Booktasmagoria

My perspective on the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.

[booktasmagoria]

Wide Sargasso Sea

Beautiful tragic novel. Team Bertha!!!

[booktasmagoria]

I'm so affected by the struggles in good novels blah I'm sad

[booktasmagoria]

Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name.

Antoinette Cosway in Jean Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea" breaking my goddamn heart

[booktasmagoria]

This was the second time I had my dream. ... It is still night and I am walking towards the forest. I am wearing a long dress and thin slippers, so I walk with difficulty, following the man who is with me and holding up the skirt of my dress. It is white and beautiful and I don't wish to get it soiled. I follow him, sick with fear but I make no effort to save myself; if anyone were to try to save me, I would refuse. This must happen. Now we have reached the forest. We are under the tall dark trees and there is no wind. 'Here?' He turns and looks at me, his face black with hatred, and when I see this i begin to cry. He smiles slyly. 'Not here, not yet,' he says, and I follow him, weeping. Now I do not try to hold up my dress, it trails in the dirt, my beautiful dress. We are no longer in the forest but in an enclosed garden surrounded by a stone wall and the trees are different trees. I do not know them. There are steps leading upwards. It is too dark to see the wall or the steps, but I know they are there and I think, 'it will be when I go up these steps. At the top.' I stumble over my dress and cannot get up. I touch a tree and my arms hold on to it. 'Here, here.' But I think I will not go any further. The tree sways and jerks as if it is trying to throw me off. Still I cling and the seconds pass and each one is a thousand years. 'Here, in here,' a strange voice said, and the tree stopped swaying and jerking. ... I dreamed I was in Hell.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. The tragic eye opening rendering of a Jane Eyre prequel, detailing the misunderstood background of "Bertha Mason," aka Antoinette Cosway.

[booktasmagoria]

Bonjour Tristesse

I’d give this book 3/5 stars. Dazzling and frivolous. 1970s artsy French fluff. Fun but naive. It's pretty much what you'd expect of the French Riviera in the 1950s for bohemian libertines. Cecile is the "quintessential enfant terrible".

[booktasmagoria]

JANE EYRE

I finished Jane Eyre! I think I’d give it 4/5 stars. I love Jane as a character. She is a strong, independent proto-feminist Victorian Gothic masterpiece. I don’t get the appeal of Mr. Rochester. I honestly wish she had wound up alone hanging out with Diana and Mary. Her relationship with Mr. Rochester never made much sense to me, and goddamn I wish she would stop calling him her “master.” But at least she maintained her independence throughout. And Mr. Rochester had symbolic punishment for his treatment of Bertha - even if he only felt remorse and regret for hurting Jane and never thought of Bertha. I would have preferred more exciting detail about the house burning down and less boring religious persecution from Captain Passive Aggressive holier-than-thou St. John. Seriously the men in this book - they’re the worst. Last thing, I gotta say, damn, Bertha, way to go out in style.

[crystalusagi]

D= I wish Jane had wound up hanging out with Mary and Diana too.

[booktasmagoria]

Agreed... her relationship with Mary and Diana was her most interesting and complex relationship imho...

[booktasmagoria]

Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan

I began Bonjour Tristesse today and I CAN’T STOP UNDERLINING! I don’t always underline. A book has to be particularly dazzling and juicy. the writing has to be so beautiful and rich. This book is definitely deserving. Here are some great gems so far: “- One might have come across her any day in the studios and bars of the Champs-Elysees.

- I plunged wildly about in my efforts to wash away the shadows and dust of Paris.

- My only torment at that moment was the way my heart was thumping. ... I looked at the sky, then saw nothing but lights bursting under my closed eyelids.

- I fell asleep thinking of Cyril who was probably at that moment dancing in Cannes with the same kind of charming girl. I realize I have skipped over an important factor: the nearness of the sea with its incessant rhythm. Nor have I mentioned the four lime trees in the courtyard of my convent school and their perfume...

- ... the pleasure of driving fast in a high-powered car, of buying a new dress, records, books, flowers. ... I would rather deny myself my moods of mysticism or despair than give up my indulgences. ... Is it because I have not read enough? ... In Paris there was no time for reading ... I savored the pleasure of drifting along with the crowds, of having a drink, of being with a boy who looked deep into my eyes, held my hand, and then led me far away from those same crowds.

- I sat down on the steps with a cup of coffee and an orange, enjoying the delicious morning. I bit the orange and let its sweet juice run into my mouth, then took a gulp of scalding black coffee and went back to the orange again. The sun warmed my hair and smoothed away the marks of the sheet on my skin. In five minutes I would go for a swim.

- ...our kiss was untinged by shame or regret; it was merely a deep searching, interrupted every now and then by whispers. At last I broke away and swam toward the boat, which was drifting out. I dipped my face into the green water to refresh it. A feeling of wild happiness came over me.

- I ran down to the sea and plunged in ... All the elements of a drama were to hand: a libertine, a demimondaine, and a strong-minded woman. I saw an exquisite pink and blue shell on the sea-bottom. I dove for it, and held it, smooth and hollow in my hand all morning. I decided it was a lucky charm, and that i would keep it. I am surprised that I have not lost it, for I lose everything. Today it is still pink and warm as it lies in my palm, and makes me feel like crying.

- Elsa walked over to the door, turned around, and struck a languorous, movie-star pose. In her voice was ten years of French coquetry...”

And that’s just from the first 30 pages. (Don’t judge me for reading so little - I snuck it in at work. I’m having an uber busy week.)

