Marginalia: Tiny Tyrants and Ghostly Gaslighting

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I've been dying to do a re-read of Jane Eyre since I bought this gorgeous Painted Edition of the classic. The book made an impression on me many (10? 15?) years ago as the first classic I actually understood... and enjoyed. So while technically I know how the story ends, all the details in-between have, well... vanished.

So, I'll be spreading out this read out, taking notes, and posting my thoughts chapter by chapter. Get ready! I've only just started and wow, what an opening....

Jane Eyre Ch. 1–2: Tiny Tyrants and Ghostly Gaslighting

• Wow, John.... real bitch move... What a tyrant! Bratty bully, total little despot. (Fuck the patriarchy!)

• Jane reads as a melancholy child, smart, observant, and already far too aware of the cruelty around her. What she needs is love from the adults in her life, and instead she gets scorn.
✦ Word of the Day: Ignominy — great public shame, disgrace, or humiliation, or a specific act/situation that causes such feelings.
• Jane is labeled passionate as though that’s a flaw. But she comes across more pensive and thoughtful than hot-headed. If there is passion, it’s internal. (A push against Victorian ideals of the “good, restrained” girl... again Fuck the PATRIARCHY!)

• She asks, "Why was I always suffering, always brow-beaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one's favour?"
OOOOOF. That feels like foreshadowing...
✦ Word of the Day: Opprobrium — public disgrace, censure, or strong social condemnation for supposedly immoral conduct; subjected to scorn & reproach.
• Aaannnnd she’s suicidal. A child. Brontë doesn’t pull her punches in showing the psychological toll of Jane’s isolation. These aren’t childish punishments Jane suffers, but adult levels of moral condemnation laid on a child.

• Then there’s the ghostly touch: the Red Room, the lantern, the sense of haunting. It’s Gothic atmosphere, sure, but also metaphorical. Jane is haunted. By the living who torment her, not the dead.

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