Review: Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I read this book when I was 9 years old. And it, in a strange and beautiful way, became the written love of my life. Some of the other reviews speak to the romance in the story, and feminism, and female independence. As a 9 year old girl, this book captured all that and more, but more than anything, it reflected a yearning and loneliness borne of the very solemn state of being different and learning to accept and love oneself as different, in every sense of the word.

When I read this book, I recognized myself in both Jane and in Mr. Rochester. A girl, and then a young woman, seeking to believe in the world and finding it full of disappointments, petty and arbitrary betrayals, yet, here and there, glimmers of hope and beauty in human beings just when everything starts to become numb and hopeless, and you begin to believe that humans aren't worth the trouble.

Later on I took the university classes that covered and diced into little bits every possible nuance of the Bronte sisters and then even Austen, but I returned again and again to the pure emotion and sharp intellect of the woman who wrote this book, who in and of herself and in her characters returned again and again to the wild girl meme in Jane and beyond that will always capture my heart. Even today it captures our hearts in modern TV shows that feature determined, discerning, self-possessed, and independent female leads, and story lines like Arya Stark's in Game of Thrones. Women who stand out, and who aren't afraid to do it (or even if they are, they do it anyway :).

I believe every young girl should read this when she's ready, and approach it again and again at different times in their lives. It keeps unfurling little nuances. When you are young, Rochester seems omnipotent and devilish, St. James, pure and selfless. When you are wiser, Rochester seems broken and lost, and St. James not so flawless after all. Where Jane seems selfish and wild, later she seems more delicate and vulnerable behind a mask that's kept her safe and alive for years.

Jane Eyre is in many ways my prototype for the ideal female protagonist for any genre - not entirely likable nor predictable; always curious; always strong-willed and striving; doubting herself yet always seeking to grow; open to goodness and standing firm in the face of cruelty or injustice; loyal and giving; steadfast and honest. Plain or not, Jane in all these things taught me beauty when I, too, felt like an ugly duckling.

She made me believe in a real and honest self-love - and was one of the cornerstones of my strong belief that there really are no happily ever afters. That we are all flawed human beings striving, and in learning to accept that as the very point of why we are here, love is a matter of course, neither the goal nor the prize.




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site launched!

And we're up and running! After much pitter pattering and releasing book after book, I finally have some traction and felt ready to launch my site! So far we've got the typical "find out about the author and what they've got for you to read" bit, but I'm looking forward to joining blog tours, reviewing other related authors, keeping the social thing going strong, and more. Stay tuned for the latest and greatest, and don't be afraid to give a holler!

The blog begins

Self-marketing is tiring work! I've been doing the Twitter (@MiraNoire) thing actively for a few months now, but as I build out my site, it's time to plump it up with some content! Ebooks and blogtime, here we go.

On my mind these days ... I'm working with one of my ebook cover designers finalizing details on Talk to Me, a piece I published on an old incarnation of my writing site in 2001 or something. Once, all was available for free in a small corner of the Intertubes people were barely aware existed, let alone visited. I finally closed the doors on that site, and created miranoire.com, which of course likely led you here!

Now, as I get better at writing and refine my craft, I've been revisiting these works, cleaning them up, improving on language and tweaking characters and scenes, until the stories are the best version of the tale they can be. These are not the same story, if you ever read them, and even if you didn't - they're much better, I think, and definitely worth your time, now! :)

Talk to Me is a tricky little story. A popular erotic ezine editor was really taken by the story and wanted to publish it, but his fellow editors weren't as impressed and nixed the idea. But I knew I'd tapped into the very audience I'd intended this story for with him, and I think his fellow editors included some folks who were rubbed the wrong way when reading it.

It's the tale of a mid-thirties guy in a Lolita-like seduction where the girl does all the seducing and she's the equivalent of the "barely legal" idea. She's definitely over 18, but she's mysterious, and the forbidden nature of it all is what, of course, turns both the girl and the older guy on. I wrote this when I was in fact doing the same thing myself with older men, so, the fantasy can work both ways, and isn't just a "dirty old man" scene. It walks a line, but I stay on the legal side of the line!

For me, the excitement with all my older guy seductions was in the promise of sex, not the actual having. The anticipation, drove both me and the guy crazy. Yes, the ultimate story of a tease. Does the hero in our story get to have the ultimate prize? Coming soon to you on the usual epub outlets!

- Mira