nothing but hunger, rebellion and rage

Jane Eyre is an autistic icon and I love her. Literature sideblog for @pollylittlehigher-littlelower.

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

one of the Moments of jane eyre is when jane is conflicted about st john rivers' offer and calls for a sign from god about what she should do and then she fucking hears mr. rochester calling for her in her head and immediately makes up her mind to Go To Him after a year and says she's coming and asks where he is and a while after she reunites with him he goes "oh yeah one time a little bit ago I was so anguished that i cried out your name and I actually heard you answer back. you said you were coming and asked where i was. crazy how that happened because it's not like you could have actually heard me or anything" and then she just tells The Reader that she knows that somehow she Really Was Answering Him but then she also goes "...y'know what I don't think he can handle that information right now so i'm just gonna keep that to myself" and then it's just never fucking brought up again

[autistic-jane-eyre]

I distinctly remember arguing this was due to the influence of Cupid and Psyche, and Zephyr's role as the wind god encouraging their relationships through ferrying messages back and forth, but if I look for the post I shall MELT.

[cor-ardens-archive]

Angela Carter: “Wuthering Heights [is] an impossible novel that ought not to exist, a novel that makes us believe the world can crack apart like an egg when its shell is blown apart by the irrepressible force of human desire. […] It is a love story that takes for granted, that takes a perverse pleasure, an insane joy, in fact, in the way desire rips through the fabric of society and demands the sacrifice of status, family, honour. And finally of life, probably.”

[cor-ardens-archive]

This violent and extraordinary romance is about a desire that is stronger by far than death, that does not acknowledge death as in any way an impediment to passion. If the price of the lovers’ desire is damnation—and there is a strong suggestion that this is so, for, if God is dead, then surely the Devil has been left in charge—then Heathcliff and Catherine will delight in being damned.

[officialgleamstar]

character playlists always should have the following:

song that is pretty accurate to the character’s story

song that doesn’t fit the character at all but i was thinking about them while listening to it on loop

song that has one or two lines accurate to the character’s story

song that just kind of is the character’s vibe

song that i desperately wish they would listen to because i personally like it

song that fits the character so well that it’s scary

unsure why this song is in the playlist but it’s so ingrained in my mind as 'part of the playlist' that it would feel weird to remove it

[velocitations]

too many movies have been ruined by not casting ugly people

[pristinanomine]

Jane Eyre chapter 24/Hadestown Chant II

(description in alt text)

[hornswogglingpapergirls]

Villette, to me, is about longing for so long so deeply in such a sick way that it’s the fabric of your existence, you can’t turn it off, you can only come up with ever more twisted ways of hiding from all the normal, happy people around you who you know will never accept you

[autistic-jane-eyre]

There's such a horrible disconnect between Lucy and everyone around her and it hurts so much

[andletforsakendidodie]

growing up an undiagnosed autistic girl almost every week some teacher would accuse me of lying because of my lack of eye contact. i was being jane eyred on a regular basis. then at 10 i read jane eyre and they were all "how intelligent she is reading adult books" fuck you.

[marisatomay]

the mcu is the “the curtains are just blue” of cinematic experiences

[thekobrakiddo3]

Is that why it’s so good?

[marisatomay]

YOU

[pr8r]

f scott fitzgerald scared to say god himself is watching nick carraway and his band of socialite hedonists so he makes up an optometrist billboard constantly overlooking them (out of fear, hes scared)

[pr8r]

michael crichton throwing out a version of jurassic park that just says “science, without restraint, can be dangerous. and dinosaurs are cool”

[pr8r]

edgar allen poe’s first draft of telltale heart: “if you kill someone…..you might feel bad about it/:” but he starts trembling looking at it and says “no…..i’m too much of a pussy…to say this”

[autistic-jane-eyre]

Bronte finally started writing like a real woman and replaced all red upholstery with tiny signs reading "women be getting locked in tiny rooms"

[darth--nickels]

I wish more than anything in the world I remembered what the book was called, because I will 100% never find it again (too niche) (hyper local history on Wisconsin lumber camps) and once I type it out no one will believe me BUT

Way out in the woods there wasn't much opportunity for entertainment, and at night the foreman or whoever would fall back on that tried and true 19th century past time of reading aloud, which was more popular than one might expect. Apparently there'd be a bunch of burly dudes around the campfire rapturously listening to Jane Eyre, to the point where one of them exclaimed, at a moment of peril for the heroine [sadly paraphrased by me] 'God DAMN them! God them that would be so cruel to one of God's own lambs!' etc

I wish more than anything I could find the book again and confirm the quote both for my own sake but also for our proud heritage of being completely insane. Heirloom blorbo.

[darth--nickels]

holy SHIT i found it

"He spent his winter evenings reading from the boss' collection of Walter Scott novels. The linkage of lumberjacks and literature was not entirely exceptional. James Johnston, a Canadian immigrant who spent the winter of 1856-1857 logging on a branch of the Snake River, was delighted to find in camp a copy of Ivanhoe and a collection of Captain Maryatt novels. Later he "made it a custom to have some book in camp and sometimes at the request of the boys would read aloud while the crew would listen." On one improbably occasion he was reading Jane Eyre to the men who sat in rapt attention as the young orphan Jane was humiliated by one of her teachers. One of the men, who regarded Jane Eyre as "one of God's little lambs", shouted out a curse "from the very bottom of his soul" at the insult to the heroine. The rest of the crew then "broke out in cheers and laughter"

[nevver]

Gorey

[wastrelwoods]

had a LONG talk about jane eyre and the frustration of bronte's utter refusal to treat bertha mason as an even partially human character on the level of every other character and you know actually when jane runs out on rochester to fuck around on the moors she SHOULD have brought bertha with her. girls trip! real jailbreak hours!! run off with your man's wife that hates him and wants to kill him

[wastrelwoods]

its so hard to update the story to find a reasonable way to give bertha personhood and agency and have her just be like maybe. an ex wife who won't grant rochester a divorce unless she takes the whole house because she exists to provide the supernatural gothic horror element, which is fucked up but inextricable. it's meant to be like--there's a mysterious and dangerous monster haunting a forbidden wing of the house that stalks around in the dark and the way the master of the house treats that threat by trying to protect it and only ever acknowledging it in the dead of night is contradictory and strange and doesn't make any sense until you learn he's Married To The Monster and the reaction is supposed to be 'oh woe oh horror! he made a pact with the devil!! how sad for him!!' because she is truly meant by bronte to read as a totally inhuman like. demon or ghost or wild animal Rochester can't escape and must keep hidden for her protection and his honor......but she seems so obviously to be a whole entire person treated unjustly and suffering and lashing out and hoping someone will look at her and listen to her and show her sympathy and give her freedom. it makes no sense now to buy into the idea that locking her under guard in the attic is in any way acceptable or right because we don't fucking do that to people and girl if a man shut me up in the attic i'd start biting as hard as i could and set the bitch on fire too

[sykesarchive1]

red room

[casgirl]

If you prefer Castiel Milton you’re old school fandom, if it’s Castiel Novak you’re in the majority and also probably really into misha collins, if it’s Castiel Shurley you’re a Dysfunctional Angel Family enthusiast.

[malinaa]

not to be an english major (derogatory) but reading books is good for u actually

[elvi-hjort]

not to be a psychology student (derogatory) but they’re right

[kendallroy-deactivated20210425]

people on this website be like “it’s actually school’s fault that i don’t know how to read because i wanted to write my essay on the divergent trilogy and that BITCH mrs. clarkson made us study 1984 instead. anyway here’s a 10 tweet thread of easily disproven misinformation about a 3 year old news story and btw, who is toni morrison?”

