Author’s Notes: I put this at the bottom of the google doc – When I finish the first draft – I can buy myself Firefly: A Celebration.
Reader, I bought it.
Charlotte Bronte & R.A. Harding
Author’s Notes: I put this at the bottom of the google doc – When I finish the first draft – I can buy myself Firefly: A Celebration.
Reader, I bought it.
Author’s Notes: This is a freaking romanic chapter and the triumph of our dear Jane. You go girl!
Author’s Notes:
And so Jane returns to Thornfield, St. John be dammed. I love the inn keepers revelation of the story, it is so relaxed and also gossipy.
Also, I love gin so I can’t blame Mrs Poole for her choice in drink. What I can blame her for is not realizing she needed to take a vacation and get out of the room with the mad woman for a little while.
Author’s Notes: Jane is close, so close to seeing St. John as the only way. She does want to see Mr. Rochester, but he will still be married and she won’t be able to see him. So she thinks that maybe she will find a reason to live if she goes to India with St. John…but she won’t go as his wife. Thank goodness. He is a total twat.
Author’s Notes: Jane has become an heiress and is excellent at it. She benefits those around her, she delights in learning and is doing quite well. However, St. John has other ideas for her and is quite annoying. His instance that she study with him is overwhelming and overbearing, his proposal is quite unromantic and then he insists he is correct while she refuses to let him have his way. She will not tie her future to his and I think she has good reasons. Whether or not she has good reasons, he is not taking no. Prat.
Author’s Notes: St. John takes his time unwinding his tale but I love how it all turns out in the end. He really has no business not telling her what she wants to know at the end but it is fun that he pulls out the suspense for a bit. It is a delight of a deus ex machina.
Author’s Notes:
Jane sees so clearly. She sees Rosemund and her loveliness, she sees StJohn and his priggish will to do his missionary work. Maybe he does see clearly that in a year with Rosemund they would be unhappy, but I think Jane still wishes him happiness.
Amazon’s cap -Amazon means riding cap, so a soft velvet cap, similar to what we would call a beret or tam-o-shanter. Sometimes the tops were almost like a mortarboard but taller than we traditionally wear now. Amazon often meant female horse rider, thus why Rosemund was wearing it.
Author’s Notes:
Jane is suffering and struggling but keeping on with life. StJohn gives the best explanation for his oddities. He has a burrnning heart and wishes to be more. So he will challenge himself by going a preaching. He is a bit of a prat.
Poor Miss Oliver wishes to tease him out and longs to get his love, but he is too tortured and in love with his agony. He has made a god of his resistance. We all make a god out of things that harm us.
Author’s Notes:
I do love the little traveling village of Morton. It adds a joy and movement to these chapters and a fresh response to the damp heartbreak of where she has run from.
She spends time with Diana and Mary, regains her strength, and finds work as a school teacher. StJohn takes for ever getting to the point, it is more an interview for a position he is not telling her about and he is quite surprised that she accepts it. I appreciate that she is considered impassioned and he is ambitious.
Their uncle dies, but we don’t care much for him it seems. Diana and Mary move on, Jane goes to her new little house and the old Moor House is abandoned.
Author’s Notes:
The detailed honesty of Jane to her benefactors is delightful. There are so many stories that hinge on what people don’t know and in this case she is honest about her past, as much as she can be, as well as honest that Jane Elliot is not her real name.
But she is among friends and good people and soon she will embark in this new life with confidence.