# Any Jane Eyre fans in the house? (Any straight male fans?) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 28, 2011, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665 "2011-07-28T20:57:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/21 "2011-07-29T11:00:04Z")
> [@Hedda\_Rosa](#): > > I made a pilgrimage to the parsonage at Haworth … > I walked in the lavender carpeting the hills above Nitpick - that would be heather, not lavender 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/22 "2011-07-29T12:43:37Z")
> [@Scheidt-Hoch](#): > > Wuthering Heights is not a romance or a life affirming love story - it is a study of child abuse (as is Jane Eyre) and people (both Heathcliffe and old Cathy) who have what would later be called personality disorder or sociopathy. > > A great book does not need to have any sympathetic characters. Thank you. I was about to say the same thing. But of course, when adapting such a book, complexities such as this get thrown out the window, because what film-goers want on the screen is soap opera. Anyone for _Vanity Fair_? ---
**Author:** ![Elysium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3be4f8/32.png) [@Elysium](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elysium)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/23 "2011-07-29T12:51:35Z")
It’s one of my all-time favorites. The first adaptation I saw was the William Hurt/Charlotte Gainsbourg version from 1996, with a young Anna Paquin as little Jane. It was that movie that prompted me to read the book, so it has a soft spot in my heart. I’m dying to see the new version! I have heard many good things. Has anyone here also read the Wide Sargasso Sea? ---
**Author:** ![alexandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e68b1a/32.png) [@alexandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alexandra)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/24 "2011-07-29T12:55:29Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > (And I’m a straight male, but I don’t see why that’s an issue. 😕) It’s a little ridiculous everyone listing this like this is a dating discussion and not a topic about one of the greatest Victorian novels. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/25 "2011-07-29T13:25:39Z")
> [@alexandra](#): > > It’s a little ridiculous everyone listing this like this is a dating discussion and not a topic about one of the greatest Victorian novels. Check the title of the thread - that’s the only reason we’ve mentioned it. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/26 "2011-07-29T13:37:29Z")
I love the book, but have never seen any movie adaptation. I don’t think a movie could really capture the things I like about the book…the writing, and Jane’s inner world. > [@Stoid](#): > > (I assume this thread will attract at least one person who will bring up Emily and Wuthering Heights; for the record, I’m not a fan at all. Never understood the appeal, since Catherine’s a bitch, Heathcliff’s a fool and the whole story is convoluted and pointless. Just one woman’s opinion.) My mother is named Catherine (with a C!) because of Wuthering Heights. I asked Grandma what the heck she was thinking, and she said, “Well, I never read the _book_.” ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/27 "2011-07-29T16:49:32Z")
> [@alexandra](#): > > It’s a little ridiculous everyone listing this like this is a dating discussion and not a topic about one of the greatest Victorian novels. Well, come to think of it, I could use an introduction to a landed young nubile. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2011, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/28 "2011-07-30T15:05:27Z")
I love the book - Mr. Rochester was my first literary crush! Coincidentally, I’m reading it again now and my boyfriend is reading it for the first time. He’s into it because he’s a huge _Dark Shadows_ fan and that show, er, “borrows heavily” from Bronte. ---
**Author:** ![Hedda\_Rosa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hedda_rosa/32/1204_2.png) [@Hedda\_Rosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hedda_Rosa)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/29 "2011-08-01T05:47:42Z")
> [@Scheidt-Hoch](#): > > Nitpick - that would be heather, not lavender 🙂 Ah heck you are right. But the color was quite lavender! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/30 "2011-08-01T06:54:27Z")
I am a straight male. I like Jane Eyre. My first exposure was via the Broadway Musical. Then I read the book. I love the book. ---
**Author:** ![YaraMateo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/58f4c7/32.png) [@YaraMateo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YaraMateo)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/31 "2011-08-01T07:13:12Z")
> [@a35362](#): > > I’m not sure if this is what you want, but it’s my favorite book. I am looking forward to seeing the 2011 movie version as soon as it’s out on DVD (yes, of course I have it on pre-order). My own favorite version is the Clarke-Dalton 1983 TV miniseries, although I think it was very low-budget 1980s BBC TV studio clunky. I enjoyed the Wilson-Stephens 2004 Masterpiece Theatre one as well. > > I am glad to hear you think so highly of the 2011 movie. I have found that the two-hour feature film format tends to ensure that nearly everything except the romance and the Gothic horror stuff tends to get cut out. Jane’s return to Gateshead and being able to let go of the past; St. John tends to lose a sister (or two!); Jane’s inheritance, making her financially independent – these are all really important parts of her story! Also, they tend to make Brocklehurst a fiend and Lowood something bordering on a concentration camp: you’re seeing all of this (in the book, anyway) through the eyes of a very angry ten-year-old girl. Religion was bleak, and poverty and illness rampant, and the church had to save the souls of these basically unwanted