[kendallroy-deactivated20210425]

i KNOW most of y’all are lying about being in the gifted program as children because none of you could pass the basic reading comprehension assessment they give third graders today

[themself]

this post is mean and I never read divergent or whatever the fuck but 1984 sucks and is rape apologism so if somebody wanted to write about divergent or whatever good for them

[westenra]

this reply is like literally exactly what op is talking about lol. like firstly ops point isn’t “1984 is good”, ops point is that analysing complex stories teaches you how to form opinions and think for yourself. and like secondly in 1984 you’re supposed to think damn it’s fucked up that he’s thinking that way about her, i wonder if this ties in with the central theme of “a society like this will fuck you in the head”? (this is the thinking for yourself part). like do you think orwell just put that in for fun? do you think that just because winston is the protagonist you’re supposed to agree with everything he does?

[lunaescribe]

You know I feel like this post just gave me an epiphany for what is wrong with how Tumblr Fandom/Internet Fandom responds to media-or not *wrong* but makes it very hard to respond to anything but a morally correct, and heroic protagonist. 

When an English teacher, or reader, taught or picked up 1984, it wasn’t with the intention they were going to love the protagonist. They picked it up with the intention of reading a whole story and trying to grasp the theme or catharsis from the story. If the protagonist was a *shitty* person it played into the the themes or the story, because it wasn’t about morally judging the book or *liking* or feeling attachment to the protagonist. Sometimes and often times, books were just about gaining another perspective. 

No one read Lolita expecting to endear, or like, or be inspired by Humbert. You are supposed to be upset by his behavior, you don’t read Lolita with the intention of being inspired. You read it to learn more about what the fuck is going on inside someone’s head when they behave like that. How children get sucked into abusive situations. Or read “The Great Gatsby” not because they want to fall in love with Gatsby or Nick, but to better understand and analyze the experience of the 1920s or destitution of the American Dream. 

A lot of internet and fandom culture has changed that though. When we say something like “I love the Great Gatsby” it comes with the idea or association that means you must *love* or relate to one of the characters. And maybe you do, but the first assumption is not longer about the quality of the work or themes, or cathartic impact-it’s about character admiration. And with that character admiration, in tumblr stan culture, or kin culture, or exalting characters with fanart/romance/so on you don’t just ‘admire’ or find that character ‘compelling’ it now translates to ‘you LOVE that character’ or you ‘DIRECTLY relate to that character.’ 

You can’t say “I love how Humbert is written, it’s so fascinating and dark”, without it directly translating you somehow relate to a child abuser or condone his actions. Taking in media has become an act of worship and connection. We no longer watch meant to just see the story as a whole, we watch expecting to connect to a character and if we offer them our “worship” as it’s become, as opposed to just attention or interest study as it traditionally was, it means we are condoning the character or saying we directly empathize with all their actions. 

I think that’s why there is often now so much fuss over *toxic* characters or not. Or whether that classical novel is showing good or bad things anymore. We’re treating the characters as people we should love or want to draw or write about. Sometimes a story is just about getting the the theme or catharsis or learning another perspective. We don’t NEED to like the character. Or we don’t HAVE to like a character to be impressed by how they’re written or intrigued by their behavior. 

I think if internet culture could learn to view stories as small insights into other lives or single takes of one perspective instead of purposeful moral inspirations we’d be a lot less worried about how toxic or not toxic they are. 

[forthegothicheroine]

Deep down, we are all endangered maidens facing a world of terrors. But which one are you?

I made a quiz!  Take it!

[howelljenkins]

i’m trying So hard to read pride and prejudice (just for fun) but it’s so hard cuz i have no fuckin idea what they’re saying and apple books spacing makes it look so weird 🥴 and i wanna buy a paperback but there’s no cute covers in canada, only these boring ones that don’t fit my bookshelf aesthetic 🙄 and i wanna read withering heights too but again i probably won’t know what the hell theyre saying 😩 i just wanna be like one of those snobby white kids who read the classics 😔✋🏻

wait I was literally exactly the same it’s so hard to synthesize older writing because you have to deliberately focus on each individual word. I kind of trained myself to be better at it by reading the sparknotes summary for each individual chapter before I read it so my brain would be like. primed to expect certain things and it’d be less of a struggle. 

[autistic-jane-eyre]

Have you tried reading aloud? That can make it easier to process who's talking when (if you do voices/pull faces you get double attention points), and saying the phrase yourself and really feeling it helps sooo much