amelia_petkova

Almost one year later, I haven't written the rest of my Jane Eyre reaction posts. This isn't it! Instead, I've been decluttering my recent "scribble notebooks" and found some thoughts from my reread of "The Woman in White" in 2020:

Walter and Marian are like a Victorian Scooby Doo. Supporting evidence:

The "ghost" seen by a little boy in the cemetery near the school is a real woman.

The villains are men motivated by money.

Walter and Marian are good at investigating.

Conclusion: I would pay good money to see a The Woman in White/Scooby Doo fusion TV series.

I never read Jane Eyre for school. It was one of those books Everyone Has To Read that somehow missed my entire education, like Romeo and Juliet. I did read Jane Eyre just because I felt like it, I think when I was a teenager. I must have liked it because I didn't remember hating it, never watched any of the movies, never got around to re-reading it...until now. I'm able to spend part of each workday listening to my headphones and I've been working my way through a lot of audio books. And last week I decided to re-read Jane Eyre. I remembered all the main plot points, but not so much of the details. Thoughts in roughly chronological order:

Jane's aunt and cousins are hell on wheels. I wanted to start cheering when, just before Jane goes to school, she reams out Aunt Reed--excuse me, "Mrs. Reed"--about how Jane will never call her "aunt" again and will tell the entire world in detail about what a terrible person Mrs. Reed. I don't have a paper copy or ebook checked out from the library right now, so I can't quote, but my jaw dropped behind my face mask (I have to work at the office) when I listened to that speech. And then Mrs. Reed leaves the room! She's scared and runs off!

Mr. Brocklehurst can also drop dead. I know the general outline of Charlotte Bronte's biography, and I feel like his character is one of the ones where Charlotte must have drawn heavily from people she met in real life, and used this book as an excuse to absolutely roast them.

Helen Burns IS the trope embodiment of "too good for this sinful world."

I like Mrs. Fairfax so much! She's so kind and welcoming when Jane arrives at Thornfield Hall.

More reactions to come later, when I have more time for blogging.

I realize I didn't actually write much about what the book is about in my first post. The first half of Shades of Milk and Honey is more character-driven rather than plot-driven, establishing what Jane's life is like in the country and her society. At the beginning, we learn that Netherfield is let at last the young Captain Livingston, who Jane and her younger sister Melody knew as children, has returned to stay with his aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh Lady Fitzcameron. Naturally Melody and most of the eligible young ladies in the neighborhood are ready to swoon. Jane is more mellow about it.

We are also introduced to Mr. Dunkirk, who Jane gets along with and is attracted to, but manages to talk herself out of every compliment he pays her by twisting it around so that she believes he's really complimenting Melody who is briefly infatuated with Mr. Dunkirk at the beginning of the story. Mr. Dunkirk also introduces Jane to his younger sister, Georgiana Darcy Elizabeth Dunkirk who has just come to stay with him. Jane immediately makes friends with her, and takes Elizabeth under her wing, and it's all very sweet.

Jane also meets Mr. Vincent, who is a professional glamourist hired by Lady Fitzcameron to create a glamour display ("glamural") at her house. Continuing the Austen vibes, they have a number of interactions invoking Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, though Jane is far more restrained and polite throughout. "Repressed" may be a more accurate term.

Mrs. Ellsworth, Jane and Melody's mother, doesn't have an obsession with marrying her daughters off but is otherwise so much like Mrs. Bennett that I was surprised she never literally said "my poor nerves!"

The plot picks up steam about halfway through the book as secret relationships are revealed and there's more focus on the physical effects from working intense glamour.

( spoilers )

Shades of Milk and Honey is the first book in a series and I liked it well enough to give the second book a try.

Regarding James Mattis's comments about Trump's reaction to the protests and misuse of the military: When a longtime military man commonly known by the nickname "Mad Dog" accuses you of violating the Constitution and says “ 'Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,' Mattis writes. 'We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.' ” you know you done fucked up.

Hello! It only took a pandemic to get me posting on DW again. Overall, I'm doing all right. I'm still employed full-time so that's the biggest source of worry out of my life. I had a minor illness about a month ago but wasn't sick enough to get tested. I get some kind of respiratory infection at least once a year, so it's anybody's guess whether I had corona virus or was just generally sick. I'm still getting my asthma beat back into submission but that's all. I miss seeing my friends in person and I want to travel.

It's good seeing everyone else's posts.

I've been trying to enjoy more books and TV shows since I can't do much outside of work other than going on walks and grocery shopping. Thoughts so far:

After rewatching a number of episodes from later seasons of The Closer, it could easily be subtitled Captain Raydor and Oh My God, What Did You People Do Now? I love her. The episodes featuring the misadventures of Flynn and Provenza continue to be my favorites.

My TV provider unexpectedly gave me a bunch of extra channels (for free as far as I can tell) including Showtime, and I now have access to all of Penny Dreadful. This pandemic just got a little bit better. I can finally watch Season 3! (I already hate the end of it based on spoilers, but I want to see at least the first half of that season.)

I listened to the audio book for Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley and it's great. I want to re-read all of Jane Austen's novels now. On a related note, I read Lady Susan early this year--it was hilarious.

I began reading The Decameron for the first time. It's been on my To Read list for years but this was definitely the right time to began reading a work of literature about a group of people who flee from the bubonic plague to the Italian countryside where they tell stories for ten days. If I began highlighting passages from the Introduction that have meaning for me due to our current pandemic, I'd end up highlighting the entire thing. I'm on Day 1 at this point and the stories are hilarious.

I'm halfway through listening to the audio book of The Awakening by Kate Chopin for the first time. Events so far can be summed up as Edna, the protagonist, saying, "I don't give a fuck and I'm gonna do what I want" and her husband in the background going "WTF?" again and again.

I like puzzling over how things could have gone differently in stories. The one that I'm focused on right now: what if Wato hadn't been into Moriya?

( spoilers ahead )

I LOVE IT! I almost never get into TV shows while they're current and everyone is talking about them. The last time that happened was Hannibal...which ended in 2015. I'm especially glad I tried watching it now, because there are only eight episodes and I was able to get through the whole thing before it was hard to find any of the illegal uploads that I absolutely, definitely did not watch. All of the actors are great and I love the storyline.

More to come later once I manage to organize my squeeing!

I've been getting lost in a sea of horrifyingly-accurate information the past week or so while I try to figure out what to do first. I'll give a shot at gathering together links I've been seeing on multiple websites so I can find information again later.

Families Belong Together, includes information on upcoming events

a list of ways to help

parallels between current events and history of Native American boarding schools

list of comparisons between Nazi era and current events involving immigrants and other Trump actions

another list of ways to help

Laura Ingrahm compares the detention centers to summer camp because she's a dipshit. I can think of one kind of camp where she would have been a competent guard employee...

complaint letter from church members saying that Jeff Sessions's actions towards immigrant children are child abuse. Boom.

To be updated more and/or better organized as I have time.

I was thinking about the NBC Hannibal series some more and that episode in Season 2 when he's choosing his dinner ingredients from the rolodex of the rude, and realized that what I want is a fic about one of Hannibal's victims-to-be unintentionally evading every attempt to kill them through sheer dumb luck. Look, that person may have intentionally given Hannibal decaf instead of regular coffee because they were in a bad mood that day (pretending for the sake of argument that Hannibal would actually go to a Starbucks), but that doesn't mean the person deserves to end up in Alanna's beer.

Let's say this person is Jenny the underpaid barista. Hannibal sabotages her car? Jenny decided to hitchhike and gets a ride before Hannibal can catch her. Hannibal breaks into her home and waits for the time he knows she gets home from the gym every night? Jenny unexpectedly has to fly to the other side of the country due to a family emergency. Hannibal waits outside the secluded side door at the gym that she always uses? Jenny canceled her membership that morning because she needs to save money to pay off her student loans.

By this time, it's the day of Hannibal's dinner party and Jenny (at least temporarily) escapes being on the menu.