I've been thinking a lot today. Some of it about what I wrote in the previous post.
Is it good thinking? I don't know yet. We'll see, in the eventual. I have to combat instinct, so I need to learn to really master my own mind. It's amazing how many things I can relate to the topic.
I haven't really done my homework this week, it's going to kill me either tomorrow (in the form of a test) or on friday (in the form of two, possibly three, tests). Instead, I've been reading Jane Eyre, which has really caught my eye this past week and a half. I only have a hundred pages left, and it is all entirely fascinating. I never knew Bronte could be so hilariously witty (as well as ideally, romantically, perfectly sentimental, as the quote in the title shows), I've heard, but I've never truly known. Today, volume two, chapter nine, was perfect. I couldn't stop grinning ear to ear and laughing in study hall. It was priceless. I'll take another moment later on to share these quotes as yet only alluded to, if you're unfamiliar with the book. Reading Jane Eyre creates a sort of calming influence on me, time flows by without a glance, and I am able to be lost in the softly swirling, watery smoke all around me. It is a welcome escape from unwelcome thoughts. I lose myself easily in this enigmatic other-reality. I hate to see it end, for what will I read afterwards? I hardly know yet. I have a feeling it will be "The Picture of Dorian Grey," or . . . I don't know. We'll see. Time knows.
I believe I almost like "Jane Eyre" better than any Jane Austen books. Jane Austen is almost too distant, too separately ironic and sardonic. Charlotte Bronte, in writing Jane Eyre, created a heroine we can really feel. She makes you see every aspect of her personality, good and bad, see every good and bad event. She makes you actually see her characters as human beings, and make you love and hate them at your own will, instead of tainting them with black or white. Their shades are subtle. Rochester is understood in his selfish need, his desperate grasping for, something pure in his own hated life. He tells Jane, early in their peculiar relationship, "Nature meant me to be, on the whole, a good man, Miss Eyre: one of the better end; and you see I am not so. . . Take my word for it, - I am not a villain: you are not to suppose that - not to attribute to me any such bad eminence; but, owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances than to my natural bent." You might despise him if you did not understand the full reasons, the full depth and thought behind his actions. With Bronte, you get the entire picture (despite the novel having been written in first person), which makes this novel so much the better. It is, indeed, more complete than anything Jane Austen ever created (and believe me, I never knew I would in any way scorn Austen's books). Her characters are splendidly human, with such doubts we are all plagued with, such hopes and pains.
Anyway, I need to do something in the way of accomplishing something for today rather than pretending to accomplish something while just musing away at nothing (puzzle that, if you will). I need to do a little homework, if I can. I will, then, end this now.
May a good night and good day follow after, in whatever succession they please.
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