[booktasmagoria]

JANE EYRE

I finished Jane Eyre! I think I’d give it 4/5 stars. I love Jane as a character. She is a strong, independent proto-feminist Victorian Gothic masterpiece. I don’t get the appeal of Mr. Rochester. I honestly wish she had wound up alone hanging out with Diana and Mary. Her relationship with Mr. Rochester never made much sense to me, and goddamn I wish she would stop calling him her “master.” But at least she maintained her independence throughout. And Mr. Rochester had symbolic punishment for his treatment of Bertha - even if he only felt remorse and regret for hurting Jane and never thought of Bertha. I would have preferred more exciting detail about the house burning down and less boring religious persecution from Captain Passive Aggressive holier-than-thou St. John. Seriously the men in this book - they’re the worst. Last thing, I gotta say, damn, Bertha, way to go out in style.

[booktasmagoria]

St John, winning at passive aggressive evil death glares

[cheshirelibrary]

How To Tell If You Are In A Brontë Novel

[via The Toast]

1. You have one dream, and it is very small, and everyone around you wants to crush it.

2. Your grandest ambition is to open a small school with four chairs and three well-behaved students, and to someday own a vase with a flower in it, and perhaps to have a second dress.

3. You take that part about the second dress back; you dare not fly so close to the sun, lest Icarus-like, your wings are singed.

4. You have just been walking in the rain, and everyone who raised you is dead, and you are glad.

5. A beautiful and shallow woman that you hate is your best friend for reasons you cannot explain. The more she demands your respect and esteem, the more cruelly you withhold it, which drives her wild. She mocks your station in public; you criticize her morals in private. You suspect her of being Catholic. One night you share a bed and have a fever dream together. She marries a terrible man and sends you fat letters stuffed with passion and longing.

6. Someone compares you to a sparrow. Someone compares your best friend to a scarlet-breasted robin. Someone compares the man you secretly love to a hawk or a crow.

7. None of your pupils are interested in Latin. Your pupils are scatterbrained monsters.

8. You have an enemy who claims to love you. You are competent at embroidering, but not accomplished.

9. You draw horrifying shipwrecks and lightning-ruined oak trees in your spare time. You have never danced, not even once, not even in your dreams.

10. You never tell anyone anything.

11. Someone you have never met has died and left you 20 pounds; you are the richest woman in the world and no man is your master now. You quit your soul-crushing job and move into a cottage. The cottage has whitewashed walls and a small chair for you to sit in; you have never dreamed of so much happiness.

12. You went to France once. You didn’t think much of it.

13. Something has been forbidden to you.

14. You know a man with easily excitable features and very dark whiskers. The two of you argue frequently over points of theology and may very well be in love. He handed you a flower once, and you have never forgotten it.

15. You have a terrible violence in your heart.

[booktasmagoria]

- since the medical men had pronounced her mad, she had of course been shut up -

Oh, OF COURSE. Um I'm sorry but if my husband locked me in a "cabinet," "a room without a window" as it is described - for 15 goddamn years (or 11 rather, as they stayed a fairly normal married couple for 4 years before he locked her up) - I would jump at the opportunity to attack him any chance I got. I feel ya, Bertha. I feel ya. I really hate the stigma of mental illness throughout history and even in modern society. Of course, who knows if women like Bertha were really "mad", "maniacs," "lunatics" as Mr Rochester so kindly refers to his wife - coulda been hysteria! The wandering womb! Definitely looking forward to reading Wide Sargasso Sea after this. I love Jane Eyre, I am starting to dislike Mr Rochester - but I'm most fascinated by Bertha for sure.

[booktasmagoria]

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

[booktasmagoria]

Glad I was to get him out of the silk warehouse, and then out of a jeweller's shop: the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation.

Jane Eyre // Charlotte Bronte

[ladylindy]

“Good night, my —”

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

[the-library-and-step-on-it]

I know that if women wish to escape the stigma of husband-seeking, they must act and look like marble or clay - cold, expressionless, bloodless; for every appearance of feeling, of joy, sorrow, friendliness, antipathy, admiration, disgust, are alike construed by the world into the attempt to hook a husband. Never mind! well-meaning women have their own consciences to comfort them after all. Do not, therefore, be too much afraid of showing yourself as you are, affectionate and good-heartened; do not too harshly repress sentiments and feelings excellent in themselves, because you fear that some puppy may fancy that you are letting them come out to fascinate him; do not condemn yourself to live only by halves, because if you showed too much animation some pragmatical thing in breeches might take it into his pate to imagine that you designed to dedicate your life to his inanity.

Charlotte Brontë writing to a friend who had been kind to a man she thought was married, only to have him fall in love with her because he thought she was flirting (letter dated April 2, 1845). (via the-library-and-step-on-it)

[booktasmagoria]

Chapter 8, Volume II

I just have to quote the shit out of this chapter because it’s goddamn romantic. Here is your alert of spoils. Beautiful gushing spoils. “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.” - Mr. Rochester finally being a damn bit romantic.

Best convo ever: JE: It is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal - as we are! MR: As we are! [...] JE: [...] I am better than you - let me go! [...] I have spoken my mind, and can go anywhere now. MR: Jane, be still; don’t struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird that is rendering its own plumage in its desperation. JE: I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.

And then total beast-mode Jane Eyre insult level 7: MR: Come Jane - come hither. JE: Your bride stands between us. MR: My bride is here, because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me? JE: ... MR: Do you doubt me, Jane? JE: Entirely. MR: You have no faith in me? JE: Not a whit.

[booktasmagoria]

Gothic Victorian perfection