Not so much sewing

[frualeydis]

I didn't manage to sew that much - I made a new pattern based on my Foy-pattern and cut the pieces for a trial version, but then I got distracted by a sudden urge to purge our bookshelves. So now the ratio between fiction and fact books is even more skewed to the latter. I carried a heap of books by international writers like Dostojevskij and swedish popular writers to the entrance and put a note to my neighbours to take what they want - I just am a person who'd rather have "pulp" novels from the 1920s and latin editions of the visions of St.Bridget than "real literature" and we're really running out of space.
Oh, and I ditched Jane Eyre too - I tried to read it last summer, but didn't even get to when she meets Mr Rochester - unsympathetic heroine and all the neurotic antics you can expect from a novel from the romantic era - give me georgian any time please: wit and charm and some sense, at least some of the time.

Comments

[jehanearbonne.livejournal.com]

Unsympathetic? She's awesome! I just love it that she's plain and can be grumpy and straight-forward and mr Rochester still sees her worth. But of course, if your thing is cardboard people who couldn't do a socially unaccepted thing if their life was on the line...

[frualeydis.livejournal.com]

It's just that I don't like the romantic tendency to heap misery on everybody in a story. I can be amused by the fact that they do it, but it annoys me to have to read about it.
Oh, and that I'm more interested in people who don't contribute so much to their own misery by irrational behaviour.I find no joy in seeing people wilfully enter in what can only be described as destructive, abusive relationships - Mr Rochester or Heathcliff aren't "dark and romantic", they're sociopaths.

/Eva

[jehanearbonne.livejournal.com]

I don't see Jane that way at all. I think she does take her life into her own hands and walks away from misery. She leaves Rochester when the thing with his wife comes out, even though she loves him. And she also refuses Whats-his-name who offers her a white marriage, because she knows she'd just be fleeing from herself. When she does go back to Rochester it's on a much more equal footing. (Note, also, that he has to be symbolically emasculinized in order for this to happen.)

I don't think Rochester is a sociopath. He's a bastard, but that's a different thing altogether. Heathcliff is, sure, but then everybody in that book is fucking mental.

[frualeydis.livejournal.com]

Oh and for example Austens' characters aren't cardboard people, they're just not totally neurotic and histrionic. I know that you don't like heroines who are pretty and smart, but I have no problem with that.

/Eva

[therru.livejournal.com]

I loved Jane Eyre the first time I read it, but I tried to reread it a couple of years ago, and had to stop, it was annoying me too much.

Give me Jane Austen any day. Her characters are real and believable. Weakness and stupidity don't make a character more believable to me, just more irritating, and I can be miserable enough all on my own.

[frualeydis.livejournal.com]

Exactly my feelings.

/Eva

[jehanearbonne.livejournal.com]

Err, I have no problem with heroines who are pretty and smart. I do, however have a problem with plots that are all about how people who do The Done Thing inevitably come out on top. Because in real life? Not so much.