07-31-2011, 07:06 AM
I've tried reading Jane Eyre several times and had no luck finishing it. It reminds me of Charles Dickens in how broad the characters are, verging on pantomime. Grotesque pouting dames and pure young ladies. Austen I have mixed feelings about. I find her gently amusing and wonderfully escapist - like Agatha Christie without the dead bodies - but her books don't have a great deal of texture. The only Bronte I like is Emily, who had the common decency to make the most prominent characters in Wuthering Heights a bunch of bitter psychotics
Heathcliff's emotional violence, Catherine Earnshaw's ghost having her wrists scraped against smashed window glass... Now that was passion. Plus she was quite simply a better prose stylist than her sister.
Heathcliff's emotional violence, Catherine Earnshaw's ghost having her wrists scraped against smashed window glass... Now that was passion. Plus she was quite simply a better prose stylist than her sister.
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe