Oh, TV Tropes...!

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Quite honestly, the Harry Potter stuff on that site has gotten to the point where I can't read it because just about everything is fawning over how great and super-special-awesome the series is, oh, and how Snape is an evil douchebag who wanted to get Harry and James killed so he could keep Lily. But this... this makes me want to scream:

"Hermione... [is] one of the smartest and more pro-active females in the whole Harry Potter canon and English literature in general"

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

How could they make such a claim?! Hermione is a better heroine than, say, Tiffany Aching?! How about Eliza Doolittle?! And I'm sure you could come up with other examples.

No, no, in Harry Potter it seems fairly obvious that the most powerful women in the series are antagonists. Sure, Hermione's perfectly independent and capable, but in the last several books it's like she becomes Harry's servant because he's too lazy to do anything himself!

God damn it, Harry Potter wouldn't bother me so much if everyone didn't insist it was the greatest thing since sliced bread!

Comments

Re: The madwoman in the attic

[the-bitter-word.livejournal.com]

I think it's impossible to say for sure. Rochester isn't a neutral party. Bertha does act mad, but I've known people who were reduced by combinations of violence, isolation, and substance abuse to appalling states. I favor the interpretations that look at clash of cultures, predominance of patriarchal privilege and racism, permanence of marriage, restriction of emotional expression in Victorian England, and, yeah, separation from her former life and family, and, finally, imprisonment.

Not a cheery book, actually.

Re: The madwoman in the attic

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

So I take it you're more a fan of

The Wide Sargasso Sea

than of canon Bronte's depiction of Berha?

Re: The madwoman in the attic

[the-bitter-word.livejournal.com]

I've never read The Wide Sargasso Sea! I should probably do that. I should probably read Jane Eyre again, too, but I don't think I'd like it much now.

For me, the discussion gets to how much author intent matters versus the tantalizing but unknowable expression of the author's subconscious, and how much personal prejudice and training affect the writing and reading of characters and their actions. Brontë wrote a groundbreaking novel, with a heroine who tried to maintain her integrity as much as possible despite the restrictions of the time she lived in. Brontë set this heroine against Bertha, very much the shadow, who may have also tried to express herself against a restrictive society and paid a higher price. For Bertha's madness, we have the unreliable origins story of a not-altogether-honorable or socially-flexible Rochester, and the behavioral evidence that Jane perceived long after the fact of Bertha's imprisonment. What was Brontë's intention in creating these two Rochester love interests, one with more agency than the other? Was it prevailing racism and fear of hysteria or sexual libertarianism that made Brontë create the madwoman in the attic, or did she subconsciously create a situation that invited us to look again at the character and her husband's treatment of her, and perhaps be appalled or sympathetic?

For me, it's a layers of meaning thing. Still, to bring the discussion back to HP, Brontë may not have intended a layered reading, at least not of Bertha. For HP, Rowling has expressed that she doesn't find Snape to be anything but unpleasant and can't understand fans of "bad boys" like Draco and Snape -- yet some of us find Snape to be, if not outright consistently good, at least ambiguously good enough to make him our preferred hero of the series. For some, Snape is a Byronic hero -- as was Rochester. These readings are supported by the books, as some have exhaustively pointed out, but many people, including apparently the author, just don't see them. And again, I would say it's our positions and experiences in life, and to some extent, our personalities, that cause us to read characters in certain ways and hold to those readings. Brontë may have tossed-off the character of madwoman of mixed race without seeing anything more than that in the character. Rowling could probably never be convinced that Snape is an attractive character in any way, but she wrote him and some of us do like him. (BTW, Snape's not Byronic for me, but I know that's a heresy. I see him as more the madwoman in the attic dungeons for a good portion of the series.)

Re: The madwoman in the attic

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

Wide Sargasso Sea is really good if you are into Jane Eyre fanfiction. I wonder how the author got away with publishing something that is fanfiction...? Oh well.

Re: The madwoman in the attic

[the-bitter-word.livejournal.com]

Jane Eyre had probably been long out of copyright when Wide Sargasso Sea was written. An author can use anything that's in the public domain, and even get the work published.

For works still in copyright, however, U.S. copyright law allows the publication of parodies, as decided in the Pretty Woman/2 Live Crew and the Gone With the Wind/Wind Done Gone (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Suntrust_v._Houghton_Mifflin) cases. I think British law also allows this. I'm not sure about other countries.

Re: The madwoman in the attic

[sunnyskywalker]

In the book on 19th-century women's novels The Madwoman in the Attic, there's some interesting discussion of Bertha. Their original reading, iirc, was that Bertha was the shadow, and they pointed out the interesting fact that Bertha's actions always end up helping Jane in the end. They also noted later readings that hm, the imprisoned woman from a colonial area helps Jane essentially against her will (she didn't set that fire so Rochester and Jane could live happily ever after, I think!), and so essentially Bertha's oppression allows Jane's fight against societal restrictions to succeed - Jane at least benefits by the contrast (she may be a social rebel, but she's still a "real" Englishwoman, unlike Bertha). Very complicated topic!