In which I briefly voice very unpopular opinions, and then hope people stay to read the last bits

[meganbmoore]

I do not like Rochester.

Or Heathcliff.

Or Lovelace.

Lets see...wannabe bigamist who keeps his wife locked in the attic.  Man who gets so pissy about getting dumped that he devotes his life to destroying her family.  Man so bent on conquering a woman that when he can't, he sets out to destroy her, eventually raping her so he can "win."

I get the interest in the character, and the less evil/bastardy character types they spawned, but the adoration for the characters themselves, and wanting the women who should just run while the running's good to end up with them, weirds me out.

And now that that's off my chest...

I have Girl Scout cookies.  At some point today, I shall let you know if the new low-calorie Cinna Spin things are any good.

I also picked up an interesting looking manga called Purgatory Kabuki.  There is no proper descriptiob of it on the back, but flipping through it and reading the translation notes, it seems to be based on the legend of Benkei and the Gojou Bridge, only set in the underworld where the swods have spirits.  (Benkei was a warrior monk who posted himself at the Gojou Bridge in Kyoto and challenged every swordsman who passed and took their swords.  He had collected 999 swords when some punk named Minamoto no Yoshitsune came along and beat him.  So he became Yoshitsune's righthand man.)  The art kinda makes me think of Mononoke if it as designed by Amano.  Looking at the inside, though, I can't help but think someone was a little too fond of the shading tool.  I may read it after I read everything else I brought.

In other queries...has anyone read Jennifer Roberson's Tiger and Del books?  I keep seeing them around, but can't remember anyone ever mentioning them.

I will now read volume 2 of Hikkatsu! Strike a Blow to Vivify.  For anyone who has forgotten, it features a girl who was raised by pigeons who falls in love with an emotastic boy who lived in a Snowy Cabin of Emo Solitude atop Mt. Fuji...before he blew it up.  They now travel the world together, bsttling evil appliances as he struggles to perfect the appliance repairing One Shot No Fail Repair Blow.

Comments

[musouka-manga.livejournal.com]

I have to give Rochester a pass. Back then it wasn't as easy as just divorcing someone, and he obviously felt that he had a duty to look after her even though she was a violent, crazy lunatic. He wasn't a perfect guy, but the narrative and Jane punish him enough for his sins, I think.

[kitsune714.livejournal.com]

I have Girl Scout cookies. At some point today, I shall let you know if the new low-calorie Cinna Spin things are any good.

WHAT. I ordered my cookies like two weeks ago and yet I am cookie-less. WHERE IS THAT BROWNIE WITH MY TAGALONGS. Also, low-calorie Girl Scout cookies are so wrong (I have this complex theory about how 100 calorie packs are the downfall of western civilization, but I'll save that for later). Let's face it, they're not so much cookies as much as they are candy in cookie form.

[laura-holt-pi.livejournal.com]

Not unpopular with me. So nice to find someone else who doesn't swoon over those three.

I always wish I could sit Jane down and explain in simple terms that a man who keeps his mad wife locked in the attic could very well be the person who drove her mad in the first place, if indeed, she is mad and not merely an obstacle to his skirt-chasing. I also believe that fire was too convenient to be coincidence, and he was badly burnt, presumably because he was very close to the fire's source. I think he done her in.

Heathcliff, I don't think his author intended us to like. Wuthering Heights is often treated as a romance, but it's actually a book about the dangers of obsession, possibly written partly for Charlotte's benefit, as she was very stalkerish in her behaviour. Heathcliff is a terrible man and a murderer (agreed, at least by me and the author of "Was Heathcliff a Murderer?"

Lovelace is a rat. Even when played by Sean Bean, he can't capture my sympathy (and Sean Bean is one of those actors who can have me making excuses for murderers). He's a vile man who destroys a woman's life. Again, his author tried to make him a villain, modern readers tend to like him (probably because the idea of a woman dying over lost virtue is so alien to them that they assume she got what she deserved).

Tiger and Del

[estara.livejournal.com]

I've read all of them and still own them all, unlike the Cheysuli books. She concentrates on those two characters across all the books revealing more and more of their backstory with some foreshadowing involved until the climax which is the last book - the story is told from the viewpoint of Tiger, though - but Del is no sidekick character at all - often the book dwells on how Tiger is trying to figure out what Del is thinking.

They're both tough and had to be, to survive what came/comes at them, Tiger in particular is proud of his skill in sworddancing. During the books many of the other major characters try to suborn their powers for various nefarious purposes until the focus shifts to Tiger's past in the last two books and strange powers he seems to acquire.

.. while there is a touch of "saving the world messiah" on Tiger at the end, the interesting thing is that Roberson doesn't run with the usual epic worldsaving fantasy ending, but finds one that fits both characters nicely.

Aside: they both remind me of Western gunslingers quite often.

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

I myself have never understood the fascination with Rochester. I've never liked him and always thought he was a jerk. Heathcliff I remember my entire class hating when we were in high school, but then all the characters in that book were rather charm free. Heathcliff was just more interesting than some of the other characters. Interesting in the "oh GOD HE'S A BASTARD" type of way. I understand they inspired a character type that I like, but I really only like that type of character when they reform somewhat (or domesticate in some circumstances) in the end. Rochester and Heathliff don't really redeem themselves to me.

