Betsy-Tacy and doing things to impress boys

I suppose there's a lot for an aspiring writer not to love in the reissuing of out-of-print books - after all, that's one less opening for a new writer in the current market - but a) my WIP is still a long way from being done, so it's really not an issue yet, and b) dude, how did I miss out on the Betsy-Tacy books as a kid?

Thanks to HarperCollins and the inimitable Jennifer Hart - and the guiding influence of Mitali Perkins - I'm making progress on Part B. Harper started reissuing Maud Hart Lovelace's* Betsy-Tacy series and related titles about a year ago. Last month, Jennifer was at the Boston Book Fest with $5 copies of the newest releases, so how could I resist? (Especially with Mitali's event - covered by Dawn at She Is Too Fond of Books - just around the corner.)

So my last two Saturdays have been spent engrossed in the world of Deep Valley (and the world of sailor suits, party caps, taffeta, and pompadours. There's a "fashion in Lovelace" post on the way).

This past weekend, it was Heaven to Betsy/Betsy in Spite of Herself, and Betsy in Spite of Herself left me thinking about the whole "change yourself to impress a boy" thing.

Betsy is clearly being dumb as she drops her friends and engrosses herself in Phil. It's kind of the high school version of something that comes up in both Dear Enemy (Gordon) and The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society (Mark). (Have I mentioned that those two books have a lot in common? Yes. Go read them both.)

Doing-dumb-things-to-impress-boys shows up pretty often in YA lit. (Probably adult books, too, but it feels like less of a trope there. Or I just haven't read enough.) And it's one of those things that works in fiction because it's true. It certainly was for me. (I almost tried to dredge up examples. Happily, Open Diary appears to have removed long-neglected accounts of its early users, so I don't have to. Since I definitely wasn't thinking about posterity when I started my first proto-blog there, that's a good thing.)

But I can think of one thing that I did to impress a boy that was a net positive: learning to drive on the highway.

I got my driver's license when I was sixteen years, four months, and four days old - in other words, exactly four days after I met Connecticut's requirements for it. (And if the DMV inspectors hadn't been so overbooked, I would have gotten it on the very day I qualified. I was excited about driving.)

Highway driving had been part of both driver's ed and the practice I got with my parents, but sometime after I got my license I decided that I just couldn't do it. I don't remember why, but it probably had something to do with being an inexperienced driver in rush hour traffic, or something like that. As a result, "Sarah doesn't drive on the highway" was just the way it was during my junior year of high school, and most of my senior year.

Then there was a boy.

He didn't have a driver's license (in fact, he managed to go another year without getting one, despite the fact that we lived in an area with no public transit), which meant that if we were going to start dating, I would be doing all the driving.

And if we wanted to go to the movies, or Borders**, or pretty much anything outside of downtown Ridgefield, I'd have to drive on the highway to get us there.

I decided that it was worth overcoming that particular fear in order to be able to ask the boy out, so one morning I went out rather early, when I-84 wasn't too busy, and I drove. I made a few circuits of the territory between Exit 3 and Exit 9 - it wasn't likely I'd have a reason to go further east, and Exit 9 happened to be an easy one for reversing directions - and tried out the biggest challenge, the left exit I'd have to take to get to Federal Road.

I expect I was grinning a bit when I pulled back into my driveway. After a year and a half of refusing to do it, I'd managed to drive on the highway.

(I'm not sure whether this was the actual timing or whether it just makes a good story, but it may have been that night I asked the boy if he wanted to go see Moulin Rouge with me.)

The boy and I started dating a couple days after we saw Moulin Rouge, in the last few weeks of our senior year in high school. (Speaking of YA tropes, we were sure we'd manage to sustain a relationship even though we were about to leave for colleges 2000 miles apart. We almost did - for the first semester.)

It's been years now since the boy and I broke up. We're still good friends.

And I still drive on the highway - quite a lot. I even took a road trip by myself in the summer of 2009, driving from Connecticut to Florida and back. (No, I don't recommend it.)

I'm not going to say that I never would have reached that point if I hadn't been pushed by wanting to impress the boy. I would have figured it out someday.

But that was one time when a teen-girl crush pushed me in the right direction.

*I have very clear memories of getting a bookmark promoting the Maud Hart Lovelace Awards as a kid visiting the St. Paul Public Library. And yet it wasn't until recently I had any idea she was the author of the Betsy-Tacy books.

**Yeah, I wasn't indie bookstore girl back then. We ended up spending more than a few Friday nights hanging out at Borders. Yes, we're both nerds.

Chapter 11: We arrive

(Fair warning: this is a really long chapter. And more than that, I have a lot to say about it. Proceed.)

Switching tenses is something writers usually avoid (or get dinged for). The exception, I think, is when they can pull it off the way Bronte does, as a way of (quite literally) setting the scene:

A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play; and when I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured papering on the walls as inn rooms have; such a carpet, such furniture, such ornaments on the mantelpiece, such prints, including a portrait of George the Third, and another of the Prince of Wales, and a representation of the death of Wolfe. All this is visible to you by the light of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and by that of an excellent fire, near which I sit in my cloak and bonnet; my muff and umbrella lie on the table, and I am warming away the numbness and chill contracted by sixteen hours’ exposure to the rawness of an October day: I left Lowton at four o’clock a.m., and the Millcote town clock is now just striking eight.

Jane's got an hour and a half (or perhaps two hours) along a typically bumpy road to ponder just what she's getting herself into - but, as she notes, if it doesn't work, she's free to leave. (Not that she has any idea what she'd do with herself then, but it's always nice to keep that in mind, isn't it?)

"A more reassuring introduction for a new governess could scarcely be conceived" when Jane first crosses the threshold of Thornfield. (I suspect her feelings might have been a tad different if the master had been in residence at the time.) There's some quick sorting-out - Mrs. Fairfax is the housekeeper, not Jane's employer; the charge's name is Adele; Mrs. Fairfax is looking forward to being able to converse with someone of her own class, because

"Leah is a nice girl to be sure, and John and his wife are very decent people; but then you see they are only servants, and one can’t converse with them on terms of equality: one must keep them at due distance, for fear of losing one’s authority."

Which puts one in mind of a J.M. Barrie line: "His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants' hall."

And then Jane's whisked off to bed - but not before Bronte takes the opportunity to toss in some foreshadowing:

A very chill and vault-like air pervaded the stairs and gallery, suggesting cheerless ideas of space and solitude; and I was glad, when finally ushered into my chamber, to find it of small dimensions, and furnished in ordinary, modern style... the eerie impression made by that wide hall, that dark and spacious staircase, and that long, cold gallery...

Yeah, that's gonna make another appearance. Let's think back to high school English, shall we? Major feature of Gothic fiction: the house that's almost a character itself.

Welcome to Thornfield.

Traversing the long and matted gallery, I descended the slippery steps of oak; then I gained the hall: I halted there a minute; I looked at some pictures on the walls (one, I remember, represented a grim man in a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing. Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green fields; advancing on to the lawn, I looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion. It was three storeys high, of proportions not vast, though considerable: a gentleman’s manor-house, not a nobleman’s seat: battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front stood out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and broad as oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion’s designation. Farther off were hills: not so lofty as those round Lowood, nor so craggy, nor so like barriers of separation from the living world; but yet quiet and lonely hills enough, and seeming to embrace Thornfield with a seclusion I had not expected to find existent so near the stirring locality of Millcote. A little hamlet, whose roofs were blent with trees, straggled up the side of one of these hills; the church of the district stood nearer Thornfield: its old tower-top looked over a knoll between the house and gates.

Oh, and did I mention foreshadowing?

some of the third-storey rooms, though dark and low, were interesting from their air of antiquity. The furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to time been removed here, as fashions changed... All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine of memory.

Curious phrase, that.

After Jane finishes her early-morning tour, she learns one other essential detail: the house belongs to Mr. Rochester, who's going to wait a few more pages before making his appearance.

Jane (as the narrator) complains that Mrs. Fairfax doesn't do much to enlighten her about their employer's character, but let's take a look at what Mrs. F. has to say, shall we?

• He has "a gentleman's tastes and habits" (which is why she keeps the house in readiness whether or not he's around)
  
• His family is respected, and they own a lot of land and have for a long time (maybe this is a good time to discuss entailment and primogeniture?)
  
• She doesn't have any reason to dislike him (which is just a rousing endorsement)
• He's done some traveling (like, say, to the West Indies?)
  
• He's "peculiar" (because Mrs. Fairfax can never quite figure out whether or not he's messing with her, but then we're given to understand that Mrs. F. has no more than common abilities, so that's not saying much)

For a guy you haven't met yet, Jane, how much more do you need? There's something about Mr. Rochester.

In the meantime, Jane meets some new characters: Adele (and her nurse Sophie, but she doesn't play much of a role in the story) and Grace Poole.

Worth Watching: 101 Things I Learned in Film School

When I sign up to work Harvard Book Store events, I don't always pick the most fascinating ones. It's a nice plus if it's a cool author (Edwidge Danticat, last night, for example), but as this is my only source of income at the moment, I'll take pretty much anything that fits my schedule. Which is how I ended up working an event for 101 Things I Learned in Film School.

It was fortuitous: Neil Landau based his talk on the story-making side of the film business, which means the techniques he discussed were totally applicable to any other narrative-based enterprise... like, say, writing YA novels. I was mentally revising the WIP the whole time. And thanks to HBS' partnership with WGBH Forum, the talk is available here:

(The video is embedded below, but since I'm using a fairly narrow blog template here - one of those things I've been meaning to work on - you'll probably get a better view on WGBH's site.)

Chapter 10: Jane Gets a Job

"But this is not to be a regular autobiography," Jane informs us at the opening of Chapter 10 - in other words, "the next eight years are kind of boring, so let's skip to the part where I acquire an unattractive and brooding yet enticing employer."

So in a couple of sentences (things get better at Lowood; Jane becomes a teacher there; Miss Temple gets married and Jane decides it's time to move on) Jane goes from child to adult, which means it's time for her to make her way in the world. (Which I believe is the phrase the Three Little Pigs' mother used to send them in pursuit of unfortunate architecture...)

Side note: After indulging in some parentheticals myself in the preceding paragraph, let me take this opportunity to point out that this chapter includes one of my favorites from Charlotte Bronte:

“A new servitude! There is something in that,” I soliloquised (mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud)

Okay, as someone currently engaged in a job search, I have to admit that I get just a teensy bit jealous of Jane here: her resume and cover letter are no more than a hundred words, she throws a classified ad out into the wild, and a week later she's got an offer for a job at twice her current salary.

Let's try that, shall we?

"A young lady accustomed to the book business" (had I not been a blogger three years, in addition to a BTW writer/editor, and a bookseller even longer?) "is desirous of meeting with a situation in which she can work from the Boston area (I thought that as I had just moved to the city, it would not do to undertake employment elsewhere - though of course young ladies are always open to telecommuting). She is qualified to sell books, write news and feature articles, work with HTML and various CMS platforms, manage corporate social media efforts, coordinate logistics for large events, and copyedit like a charm" (in these days, reader, this rather varied catalogue of accomplishments, was somewhat less unusual than it might once have been). "Address, S.M.R., GMail, srettger@---."

If this works out as well for me as it did for Jane, I'll eat my hat*.

What? We're supposed to be talking about Jane, not me? Very well.

Jane's reply is from a Mrs. Fairfax, who Jane assumes is a mild, unoffensive old woman, "a model of elderly English respectability." (For the record, Cary Fukanaga has ruined me for all others; Judi Dench is now Mrs. Fairfax.) She goes through all the proper channels, getting references from her current employer and permission (well, a brush-off, but with the same effect) from her legal guardian.

Just before Jane is due to leave Lowood behind, she gets a visitor: Bessie, the Gateshead maid. Thanks to Bessie, we get a quick update on the state of the Reed family: Eliza has thwarted Georgiana's plans to run off with a young lordling, and John is "such a dissipated young man, they will never make much of him."

Oh, and one of Jane's paternal relatives dropped by the house. I do have a feeling we're going to hear more about him.

*By "hat," of course, I mean this kind.

(Post pic: not Thornfield, but a boys' school in Bath, according to the label I gave it nearly a decade ago.)

Chapter 9: There's something about Helen...

Oh, dear. Sadness ensues in this chapter.

But first - you know how the Romantics had a thing for nature? Yeah.

April advanced to May: a bright serene May it was; days of blue sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its duration. And now vegetation matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose its tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre.

But all is not well at Lowood. And thought he isn't called out directly, Jane blames Mr. Brocklehurst's mismanagement from the beginning:

Semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the pupils to receive infection: forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one time.

Jane's one of the hardier girls, so she gets to enjoy more-or-less freedom while all the adults are busy in their makeshift hospital. She'd be quite content to spend her days with Helen Burns, but Helen is tucked away in another wing of the school - unlike the other sick girls, she has consumption. Jane assumes it's some kind of minor illness, but she and reality eventually have a little get-together.

Motif alert: Jane's visit to Helen's sickbed marks the moon's first appearance in the book. We'll be seeing more of it.

It was quite at the other end of the house; but I knew my way; and the light of the unclouded summer moon, entering here and there at passage windows, enabled me to find it without difficulty.

Helen's a tragic figure, and she assures Jane she's totally at peace - and within a few paragraphs, she is. Jane stays with her until the end.

Chapter 8: Maybe this place isn't so bad after all

Okay, first of all? So going to see this.

Premiers in March, people! (H/t to Flavorwire and everyone who linked to the trailer on Twitter.)

Let's start with the end of the chapter: "I would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for Gateshead and its daily luxuries," our girl says.

So what makes her willing to put up with borderline starvation and abuse, as opposed to the sufficient food and abuse she got at Gateshead? 'Cause when you phrase it that way...

At first, Jane takes Mr. Brocklehurst's attack on her character pretty hard. But Helen keeps telling her to look on the bright side:

“Everybody, Jane? Why, there are only eighty people who have heard you called so, and the world contains hundreds of millions.”

“But what have I to do with millions? The eighty, I know, despise me.”

“Jane, you are mistaken: probably not one in the school either despises or dislikes you: many, I am sure, pity you much.”

And Jane, after doing her drama-queen thing for a bit - and I'm sorry, but when you're offering to have your arm broken so Miss Temple will like you, there's no other way to describe it - allows herself to be comforted. But there's also a hint here that all is not well:

Helen had calmed me; but in the tranquillity she imparted there was an alloy of inexpressible sadness. I felt the impression of woe as she spoke, but I could not tell whence it came; and when, having done speaking, she breathed a little fast and coughed a short cough, I momentarily forgot my own sorrows to yield to a vague concern for her.

But the real reason Jane finds Lowood more appealing than Gateshead is Miss Temple. She goes to find Jane, asks for her side of the story - you get the sense that she's got a limited level of respect for her employer - offers to get corroboration, feeds Helen and Jane, and then has some serious conversation with Helen before the girls have to leave.

And then she actually obtains corroboration of Jane's story, and publicizes it - thus indirectly challenging Mr. Brocklehurst before the whole school. (Which Bronte doesn't address at all.)

After finding herself welcomed back into the fold, Jane decides it's time to put in some effort too:

Thus relieved of a grievous load, I from that hour set to work afresh, resolved to pioneer my way through every difficulty: I toiled hard, and my success was proportionate to my efforts; my memory, not naturally tenacious, improved with practice; exercise sharpened my wits; in a few weeks I was promoted to a higher class; in less than two months I was allowed to commence French and drawing.

So really, it's no surprise she'll stick with Lowood.

Chapter 7: The Big Bad Wolf returns

Lowood is not a pretty place. (The name might be a bit of a hint - in the nineteenth century, low-lying areas were generally thought unhealthy. And I suppose you can consider that a minor spoiler, too.)

Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold: we had no boots, the snow got into our shoes and melted there: our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet: I remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw, and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning. Then the scanty supply of food was distressing: with the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion.

Just where you want to send your kid, isn't it? It appears our Jane was not the only one with less-than-devoted relatives.

But here's the part that tells the reader how bad things really are: "The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others." I'm actually a little surprised Jane lets them off so easily here, as opposed to using this to demonstrate that the staff is as bad as the physical plant, but apparently she's inclined to be generous.

And then... Mr. Brocklehurst shows up.

Cue the ominous music, 'cause you just know this isn't going to turn out well.

His visit starts out mildly enough - if he's not very sympathetic, he's not too horrible as he goes over some housekeeping notes with Miss Temple. But his criticisms of her management continue, and then we get to the shocking indulgence of lunch:

I looked over the regulations, and I find no such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this innovation? and by what authority?

Historical side note: Lunch in the sense of a midday meal hadn't really arrived by the time this chapter takes place in. By the end of the book, we're getting to the late 1820s/early 1830s, when it had become more fashionable, but to be fair to Mr. Brocklehurst we have to acknowledge that most girls probably weren't getting any meals beyond breakfast, dinner (which was undergoing some migrations at this point, but was somewhere around mid-afternoon), and supper (the oatcake-with-a-splash-of-coffee meal of Jane's arrival at Lowood).

Etymological side note: Before lunch/luncheon took on the meaning we associate with it, it meant a small serving of something.

Back to the story. Miss Temple explains the extenuating circumstances surrounding the lunches, and Mr. Brocklehurst demonstrates his ability to cloak miserliness in priggishness.

"Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under temporary privation."

And Miss Temple looks like she's about to let him have it, when another distraction pops up: hair. Let's just not even get into it. Or the female Brocklehursts. The closest thing to a rational comment on that is ppbbbbthhhhh.

And then we get to the heart of the chapter: Mr. Brocklehurst makes good on his promise to Mrs. Reed, and calls Jane out as a liar. Rather over-the-top eloquently. In front of everyone.

We already know, thanks to her strong feelings in Helen's case, that Jane's not a fan of the public humiliation form of punishment. So how does she feel when she's the object? That's what we'll learn in Chapter 8.

