Happy Ending

Mr. Rochester comes back from Jamaica worn down by the tragic insanity of his wife. She then burns his house to the ground, blinding him. He does, however, manage to hook up with Jane Eyre, live in perfect concord, and regain his sight, while generally being happy nestled in the bosom of his mother country. Get at the kid! Much as Rhys might dislike him (I get the feeling that she dislikes most men) she really can't take away the good old happy ending.  Depressing book, overall, but really it was quite uplifting for me, because the only character I really sympathized with--poor put-upon Rochester, tricked into marrying a madwoman and then raped and maligned at length by his rapists--manages, I know, to awake from the seemingly inescapable nightmare that is Jamaica and its aftereffects. It's almost like a Lovecraft story; the monster arises, we get twenty pages about just how existentially horrifying it is, and then it dies. The voodoo from Jamaica seems like it would end all chance at happiness Rochester might have had (I'd bet you anything that Rhys would love to add a smug epilogue about how the guilt over Bertha ate away at him until he died, afraid and alone) but a fine western woman solves all of that in a jiffy. Really life-affirming stuff.

Christophine's Amazing Ju-Ju Luv Magic

This may be slightly tangential. I recall a class discussion nearer the beginning of the year where Mr. Mitchell  gave me the impression that as long as you started with the book and kept it somewhat relevant, you could talk about whatever you wanted on these blog-journals. 

Anyways, I had a conversation about this with Soren a few weeks ago about this in reference to a different work of literature. What, scientifically speaking, is the difference between a "love potion" of the kind that Christophine brews for Antoinette and a date-rape drug? I mean, Antoinette literally lures Rochester into her room, gets him a little drunk, and then slips him something so that she can take advantage of him sexually in his vulnerable state, and so that he'll forget all about it in the morning. If the ads on the MTD bus I take every morning are true, rape is rape even in the context of marriage. We're not offended--and I hate to be the one doing the gender-flip thing, but bear with me--because it's girl-on-guy rape. It's still mad rapey. If a Jamaican dude wasn't getting any from his Brit wife, and he brewed himself up some Roofies, we'd be appalled. 'S essentially the same thing. Rochester ACTS all tough, but he's probably emotionally scarred for life and stuff.

Jean Rhys

I first heard about Wide Sargasso Sea maybe five or six years ago. Some girl from my middle school was reading it, and when she introduced the concept to me, it seemed a little silly. As a rule, I don't hold with "in the same universe as" stories, or unofficial sequels, or what have you. This book, of course is a little different; it has a  lot more class than Peter Pan in Red or The Wheel of Time (yeah, I went there) or whatever. I think that if this book had been written by a new author, I'd be a little puzzled by it, because it's difficult to see why someone would have the arrogance to assume that they could... "add on"? I guess? To a great work of art like Jane Eyre and have their contribution also be great art. It's fanfiction, essentially.

The only way that such a novel could ever be pulled off is by a writer from the Lost Generation who retired to anonymity for forty years and then spent a decade working obsessively on it because of an actual and obvious connection to the part of the novel they were "expanding." Jean Rhys is legit. What can I say? The Mezzanine's goodness was hard to explain, but  not nearly so much as that of Wide Sargasso Sea.