Her demands for justice and for happiness seem just as authentic, as vital, as urgent as they did to Woolf and, perhaps, to Charlotte herself.Īnd Jane is so bold! She is clever, and not afraid to show it. Think of the drawing-room, even, those ‘white carpets on which seemed laid brilliant garlands of flowers’, that ‘pale Parian mantelpiece’ with its Bohemia glass of ‘ruby red’ and the ‘general blending of snow and fire’– what is all that except Jane Eyre?”Īnother hundred years have gone by, and Jane feels just as present. Think of the moor, and again there is Jane Eyre. “Think of Rochester,” wrote Woolf, “and we have to think of Jane Eyre. How had she written a novel that still seemed so fresh after so many years? The secret was, she decided, the heroine, who pervaded every line and every image. She was worried it would seem antiquated, but instead, she was so absorbed and exhilarated she couldn’t put it down, and when she did, she wondered how Charlotte had done it. A hundred years ago, Virginia Woolf sat down to re-read Jane Eyre for Charlotte Brontë’s centenary.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |