Jane Eyre and Villette: Thoughts So Far

I am about halfway through both Jane Eyre and Villette and have a million thoughts about my foray into the classics.  So I figured it was time for a little status update.  I have a blog for a reason, right?

1. It is kind of refreshing to read books with only one narrator.  I’m really wearing out on the multiple narrator thing and there’s certainly a lot of that going around in novels these days.

2. I love rereading Jane Eyre and I look forward to listening to it whenever I can fit it in.  I took a class in college where the professor told us we were reading classics, books that would stick with us, that we’d read over and over again because of the lessons they teach/how we connect to them.  I never felt that way about any of the books we read in that class (would it surprise you that all were written by men?), but I realized recently that I do feel that way about Jane Eyre.

3. Villette is challenging, especially because its narrator, Lucy Snowe, is pretty difficult.  She’s evasive and tends to be a bit depressed.  And she’s an outsider, so there’s a lot of being on the outside looking in with her narration.  It’s not always enjoyable to be so apart from the action.

4. In reading Jane Eyre and Villette at the same time, I am realizing that Charlotte Brontë LOVES to describe things and, perhaps even more, likes to describe people and FEELINGS.  And sometimes I love it.  And other times my eyes (or ears in the case of audiobooks) glaze over and I’m like, ok, let’s get to the action, enough of the sloping necks and pure white dresses.  And sometimes it gets a little emo, but sometimes the emo is totally worth it when you get lines like “happiness is not a potato.”

5. It is sort of nice to read classics because there is a lot more to think about and analyze and well, it’s been a while since I read something like that.  Remind me to do this more often.