(Post pic: This was actually taken in Georgia, but if you pretend that the vegetation is something more English than Spanish moss and live oaks, it could almost be Lowood's surroundings, couldn't it?)

Good stuff from other blogs

Cool idea from Laurel:

"For any group of (at least) THREE kids (or grownups, I guess) who wants to get together and read THREE books from the list below (that they have not read before) I will offer a FREE SKYPE VISIT to chat with the group about the books they’ve read. I’ll also happily chat about other things, but at the heart of the conversation should be the books on this list."

Read it for the categories:

"Related to this is the explosion of commentary in 2009 around the publishing industry’s future. Pundits bloviated over ebooks in post after post without definition or focus."

If Cheryl hadn't posted this, I probably would not have found a connection between Taylor Swift and my historical WIP:

"The thing that so impresses me about this line is that it implies four layers of relationship in those ten words"

Fascinating ideas, fabulous graf-level linking:

"Here’s a little idea for creating innovation in news coverage: the 100 percent solution. It works like this: First, you set a goal to cover 100 percent of… well, of something. In trying to reach the goal you immediately run into problems. To solve those problems you often have to improvise or innovate. And that’s the payoff, even if you don’t meet your goal."

Katherine takes on picture books:

"Yes, I think price is a factor. No matter how many times these books are going to be read, people see an $18 + price tag on a 32 page book and they balk."

Awesome:

"The maps use typography as the sole visual clue."

In which J.L. Bell makes me reconsider a minor character in said WIP:

"It’s always a printer’s apprentice."

Food for thought:

"Publishers are in the business of linking content to markets, but we’re hamstrung at search because we’ve made context the last thing we think about."

Loads of advice from Deborah Heiligman:

"Transcribe your notes soon after taking them. Write so you can read your handwriting. Make a note of the source if it's not from your head."

Chapter 6: Meet Miss Perfect

[ETA: Roman numerals are unnecessary, but usually they're not too much trouble. Not sure why I misread the chapter heading, but you'll note that this post now has the correct chapter in the title. We're up to 6, not 7 - or VI, not VII, as the Project Gutenberg edition has it.]

One of the first things that jumped out at me in this chapter is "the girls here were all called by their surnames, as boys are elsewhere." Because that was the case not only for schoolboys, but also for higher-level servants - Darcy's housekeeper is referred to as Reynolds, for instance, in Pride & Prejudice. Is this a dig at the girls' in-between social status - well-bred enough to be sent to school, but not likely to end up as gentry?

This chapter also marks the first time Helen Burns is introduced by name, and it's clear that she's being set up as a foil to Jane - Jane can't even stand to watch Helen be punished, while Helen just accepts it, because clearly, she must have done something wrong.

(That punishment, incidentally? I'd love to think that it's because of Miss Scatcherd's love of black humor that she delivers a switching on the back of Helen's neck in the midst of a lesson on Charles I, but we're never led to think she's that clever.)

So on the one hand, we have Jane: "If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose."

And on the other, Helen: "Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear."

Helen seems just a bit too good to be true, which is one of the reasons why it's generally accepted that Charlotte Bronte based the character on her sister Maria, who (spoiler alert) died at the Lowood-esque school the girls attended. So while the idealization is understandable, I think it's fair to say that Jane Eyre would not have been such a success if we had to put up with Helen for more than a couple chapters.

Quick Jane recap

Since I haven't posted anything in the Jane Eyre-athon since June, how about a quick recap before we move all the way to Chapter 6?

Chapter 1: Beginning Jane
Chapter 2: Jane Strikes Back
Chapter 3: In Which Mr. Lloyd Foreshadows
Chapter 4: The Big Bad Wolf
Chapter 5: A Journey for Jane

Ten 10-10-10 Challenge wrap-up

So, how'd I do?

Not too spectacularly, especially when you look at what Melissa and Kalen managed to pull off. I finished a total of 50 books for the challenge, and reached ten books in only two categories, history and contemporary YA.

I really slacked off after the first couple months - most of the books on these lists were there by May.

But the thing is, I didn't just read 50 books since January 1. I've recorded 91 books in LibraryThing since then, though that also doesn't represent my total reading time - as always, most of my reading time is spent rereading. I did push myself to read more new books than I otherwise would have, though, in those first few months.

Other musings:

• Despite the fact that a third of the mysteries I read for the challenge were by Agatha Christie, I'm not actually much of a fan - I'm willing to suspend disbelief to some extent, but her plots were too implausible even for me.
• I keep intending to read poetry more often than I do. I had plenty of options to choose from just at home, without even heading to the library or the bookstore, but I chose to read other stuff.
• From what I can tell, three of the 50 books I read for the challenge were written by people of color. That's pretty pathetic, especially for someone who tries to be aware of things like that.

Here's the summary:

1. Shakespeare-related (2/10)
Shakespeare: The World As a Stage, Bill Bryson
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, James Shapiro

2. Poetry (1/10)
Red Bird, Mary Oliver

3. Biography (3/10)
Shakespeare: The World As a Stage, Bill Bryson
The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom
Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller, and Countrywoman, Judy Taylor

4. Contemporary young adult (10/10)
Sweet, Hereafter, Angela Johnson
A Wish After Midnight, Zetta Elliott
The Clearing, Heather Davis
The Things a Brother Knows, Dana Reinhardt
The Six Rules of Maybe, Deb Caletti
Extraordinary, Nancy Werlin
Kissing Tennessee, Kathi Appelt
My Most Excellent Year, Steve Kluger
Habibi, Naomi Shihab Nye
Only the Good Spy Young, Ally Carter

5. Children's non-fiction (7/10)
Honeybees: Letters From the Hive, Stephen Buchmann
The Boys' War, Jim Murphy
How Do You Go to the Bathroom in Space?, William Pogue
Bloody Scotland, Terry Deary
Math Doesn't Suck, Danica McKellar
The War to End All Wars, Russell Freedman
Here There Be Monsters: The Legendary Kraken and the Giant Squid, H.P. Newquist