children. > > I wrote some stuff on the TV Tropes page about Rochester that later got edited out. Lots of people think he’s a manipulative jackass, almost cruel, and not quite worthy of Jane. I think he’s a tragic figure in an impossible situation, trying to do right by his ward, his servants, and his tenants. \*\* He knows he’s probably going to be alone for the rest of his days and is wondering what in the hell he did to deserve this\*\*. Then he meets this woman and he can’t even trust his own judgement when he’s around her, so he won’t allow himself to even speak to her much; and then he wonders if she might just be after his money and social standing. > I even think that Blanche Ingram isn’t all that bad: yes, she’s a spoiled brat, but you gotta wonder why she’s still unmarried at 25 if she’s so wonderful. She’s just doing what she’s been brought up to do: make a good match with a wealthy member of landed gentry. > > Yeah, the other Bronte men are not the same. Heathcliff and the abusive alcoholic in _Tenant of Wildfell Hall_ are unredeemable monsters. Maybe locking his first wife in the attic? He wasn’t that um… Nice to her. That might be why he deserves to be unhappy… ---
**Author:** ![a35362](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@a35362](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/a35362)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/32 "2011-08-01T08:14:30Z")
You understand she’s a violent lunatic, right? I mean, what’s he _supposed_ to do with her? As it is, he thinks keeping her locked up at Thornfield is a better option than sending her to one of the asylums of the day (of course, she couldn’t make noise and make trouble if she were safely out of the way). I wonder if the elder Rochester knew what he was getting his son into (probably not – the Mason family was probably keeping it a secret, in the hope that she wouldn’t manifest or wouldn’t get worse). I read something about how the idea that her illness runs in the family indicates that the Masons are carrying some kind of genetic problem that came from untreated venereal disease…? Some European colonist gave somebody something at least two generations back and the family is still dealing with it. ---
**Author:** ![a35362](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@a35362](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/a35362)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/33 "2011-08-01T08:18:25Z")
Personally I think his biggest sin is trying to marry Jane under false pretenses. Yeah, 'cause she’ll be just fine with it when he finally tells her after “a year and a day.” Not to mention teasing her with Blanche Ingram. Gah, you _cad!_ Her heart is breaking over here! ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Mapp](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miss_mapp/32/369_2.png) [@Miss\_Mapp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Mapp)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/34 "2011-08-01T10:42:36Z")
> [@a35362](#): > > Personally I think his biggest sin is trying to marry Jane under false pretenses. Yeah, 'cause she’ll be just fine with it when he finally tells her after “a year and a day.” I think his thinking here is that she may well be pregnant after that period of time–and then she’d have little choice but to stay with him even if their marriage isn’t legitimate. ---
**Author:** ![Hedda\_Rosa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hedda_rosa/32/1204_2.png) [@Hedda\_Rosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hedda_Rosa)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/35 "2011-08-02T19:11:46Z")
> [@Miss\_Mapp](#): > > I think his thinking here is that she may well be pregnant after that period of time–and then she’d have little choice but to stay with him even if their marriage isn’t legitimate. I’ve always thought that Edward didn’t know her as well as the thought he did, if he thought she’d stay with him unmarried. I suppose that is what the second half of the book is all about though. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![a35362](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@a35362](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/a35362)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/36 "2011-08-02T20:02:49Z")
One of my editions has an introduction that suggests that Rochester, for all his sophistication, really is kind of clueless about women. Bertha, then Celine and the other mistresses, then Blanche is in there somewhere, then Jane, who so impresses him with her kindness, intelligence and goodness. I’m not sure that’s fair to Rochester. Okay, he was blinded by lust and romance with Bertha, but he was a dumb kid then, and who the heck would have expected his marriage to turn out the way it did? He was betrayed by someone he thought of as a friend. Then he travels abroad, hooking up with various women, and they use each other for sex and money. He meets Blanche at some point and impresses Mrs. Fairfax and others with how well he appears to click with her. Maybe he is mature enough by this point in his life to see Blanche for what she is because he doesn’t marry her, but he knows he has to play the game in his society and nobody knows that he’s already “married.” Blanche is still his go-to for when he needs to look like he might be getting married, though. Then he underestimates how strongly Jane feels about him and hurts her. (I’ve always felt weird about the proposal scene. Poor Jane is so wound up in grief, thinking that she will never see this man ever again, that she can’t quite follow what he is saying to her.) Then after the aborted wedding ceremony, he tries to talk her into some kind of understanding. I’m distracted remembering the Toby Stephens version: when he says, “We could go to my villa in the Mediterranean and have tea and play bowls… something sedate and traditional. We could live like brother and sister: a kiss on the cheek on birthdays. I wouldn’t tempt you,” I know most of that (including the passionate kissing before) was Not in the Book, but it was a sweet way to show Rochester desperately trying to make it work. I like the way he says, “I wouldn’t tempt you” right after all the kissing. Yeowza! Anyway, I digress. In the book he brings up his villa in the Mediterranean, she resists “Sir, your wife is living,” and he goes into the whole history of his marriage, thinking Jane will give in to his wishes out of sympathy for his situation. Uh-uh. She thinks to herself: “_I_ care for myself… Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour… Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.” And I just want to cheer. Go, Jane! ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Mapp](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miss_mapp/32/369_2.png) [@Miss\_Mapp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Mapp)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/37 "2011-08-02T21:25:13Z")
> [@Hedda\_Rosa](#): > > I’ve always thought that Edward didn’t know her as well as the thought he did, if he thought she’d stay with him unmarried. > > I suppose that is what the second half of the book is all about though. 🙂 It’s a tad harder to go tromping around the Yorkshire dales after leaving your luggage and money on the coach if you’re lugging a baby on your hip. 🙂 One thing that’s always amused me is Rochester’s style of thinking just after his secret is revealed and before Jane leaves. He keeps asking her to listen to his perfectly logical and rational reasons for why she should stay with him in spite of his mad wife upstairs–and his reasons are all emotional appeals, basically boiling down to “But you can’t go! I love you!” ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/38 "2011-08-02T21:57:41Z")
The Rochester-Jane courtship really is intoxicating, but the description of their married life at the end of the book creeps me right the fuck out. > [@Jane Eyre](#): > > I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest–blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully is he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character–perfect concord is the result. > > Mr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union; perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near–that knit us so very close: for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand. Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye. He saw nature–he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam–of the landscape before us; of the weather round us–and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye. Never did I weary of reading to him; never did I weary of conducting him where he wished to go: of doing for him what he wished to be done. And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most exquisite, even though sad- -because he claimed these services without painful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly, that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance: he felt I loved him so fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes. I know that’s meant to be a portrait of sustained romantic bliss, but it’s just so over-the-top that it comes across as pathological. It’s literally a maiden’s dream of what a marital relationship should be like (Bronte herself didn’t marry until years after _Jane Eyre_ was published), rather than a portrayal of any kind of actual romantic union after ten years of marriage. Yes, I believe that two people deeply in love and compatible in temperament and character can have a very close emotional bond that can withstand the strain of a very drastic and one-sided physical dependence. No, I simply don’t believe that two people, however compatible or however much in love, can literally spend all their time together day in and day out, year after year, without ever feeling any weariness of each other’s company or any emotional withdrawal. I don’t think any woman who had had any experience with a real marriage in her own family circle in her adult years (Bronte’s own mother died when she was five) could have written about marriage like that. Though I mostly love the novel and the character, these passages in the closing chapter make me picture Jane as a neurotically obsessed sentimentalist whose suffocating possessiveness is probably driving her poor husband to deep depression, or at best to recurrent daydreams about being able to go for a long ride on his horse Mesrour or go on a visit to a neighboring country house without having that blessed wife of his yak yak yakking in his ear all day long. ---
**Author:** ![a35362](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@a35362](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/a35362)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/39 "2011-08-03T01:13:48Z")
They didn’t talk _that_ much. They just enjoyed each other’s company very much. They’re _soulmates_, perfectly suited to one another. Remember, they’ve still got old John or somebody if he wants to go for a ride or something. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665/40 "2011-08-03T01:52:48Z")
> [@AnalogSignal](#): > > Jane Eyre + Broadway musical =? straight male. Sorry, this does not compute. 🙂 Hmmm. I’m also a straight male, also like _Jane Eyre_ (in fact, my second-fave of all the Bronte sisters’ works) and I like the music for the Broadway version (although for my money Marla Schaffel was waaay too hot to play Jane). I have not seen any of the film versions. I have a fondness for the Gothic genre, and especially the “monster in the attic” literary theme which the novel does so well – indeed, I can’t think of an earlier instance of this, so Jane Eyre may well be the literal originator of monster-in-the-attic. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-jane-eyre-fans-in-the-house-any-straight-male-fans/590665.md?page=3)