It's Twilight in Oak Harbor (SPOILER ALERT)

As the sun approaches the horizon of the new Twilight movie, let's take a moment to reflect on the series that has been giving nerdy teenage girls everywhere a new sense of hope. Now, I have not read Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final installment, but I have it in my possession and plan to start as soon as things wrap up with Jane Eyre. I read these books last Spring, so I am having to brush up a bit--I got totally sidetracked on Stephanie Meyer's website where she talks about her journey to Twilight. She is so normal-seeming, I kind of wanted her to be a bit more eccentric.

In the beginning we have Bella--an average high school girl who moves from Arizona to Forks, WA, to live with her dad. Now, if you have ever been to the Olympic Peninsula, you will know that this is quite a drastic move. Forks is a tiny town south of Port Townsend and isolated from the rest of the world. She makes friends easily, but is intrigued by a group of "siblings"--apparently foster children--who keep to themselves but are all excrutiatingly beautiful. These are the Cullens--a vampire family living in Forks--the rain forest creating the perfect abode for vampires who need to stay away from direct sunlight. Duh-duh-duh...

Edward finds he has an overwhelming attraction to Bella and has to distance himself from her for fear of hurting or killing things. Blah, blah, blah, they get together, fall in love, fight with werewolves and other vampires, and begin the journey to infinity together. Now, there is some serious sexual tension between our two mortally-crossed lovers because though they long for each other (drawing in every teenage girl in America) and Meyer does not spare the details of this longing--descriptions of it are in fact, just that--long, the clincher is that they can't have sex because he would kill her. How's that for adolescent birth control, huh? Yes ladies, he is so powerful that he would actually rip her apart.

I think I will stop there for now, and let you think about that for a while. Be careful this weekend, it's supposed to be overcast...

Part 2--the end

Don't forget the read the Pros and Cons at the bottom-- I think it might be my favorite part!

I love this--click to make it bigger

FW: How are you like Jane?

You know when you get those email forwards that ask you to fill in the answers to a bunch of really unoriginal questions and then forward it on to all of your friends? Well, I have gotten a lot of those lately and have decided to make one of my own that relates to Jane Eyre. Feel free to copy and paste it into an email and send it to all of your friends.

1. Which do you prefer, grey smocks or black? (If you have a hard time deciding between the two, you may be like Jane)

2. Do you believe in ghosts, spooks, haunts, or other apparitions? (If you do, you may be like Jane)

3. What is the largest age-span between you and someone your heart truly desired? (If it is more than 15 years, you may be like Jane)

4. Do you feel obligated to consistently mention the fact that you are plain or unhandsome, and that one would have little reason to take note of you based on your physicality? (If so, you could be like Jane or Mr. Rochester!)

5. Do you want love and independence--to a fault? (If so, you guessed it)

Keep checking your email, you never know when something good like this will pop in!

A History Lesson--Charlotte and Jane

For some time, I have harbored the false illusion that I once tried to read Jane Eyre but found it so boring that I couldn't make it through the first chapter. Henceforth, I have not, since this fictional occasion, felt any desire to return to the Brontes in any way, shape, or form. This being said, I am often confronted with questions of the literary nature posed by young and eager minds that I can't answer--and recently one came my way concerning a young girl by the name of Jane Eyre. Not having an answer for the question, I sought to find one by means of attempting anew to read the story. What I discovered, to my delight, is that I have never read this book before and the first chapter quite caught my attention! I have come to the conclusion that the book to which I previously referred was actually Wuthering Heights--a different Bronte sister entirely!

As I researched Jane and her creator Charlotte Bronte to gain some insight into the motivation of this narrative, I uncovered some fascinating new information (courtesy of Sparknotes, of course). Here's what I found out:

1. Either because of or in spite of its critique of Victorian assumptions about gender and social class, Jane Eyre (originally published under the male pseudonym Currer Bell) was one of the most successful novels of its era both commercially and critically.  This means that the Victorians, as perfect as they were, harbored secret desires to, so to speak, "balk the system".  Fantastic--I knew they had it in them.

2. The novel follows the form of Bildungsroman--a novel that tells the story of a child's maturation and focuses on the emotions and experiences that accompany and incite his or her growth into adulthood. *See Great Expectations and many other 19th century British works for further examples of this literary form.

3.  It is a fairly autobiographical narrative, based on Charlotte's experiences in boarding schools both as a student and teacher, including a crazy Evangelical reverend and a close friend who dies of tuberculosis. 

Stay tuned for more to come (I've only read 100 pages or so!).