6. Science fiction (2/10)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
Android Karenina, Leo Tolstoy and Ben Winters

7. History (10/10)
Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews, Melvin Konner
The Imperial Cruise, James Bradley
Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides
Playing the Enemy, John Carlin
Helluva Town, Richard Goldstein
Hellhound on his Trail, Hampton Sides
A Nation Rising, Kenneth C. Davis
Farmers Against the Crown, Keith Jones
The Atlantic, Simon Winchester
The Madame Curie Complex, Julie Des Jardins

8. Mystery (9/10)
Poirot Investigates, Agatha Christie
The Seven Dials Mystery, Agatha Christie
The Mapping of Love and Death, Jacqueline Winspear
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, Alan Bradley
A River in the Sky, Elizabeth Peters
The God of the Hive, Laurie R. King
Dark Road to Darjeeling, Deanna Raybourn
The Tale of Oat Cake Crag, Susan Wittig Albert
The Secret Adversary, Agatha Christie

9. Written before 1900 (5/10)
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
Roughing It, Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy

10. Pulitzer winners (4/10)
Among Schoolchildren, Tracy Kidder
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman
Red Bird, Mary Oliver
War in a Time of Peace, David Halberstam

Read These Books

A couple weeks ago my little sister Dom* asked for book suggestions. I used moving as an excuse to procrastinate for a while, but finally got around to pulling together a list of some of my favorite books from this year.

(Okay, the capsule reviews are kind of cheating, since I totally intended to write more about these books. But it's better than just intending and forgetting, right?)

Poison Penmanship, Jessica Mitford. I had a copy of this book back in high school, but after it sat untouched on my bookshelves for years, I ended up getting rid of it unread. What was I thinking? This would have been the perfect thing to read every time I hit an aspiring-journalist phase. Mitford starts out with a quick version of what she teaches to j-school students, then comments on each piece - what the editor changed, what she thinks of it years later, how she got the key interviews. Very glad NYRB Classics brought this one back into print. (Source: review copy courtesy of the lovely @NYRBClassics, who's been putting up with my gushing on Twitter)

Diamond Ruby, Joseph Wallace. I probably would have picked this book up even if I hadn't first met the author through Twitter, as I spent a couple years in middle school trying to be Geena Davis in A League of Their Own. Jazz Age Brooklyn, baseball, rum runners, and plenty of real-people cameos come together beautifully, and - I'll try to say this in as un-spoilerish a way as possible - when I thought the author was about to do something terrible to one of his characters, he didn't, which just made me love him that much more. (Source: ARC)

Forge, Laurie Halse Anderson. It's a sequel, but I think it's a good starting point even if you haven't read Chains. The title refers to Valley Forge, where former slaves Curzon and Isabel are encamped with the Continental army, but also to - well, you'll find out about halfway through. And after just saying that I adore Joe Wallace for not doing awful things to his characters, one of the awesome things about Forge is LHA's willingness to put her characters in a bad situation and then make it worse, but not scare me off. And the cover is gorgeously Kara Walker-ish, no? (Source, ARC)

Hellhound on His Trail, Hampton Sides. Even though anyone who reads this probably already knows how it's going to end - the name James Earl Ray does mean something to you, doesn't it? - this book still reads like a thriller. Sides did a great job recreating the sequence of events surrounding Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assasination. (Source: ARC)

The Madame Curie Complex, Julie Des Jardins. Thanks to Colleen for putting me onto this one. For the record, I studied astronomy at a women's college, in an observatory named after a woman, using computers named after female astronomers (so much more interesting than naming them OBS001 or something like that) - so this is a topic of interest to me. Which meant I was willing to slog through some unfortunate formatting that made the book appear way more dry and academic than it actually is. Look past the footnotes at the end of each chapter (endnotes, people, please - we all know how to flip pages) and give it a try. (Source: library)

My Most Excellent Year, Steve Kluger. As Stephen** points out in his Guys Lit Wire review, this book requires some degree of suspension of disbelief, but it's so worth it. The book is funny, the story moves along, and - well, just trust me on this one. (Source: acquired in the ABA lounge at BEA 2008, and yes, it took me this long to get around to it. Should have read it sooner.)

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Helen Simonson. I finally got around to reading this one after Ron Charles' rave in the Washington Post, so I have to admit I'm pretty much cribbing from him when I say that this book works because it's a wide-eyed story of a second chance at love. And the intercultural angle (he's English; she's Pakistani) comes off well, without being either forced or condescending. (Source: ARC)

Android Karenina, Quirk Books. Sorry, but I can't bring myself to list the authors here as "Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters." I'm so not a fan of the "remake classics with paranormal elements" thing from the past year or so. I want nothing to do with Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. And yet... my boss handed me this one, and I decided to take a look - and liked it. It's sort of Imperial Russia steampunk loosely based on Anna Karenina, and the aliens/robots/cyborgs storyline actually works. You probably have to have read the original to appreciate it, though. (And no, it did not change my feelings about P&P&Z and its cousins one bit.) (Source: ARC)



*My Wellesley little sister, not an actual sister. I don't have any of those.
** My actual little brother.

10-10-10 Challenge update (again)

Two categories completed, and I think it's a total of 44 books - counting them in more than one category makes it hard to keep track, especially when I don't properly tag the books in LibraryThing.

