Did anyone else pick up on the references to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre? That was one of my favorite books in childhood, and I still like it.
1) In "Mr. Early," Alice mentions teaching at a small school like Jane Eyre and how she defends Mr. Rochester - "the caped, brooding Rochester, a man as ugly as my own Mr. Early, Rochester, who, in disguise, tested Jane and found her worthy..." Then, too, Mr. Early also has a wife ...
2) The "Little governess" passage in one of the chapters titled "Mother" - "Jane Eyre is a talker of such succinct or impassioned, memorable speech as in, how to avoid the burning pit of hell? 'I must keep in good health, and not die.' "
3) In "Short Identifications," Alice writes, "I was hoping for the discovery of a rich uncle from Madeira." The same uncle that gave Jane her fortune! Except in Jane's case, she wasn't expecting or hoping for it - it just came. And she gave most of it away.
4) How Alice's students don't understand Jane: "Most of them get mad at her or don't care what she does, if only she would get to it. Make a life in the brisk climes, honest and alone, or travel with your lover undercover in warm places, but in less than forty pages, please!" (Wow, how times have changed! Hehe.)
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Ooh, nice observation, Shanxi. The Jane Eyre references hadn't really stood out to me so dramatically, but it makes so much sense. The eccentric household, the "orphaned" girl, the mad woman in the attic (which is a nice metaphor, perhaps, for the place our narrator's mother occupies in her psyche).
ReplyDeleteI like the bit about how her students didn't understand Jane Eyre, how they were impatient with her — and the call to keep it under 40 pages! Hehe. Schutt's own book, "Florida," is quite short — nothing approaching the length of Bronte's — but she covers a life from childhood to adulthood!
I was reading that Schutt taught literature for many years. Do you think it shows?
Yes, absolutely. I think she would have made a fun literary teacher too! The way she talks to her class and voices opinions that probably new students are thinking but aren't yet comfortable enough to put into words.
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