Thursday 19 July 2012

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

There is something irrefutably romantic about older English, a charm that extends to even the harshest phrase. Titled as an autobiography, the dark toned fore chapters of Jane Eyre certainly become more digestible with a charming dialect. Relating to many - social outcasts, black sheep, ugly ducklings and the like - Jane's story begins as a ten year old orphan. With scenes all to familiar  to some, she endures - not quietly! - physical, verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of relatives, and the school benefactor of Lowood, the charity school she is gladly carted away to from her miserable existence at Gateshead. Discovering for the first time acceptance, friendship and love from a doomed girl Helen and Miss Temple, Jane would spend 8 years of her life at Lowood as both pupil and teacher.
Off to Thornfield as a governess and to meet Mr Edward Rochester who later after tribulations (an insane wife) ; trials (Mr Rochester losing sight and a right hand in an attempt to save the wife from her suicide after she sets Thornfield ablaze) ; a proposal from an austere clergyman and coming into an inheritance and family, Jane marries Edward and would devote her life to taking care of him.
Bronte's depictions of the unshakable love between Jane and Edward inspires the type of writing that today would be used as a love quote. The closing chapter ethereally explains:
"No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.  I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than
we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together"

Wednesday 11 July 2012

The Twilight Saga - Stephanie Meyer

What can I say? The millions that flock to cinemas and the fact that these books were on best seller lists for literally years bares testament to the hysteria that Meyer's books have caused. All a result of a dream she had of a beautiful boy in a a clearing which inspired the books and movies that have a cult following of 'Twihards'.
Certainly designed with an adolescent age group in mind, the books are narrated by Bella - a plain Jane who both vampires and teenage boys tend to find equally appealing. The Saga takes the reader on an older crowd fairytale journey that culminates in Bella birthing a vampire/human hybrid and - out of necessity - transforming into a vampire to save her life.
Meyer authored the lessor known and officially unreleased work 'Midnight Sun' which is the tale as experienced through Edwards eyes. Its said that a few versions of Midnight Sun have been drafted, but due to the leak of the work,  Meyer retracted intention to publish until the popularity of the Saga waned.