Overall:
Shakespeare-related (20%)
Poetry (10%)
Biography (30%)
Contemporary YA (100%)
Children's non-fiction (60%)
Science fiction (20%)
History (100%)
Mystery (60%)
Written before 1900 (40%)
Pulitzer winners (40%)

1. Shakespeare-related (2/10)
Shakespeare: The World As a Stage, Bill Bryson
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, James Shapiro

2. Poetry (1/10)
Red Bird, Mary Oliver

3. Biography (3/10)
Shakespeare: The World As a Stage, Bill Bryson
The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom
Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller, and Countrywoman, Judy Taylor

4. Contemporary young adult (10/10)
Sweet, Hereafter, Angela Johnson
A Wish After Midnight, Zetta Elliott
The Clearing, Heather Davis
The Things a Brother Knows, Dana Reinhardt
The Six Rules of Maybe, Deb Caletti
Extraordinary, Nancy Werlin
Kissing Tennessee, Kathi Appelt
My Most Excellent Year, Steve Kluger
Habibi, Naomi Shihab Nye
Only the Good Spy Young, Ally Carter

5. Children's non-fiction (6/10)
Honeybees: Letters From the Hive, Stephen Buchmann
The Boys' War, Jim Murphy
How Do You Go to the Bathroom in Space?, William Pogue
Bloody Scotland, Terry Deary
Math Doesn't Suck, Danica McKellar
The War to End All Wars, Russell Freedman

6. Science fiction (2/10)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
Android Karenina, Leo Tolstoy and Ben Winters

7. History (10/10)
Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews, Melvin Konner
The Boys' War, Jim Murphy
The Imperial Cruise, James Bradley
Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides
Playing the Enemy, John Carlin
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman
Helluva Town, Richard Goldstein
Hellhound on his Trail, Hampton Sides
A Nation Rising, Kenneth C. Davis
Farmers Against the Crown, Keith Jones

8. Mystery (6/10)
Poirot Investigates, Agatha Christie
The Seven Dials Mystery, Agatha Christie
The Mapping of Love and Death, Jacqueline Winspear
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, Alan Bradley
A River in the Sky, Elizabeth Peters
The God of the Hive, Laurie R. King
Dark Road to Darjeeling, Deanna Raybourn

9. Written before 1900 (4/10)
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
Roughing It, Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

10. Pulitzer winners (4/10)
Among Schoolchildren, Tracy Kidder
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman
Red Bird, Mary Oliver
War in a Time of Peace, David Halberstam

Note to Self

Do this.

Chapter 5: A Journey for Jane

Really, what's better for a ten-year-old than a fifty-mile coach journey by herself? Over early-nineteenth-century roads? I think Mrs. Reed would say the answer is "nothing."

Jane's just arrived at Lowood School, and while her arrival there doesn't sound like a lot of fun, it's not overly inauspicious:

"I passed from compartment to compartment, from passage to passage, of a large and irregular building; till, emerging from the total and somewhat dreary silence pervading that portion of the house we had traversed, we came upon the hum of many voices...a congregation of girls of every age, from nine or ten to twenty. Seen by the dim light of the dips, their number to me appeared countless, though not in reality exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores."

Now, I've never tasted porridge in any form, let alone burnt. Or rotten potatoes, for that matter. But "burnt porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes" is one of the lines I remember from this book. Ugh.

But Miss Temple, one of the unequivocally good characters here, jumps in to save the day:

"'You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat; you must be hungry:—I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be served to all...It is to be done on my responsibility,' she added, in an explanatory tone to them, and immediately afterwards left the room."

Brave Miss Temple. We'll be returning to this decision in a few pages.

One other important character makes her debut in chapter 5: Helen Burns. But we'll leave her details for next time.

While we're having fun with alliteration, here's another J word for Miss Jane: judgmental. Nothing's stopping this girl from forming opinions, even if she's smart enough not to share:

"none of whom precisely pleased me; for the stout one was a little coarse, the dark one not a little fierce, the foreigner harsh and grotesque, and Miss Miller, poor thing! looked purple, weather-beaten, and over-worked"

And on Helen's choice of reading material:

"a brief examination convinced me that the contents were less taking than the title: 'Rasselas' looked dull to my trifling taste; I saw nothing about fairies, nothing about genii; no bright variety seemed spread over the closely-printed pages."

10-10-10 Challenge update

Well, none of the categories are 0/10 any longer:

1. Shakespeare-related (2/10)
Shakespeare: The World As a Stage, Bill Bryson
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, James Shapiro

2. Poetry (1/10)
Red Bird, Mary Oliver

3. Biography (1/10)
Shakespeare: The World As a Stage, Bill Bryson

4. Contemporary young adult (9/10)
Sweet, Hereafter, Angela Johnson
A Wish After Midnight, Zetta Elliott
The Clearing, Heather Davis
The Things a Brother Knows, Dana Reinhardt
The Six Rules of Maybe, Deb Caletti
Extraordinary, Nancy Werlin
Kissing Tennessee, Kathi Appelt
My Most Excellent Year, Steve Kluger
Habibi, Naomi Shihab Nye

5. Children's non-fiction (4/10)
Honeybees: Letters From the Hive, Stephen Buchmann
The Boys' War, Jim Murphy
How Do You Go to the Bathroom in Space?, William Pogue
Bloody Scotland, Terry Deary

6. Science fiction (1/10)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne

7. History (9/10)
Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews, Melvin Konner
The Boys' War, Jim Murphy
The Imperial Cruise, James Bradley
Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides
Playing the Enemy, John Carlin
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman
Helluva Town, Richard Goldstein
Hellhound on his Trail, Hampton Sides
A Nation Rising, Kenneth C. Davis

8. Mystery (5/10)
Poirot Investigates, Agatha Christie
The Seven Dials Mystery, Agatha Christie
The Mapping of Love and Death, Jacqueline Winspear
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, Alan Bradley
A River in the Sky, Elizabeth Peters
The God of the Hive, Laurie R. King

9. Written before 1900 (3/10)
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
Roughing It, Mark Twain

10. Pulitzer winners (3/10)
Among Schoolchildren, Tracy Kidder
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman
Red Bird, Mary Oliver

(Post pic from my collection; location unknown but probably Yosemite.)

Sacred Mountain Everest

Sacred Mountain Everest, by Christine Taylor-Butler (Lee & Low)

This is a long-overdue Cybils review, but let's start with the important question: how did I not know that Edmund Hillary was a beekeeper until I read this book?

Sacred Mountain Everest is a very cool book, covering some of the familiar history while giving full credit to the Sherpas who made the climbs alongside the famous names.

Seeing the author tweet this, six months after I read the book? Also very cool:

10-10-10 Challenge update

As of this week. Clearly I've got some work to do.