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on Lovelace, Heathcliff and Rochester (though I think at least the narrative does make Rochester suffer horribly and the ending is presumably about levelling out the power narrative. Plus Jane's other option is the horrible St. John so I think he improves by comparison).

I don't get anyone rooting for Lovelace especially in the book, where you realise how rotten he is from his letters. You can see what charms Clarissa, but at the same time you understand that this a thoroughly ruined human being. I know that Richardson was horrified by people wanting Lovelace to end up with Clarissa and revised the book so that he was even more evil.

I have to admit that I'm not that keen on the character types these three have spawned because they've more or less dominated the heroic types in certain genres of fiction/media and it would be nice to see some different ones creep in there.

[vierran45.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea which is supposedly told from the viewpoint of Rochester's wife. I've only read a few excerpts from it, but thought it might be an interesting counterpoint to the older story.

A lighter and more parodic reference can be found in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books. IIRC, this particular reference appears in the first book, The Eyre Affair.

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

I hated Jane Eyre and everything in it with a fiery passion. As it happened, I had a choice of reading that or Wuthering Heights and I chose Eyre because I thought I'd hate Wuthering Heights more. These days, you couldn't pay me to read either one.

[fairest1.livejournal.com]

Word. So, so much word. I had trouble reading Wuthering Heights in high school because there was absolutely no character that I felt like rooting for. Well, none who were relevent to the main plot. The guy who rents the house and is hearing the story? He's cool. But pretty much all the rest were just nasty, and showed no sign of improvement. Even the kids you just feel a kind of pity for because you realize that either through nature or nurture (they're being raised by those who spawned them) they're doomed.

[surgingshark.livejournal.com]

Heathcliff had issues...

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I got Purgatory Kabuki and while I liked the art, I found the story thoroughly incomprehensible. If you can figure out what's going on, let me know.

[madame-manga.livejournal.com]

I think one big problem with Rochester is that he's visibly not a real man. He's a Byronic fantasy figure who is there as a challenge to the heroine and an object for her reforming efforts and need for love. If you ever take a look at Charlotte's juvenilia (which I guess isn't likely! ^_^) you can see exactly where he came from: the wild, overromantic pulp she read and her own immature self-obsession and insular imagination. Jane is the only real person in that book, because she's the author; everyone around her is a cardboard cutout pushed to the background. I speak as a one-time Bronte junkie, you understand. :)

Heathcliff is again not really conceived as a human being. He's a destructive force, and his "love" for Cathy is one of the weirdest passions in literature. It's more like demonic possession. Emily Bronte had an even wilder imagination than Charlotte's, though strange to say she was a much more disciplined writer and better observer, and in her case that imagination is almost completely unleavened by conscious sexual feelings. (I think that's one reason I liked Jane Eyre so much as a teenager; it's a very good explication of physical passion as a goal in itself for a woman, which at the time it was written was REVOLUTIONARY. Charlotte had one hell of a sex drive, and that element of the book is 100% authentic.)

For Emily, love was no less than a complete loss of boundaries and merging with the loved one ("I AM Heathcliff," says Cathy) and the way she looks at this with clear, unblinking eyes, as if it were something normal when it so obviously is not, can be spellbinding. The sequence in which Heathcliff has the sexton take the lid off Cathy's coffin so he can see her again, and talks about being buried next to her with the sides of the coffins removed so that they can merge in death... well, you could think of it as a horror novel and just savor the spinal chills.

The Brontes are just... the Brontes. They're justified in their own minds, and that's the only context in which they make any sense at all. The context that most English teachers try to force them into -- oh God. When their basic motifs and characters are prettied up into Great Glorious Romances, those relationships look even more obviously ill. Then there's the endless retellings by much less talented writers -- you get manipulative Rochester-figures who keep secrets and play power games, you get violent Heathcliff-figures who stalk and destroy (and rape) and this is depicted as some kind of ideal. O_o They've obviously got a kind of power for many people, having lasted this long, and I certainly felt it myself at one time. I think I was fortunate in NOT having either of those books as a class assignment, possibly in more ways than one...

late to the party

[bzoppa.livejournal.com]

I'm late here so I'm not going through comments am just adding in my two cents.

I liked Rochester, a lot. I didn't like Heathcliff. I don't think I know who Lovelace is although the name sounds familiar.

I read the first few Tiger and Del books when I was about 13 and really liked them. She took a 7 year break between 4 and 5, and by 1998 I'd gotten out of fantasy. Besides, I didn't remember what happened. I did read the Cheysuli all the way through and thought they were good, but again, I read them very young. They might not be up to snuff for an adult audience.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I don't like Heathcliff (talk about a psychopath). Don't care for Lovelace but even he is more fun that that insufferable prig Clarissa. Ugh.

Re: Rochester. I like him. A lot. He is a flawed, damaged man madly in love and in an untenable situation. Would I want to be Jane in real life? Nope, but in fiction I adore him. And, confession time: in his place I would have done the same.