1. Shakespeare-related (2/10)
Shakespeare: The World As a Stage, Bill Bryson
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, James Shapiro

2. Poetry (0/10)

3. Biography (1/10)
Shakespeare: The World As a Stage, Bill Bryson

4. Contemporary young adult (8/10)
Sweet, Hereafter, Angela Johnson
A Wish After Midnight, Zetta Elliott
The Clearing, Heather Davis
The Things a Brother Knows, Dana Reinhardt
The Six Rules of Maybe, Deb Caletti
Extraordinary, Nancy Werlin
Kissing Tennessee, Kathi Appelt
My Most Excellent Year, Steve Kluger

5. Children's non-fiction (3/10)
Honeybees: Letters From the Hive, Stephen Buchmann
The Boys' War, Jim Murphy
How Do You Go to the Bathroom in Space?, William Pogue

6. Science fiction (1/10)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne

7. History (9/10)
Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews, Melvin Konner
The Boys' War, Jim Murphy
The Imperial Cruise, James Bradley
Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides
Playing the Enemy, John Carlin
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman
Helluva Town, Richard Goldstein
Hellhound on his Trail, Hampton Sides
A Nation Rising, Kenneth C. Davis

8. Mystery (5/10)
Poirot Investigates, Agatha Christie
The Seven Dials Mystery, Agatha Christie
The Mapping of Love and Death, Jacqueline Winspear
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, Alan Bradley
A River in the Sky, Elizabeth Peters
The God of the Hive, Laurie R. King

9. Written before 1900 (2/10)
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne

10. Pulitzer winners (2/10)
Among Schoolchildren, Tracy Kidder
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman

You though I forgot about Jane, didn't you?

Forgot, no. Lazy? I plead the fifth.

We've reached the fourth chapter of Miss Eyre's autobiography, in which the Black Pillar is introduced. That would be Mr. Brocklehurst, of course, and if this were Rocky Horror, now would be the time to throw stuff at the screen -

Mrs. Reed has summoned Mr. Brocklehurst to Gateshead because she's decided she must get the Eyre child away from her little darlings. ("They are not fit to associate with me," our girl snaps one day.) Jane spends two and a half months in a sort of limbo - deliberate religious reference, courtesy of the pretty sharp satire in this chapter - before the villain appears.

(And as Bronte sets the stage for his appearance, she breaks into a delightfully snarky portrait of Eliza Reed:

"She had a turn for traffic, and a marked propensity for saving; shown not only in the vending of eggs and chickens, but also in driving hard bargains with the gardener about flower-roots, seeds, and slips of plants...Eliza would have sold the hair off her head if she could have made a handsome profit thereby. As to her money...Eliza, fearful of one day losing her valued treasure, consented to intrust it to her mother, at a usurious rate of interest—fifty or sixty per cent.; which interest she exacted every quarter, keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy."

Just in case you thought she was meant to be a sympathetic character.)

Okay, back to the Big Bad Wolf.

You laugh? Look at how he's described, and tell me that "Grandmother, what big teeth you have" doesn't complete the series:

"What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! what a great nose! and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth!"

And he, charming man, proceeds to quiz Jane on why she's such a wicked girl, and what happens to disobedient children, and other cheerful topics, making reference to the "Child's Guide" and its tales of awful things that happen to bad children. The "Child's Guide" was a play on the "Children's Friend," a periodical published by the real-life inspiration for Mr. Brocklehurst.

Bronte gets in one more dig at the distinguished clergyman before the scene closes: "Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties," he says. Uh huh. Matthew 22:38 says something a little different, and Bronte's readers were no doubt familiar with that verse.

Product placement that worked

(Sort of.)

In Lynda Sandoval's Who's Your Daddy?, one of my favorite overlooked YA books of the past few years - although it looks like S&S rereleased it with a new cover in 2008, so maybe it wasn't as overlooked as I thought - I was introduced to OPI.

(PSA: OPI's website is a Flash monstrosity that seems to have caused a certain amount of havoc in Firefox. Sephora's site might be a better choice if you want to check out the offerings.)

Specifically, the pun-tastic names that OPI gives its nail polish colors:

"Caressa was bent low over my feet, painting my toenails with this sweet OPI shade she'd just bought, 'I'm Not Really a Waitress.' It's kind of a red with sparkly gold in it. I had a hard time deciding between that and another shade from OPI's European collection called 'Amster-Damsel in Distress,' but the gold shimmer in 'Waitress' really won me over."

The names were what won me over. I can't think of another instance in which I've become a fan of a brand just because it appeared in a book.

Even this book - there's a fair amount of brand-dropping, but the references to Lucky Brand jeans didn't do it for me.

You want more examples? How about "A Good Man-Darin is Hard to Find?" "Curry Up Don't Be Late?" "Pinko de Gallo?"

Now, it's been the better part of a decade since I actually bought nail polish, so OPI hasn't been benefiting much from my enthusiasm. But when I do get my nails done, I choose from the OPI selection - and I make sure I like the name before I decide on a color.

There's a small bit of anecdata for you.

Buy books (for someone else)

Lots of someones, in fact - the students at Ojo Encino Day School on the Navajo Nation, and Alchesay High School on the White River Apache Reservation. Guys Lit Wire and readergirlz are once again rocking the philanthropy, and they've compiled huge lists of books these kids want.

Go read more, and donate some books.



(Side note: I know. Not a real post. We'll get back to Miss Eyre, Cybils books I still haven't gotten around to reviewing, and why I look for OPI nail polish soon.)

Chapter 3: In Which Mr. Lloyd Foreshadows

When we left Jane, she had just collapsed in the red room. In chapter 3, she's been removed to her own bed, and Charlotte Bronte throws in another atmosphere-setting zinger:

I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed.

This is a ten-year-old girl, remember. And what it takes for her to feel safe is the presence of a stranger.

The stranger is Mr. Lloyd, the local apothecary (the lowest rung of the medical profession at the time; if you don't know this, the fact that Mrs. Reed calls in a physician for herself doesn't have the same impact). He's there to check in on Jane, who's had a bit of a fright.

And then we get one of the moments where Jane actually seems like a child, as she contemplates Gulliver's Travels:

This book I had again and again perused with delight. I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth’s surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other.

Mr. Lloyd comes back for a chat, and the reader is given the first hint that Jane might have family beyond the walls of Gateshead:

"Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed?"

"I think not, sir."

"None belonging to your father?"

"I don’t know. I asked Aunt Reed once, and she said possibly I might have some poor, low relations called Eyre, but she knew nothing about them."

"If you had such, would you like to go to them?"

I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable poverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty for me was synonymous with degradation... I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.

We've touched on Jane Eyre as a book that endorses revolutionary ideals, but it's a revolution that takes place very much within the landed classes. Bronte was not a fan of Jane Austen, but I think there's a good chance our Jane and Fanny Price would have agreed on the undesirability of poor relations.

Mr. Lloyd continues to act as a one-man foreshadowing show when he asks Jane if she'd like to go to school. Poor girl doesn't know what she's letting herself in for, but we'll see, starting in the next chapter.

Even with all the pathos in this chapter, the deadpan humor is still there, particularly in this line from the narrator:

Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes.

Hmm. That's a mash-up that no one's tried yet. Anyone up for Jane Eyre and Gunpowder?

Where the name came from

Just moving this off the sidebar and into a post:

'That Greek one, then, is my hero
who watched the bath water
Rise above his navel, and rushed
out naked, 'I found it,
I found it' into the street
in all his shining and forgot
That others would only stare
at his genitals.
What laughter!'

- Dannie Abse

Chapter 2: Jane Strikes Back

[Previously: Chapter 1]

Well, sort of. Bronte drops the reader into an opening paragraph that shows the change that's suddenly come over Jane:

I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed to entertain of me. The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself; or rather out of myself, as the French would say: I was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.

"A new thing for me," another one of those character-development asides that I just love. (See also "'If you don’t sit still, you must be tied down,' said Bessie. 'Miss Abbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine directly.'" Tell me that's not a dig at the larger girth of the less-sympathetic Abbott.)

I'm going to leave the slavery bit until later, even though the slaves Jane refers to are probably, as in the last chapter, classical ones. There's a lot to say about slavery in Jane Eyre, and for the moment the politics that contemporary critics saw in the book are quite enough for one post.

The Christian Remembrancer used the phrase "moral Jacobinism" in its review of the book, and this chapter was one of the bits it cited in support of that view - which was not an endorsement. The Jacobins were associated with the French Revolution (half a century before the book was published; a generation before its events), and no respectable English monarchist would get behind that, would they?

What's the one thing that distracts Jane from rebellion? A ghost, or the idea of one.

A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not—never doubted—that if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls—occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaning mirror—I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed... This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised...

To review: Jane is the child of Mr. Reed's sister and brother-in-law, both dead. As is Mr. Reed, so the adult in charge is his widow, who considers Jane no relation at all - although Jane suspects things might have turned out differently if she'd been pretty.

Which reminds me of one of Fanny's speeches from Sense & Sensibility:

"What brother on earth would do half so much for his sisters, even if really his sisters! And as it is--only half blood!--But you have such a generous spirit!"

Wouldn't you love to see Jane and Fanny duke it out?

Other bits:

• This is the chapter with the red room scene, which I no longer read without thinking of Roger's question.
• It's also the first appearance in the book of "abigail" as a synonym for "lady's maid." (Thank you, Penguin Classics, for defining that!)

Beginning Jane

Inspired by Leila's Big Reads, Kelly's chapter-by-chapter look at Jane Austen, and the fact that Colleen has somehow never read one of my favorite books, I'm launching a Jane Eyre blogathon.

Knowing my inability to keep to any kind of schedule I set out, I'm not going to promise a chapter a day, or really any posting calendar at all. But I've already taken notes on the whole book, so we'll get through it sooner or later.

For those who'd like to play along at home, the complete text is up at Project Gutenberg - plus, it's the sort of book you should be able to find in any library or general bookstore. (And if it's not in yours, I want names!)

I actually have three different copies of the book - one that I picked up at a book sale sometime in high school, a Penguin Classics edition acquired from my store, and the new Penguin Classics Couture edition, which is just as gorgeous as it looks in the pictures. (And even though that wasn't the copy I grabbed for notetaking, I'll satisfy the FCC by saying that that copy was a gift.)

So... (taking a deep breath) here goes: Chapter 1

The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy.

You see what she did with that parenthetical? Yup, Miss C's got your character development right there. Seven words, and you've got a pretty good idea what life is like at the Reed house.

The Reeds are Jane's cousins and her aunt, who serves as guardian totally against her will. She's not too fond of Jane, and doesn't bother to hide it, so Jane does her best to keep out of the way.

In this case, she curls up in the window seat with a copy of Bewick's History of British Birds, keeping to herself until John Reed finally locates her. (And if you're familiar with Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance, you'll see that John Reed and Gerald Fairley have quite a lot in common, in terms of their character and their physical person, though it takes longer for Gerald to come to a bad end.)

John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home for a month or two, “on account of his delicate health.” Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home; but the mother’s heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that John’s sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after home.

Sounds like a charmer, no? He lets loose on Jane:

You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen’s children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama’s expense.

Again, I'm impressed by Bronte's skill with words - John's basically reciting a bunch of backstory here, but no one's about to accuse Bronte of telling instead of showing.

Jane, although she describes herself as "habitually obedient" just a few paragraphs earlier, isn't going to take the abuse quietly. And you just can't help laughing a bit at her reasoning here:

“Wicked and cruel boy!” I said. “You are like a murderer—you are like a slave-driver—you are like the Roman emperors!”

I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, &c.

'Cause, you know, most ten-year-old girls are pretty set in their opinions of Roman emperors. This is one of the points that make the reader remember that the narrator is actually late-twenties Jane, telling her history from a particular point of view. There's one other line in this chapter that strikes me the same way, when Jane describes the stories Bessie the nurse would tell:

passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland.

To a kid, they're just stories. But to an adult - who is probably well aware of the prejudices against novels that existed both at the time she was writing and at the time the story was set - it's a reason to chuckle.