Jane Eyre Is A Book I Like A Lot But Also Have Intense Feelings About Bc I Don’t Interpret Rochester

Just a thought… Rochester delays paying Jane her wages until she leaves to visit Mrs. Reed. Could it be that the reason behind this delay is more psychological than practical?

Consider this: Rochester might associate paying Jane with the transactions he had with his former mistresses, whom he paid for their company. Rochester never truly viewed Jane as just an employee. In his mind, he already had a deeper, more personal connection with her. Paying her would shatter this fantasy and reduce their relationship to a mere employer-employee dynamic, something he’s clearly uncomfortable with labelling their relationship as.

It's not that Rochester is stingy or unwilling to part with his money—quite the opposite, in fact. He enjoys being generous, almost to a fault. Even when Jane asks for leave, he doesn’t merely pay her the wages he owes; he offers her a £50 note, an amount far exceeding what she’s due. He wasn’t paying her as an employer but rather a “friend”. This suggests that Rochester’s reluctance to pay her isn’t about the money itself but rather the social implications of the transaction.

Rochester despises his past actions of hiring mistresses, equating it to "buying a slave." This disdain likely influences his feelings toward paying Jane. He doesn’t have an issue with paying his other female employees, but with Jane, it’s different. His romantic feelings complicate things. For Rochester, paying Jane is too reminiscent of paying for love, a notion that deeply disturbs him. This is why I believe he delays paying her.

JANE EYRE — Chapter XIV & XXXVII

She’s iconic, period.

Just found Hugh Grant’s Reddit AMA from 2014, featuring such gems as “I love to kill” and “I will pour almost anything down my throat”

Source: Hugh Grant Reddit AMA

Sorry, still not over Darcy critical-failing that proposal! Not that sorry, though. I have no idea why Pride and Prejudice hits so hard when most of Austen's other novels are like "They're fine! I like them! Anyway..." for me.

But, here's the thing. Darcy is being an asshole. Darcy isn't an asshole, generally, but he's really being one about his whole Regency Era situationship with Lizzie. Like, he rolls in on day one with this giant fucking chip on his shoulder, acts like he's too good for everyone, and why? Well, he's rich, and he's got lofty connections.

Except who's he rolling with right then? His spineless dustmop of a bestie and his bestie's godawful sisters. Bingley's the sort of guy who can be peer-pressured out of being in love!

Like, you know that thing where you have a friend, and they introduce you to another friend, and that friend is such a wet sock that you find yourself reevaluating your friend because they're hanging around with this guy? Like, okay, Darcy, do you have friends, or do you have toadies? Is this your bestie, or did you find a gentleman's companion that you didn't have to pay?

Later on we meet his aunt, who's the goddamned worst.

Like, we all hate Mr. Collins, right? This woman has Mr. Collins over twice a week for a quiet evening of performative dickriding. That's the kind of taste Darcy's family has. Voluntarily spending hours with Mr. Collins on a regular basis.

There's no talking about Mrs. Bennet's lack of decorum or matrimonial grasping or entitlement without talking about Lady Catherine flying in on her broom to scream at her nephew's fiancee, right? Especially considering that her basis for doing so is a cradle engagement that she seems to have never spoken to her nephew about as an adult and a fucking rumor that she assumes pertains to Lizzie.

She doesn't even talk to her fucking nephew before spending half a day in a carriage to make a blazing spectacle of herself in front of the entire Bennet household! He finds out she did that afterwards when she tries to make him break off the nonexistent engagement that she's announced to half the fucking kingdom by that point.

I mean, unexpected point to Mrs. B, who notably did not even walk down the road to Netherfield to act disappointed at anyone.

Also hard to get on too high a horse after Georgiana's near-elopement with the country's biggest asshole! Like, oh, the Bennet sisters are embarrassing? The Bennets lack propriety?

Buddy, you hired a sex trafficker to look after your sister and then your sister almost fucked the one-man-crime-wave son of your late property-manager. And you didn't even manage to hush it all up properly! Sure, he's keeping your sister's name out of his mouth, but he's running you down like a dog in every other respect to the whole county!

Like, "Oh, look at me, I'm Fitzwilliam Darcy! I'm not going to lower myself to correcting any of The Plebes who now think I deliberately misadministered a will to fuck over The Help out of cheapness and spite, especially when all it would take is one conversation with That Fucker's commanding officer, but god forbid I ever have to go out in public with a Bennet! I might die of shame and secondhand cringe!"

So he's got all of that going on, and then he busts in on Lizzie with a proposal that's got huge "I don't consent to being attracted to you" energy and runs her entire family into the ground. This is after Lizzie's spent approximately three centuries being negged by his mannerless nightmare of an aunt, so that's at least one extra level of "Really, bruh?" in there.

And then he fucking claps back at her rejection! Instead of going "Oh. Huh. Whoops. Guess I'll just have to go marry one of the other ten thousand women lined up waiting to marry me!" he's like "What the fuuuuck did I ever do to you, you fucking menace?". At which point she checks him so hard he spends the next three months bluescreening and looking up how to be polite to people you haven't already known for five years.

So like I said, he is being an asshole here. He knows how to act right, he just hasn't bothered to do so once since posting up in Netherfield because idk, he's on vacation or some shit.

Critically! However upsetting Lizzie finds The Proposal Incident (half-hour crying jag, spends the rest of the day hiding in her room), she is at no point worried about Darcy's subsequent behavior.

This is while she still thinks he genuinely did Wickham dirty and before she's had a chance to get character references from the 500 people working at Pemberley. This is the guy about whom her dad later says "Kidding-not kidding I can hardly say no to this rich fuck, can I?" when asked for his blessing. This is after Mr. Collins literally said "I've heard no means yes these days" to her fucking face and then her mother tried to make her marry him anyway.

She preached a full on sermon about the man's shortcomings to his face immediately after saying she wouldn't bounce on his dick if it was the last one on earth and after the adrenaline crash wasn't like, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuuuck my entire life, he's going to burn down the vicarage and frame my father for tax fraud."

Everything that she's seen with her own eyes about this snobby bastard tells her he's not going to go crying to his aunt and get her cousin's patronage revoked. He's not going to go out of his way to fuck her or her family over. He's pissed, and he was definitely playing the ass with that proposal, but he's not going to lash out over it.

So this is Lizzie seeing Darcy at Peak Asshole, with extra assholery that he didn't even do but he couldn't be bothered to tell anyone he didn't do, and Lizzie's still like "omg you're such a fucking prick, how do you even get out of bed in the morning" instead of "Well, RIP to my prospects, there's no way that man doesn't have the lot of us consigned to a convent by parliamentary decree now."

i like to believe that ophelia’s madness gave her a kind of meta knowledge of the plot— that she saw the tragic ending coming, knew that hamlet’s indecision would be his hamartia, that she realised gertrude and claudius were both poisoned with corruption from the beginning and instead of the customary funeral goers laying flowers at a grave, it was Ophelia— mad, at death’s door, about to die in less than 2 scenes— who handed flowers to the king, queen and protagonist as if the dead girl was mourning the living

“He asked me, smiling, why I cared for his letter so very much. I thought, but did not say, that I prized it like the blood in my veins.”

– Villette, Charlotte Brontë

The Fairy Ring

Artist : George Vernon Stokes (1873-1954)

Walking My Penguin

i am walking my penguin walking my penguin for a few furlongs walking my penguin no madam that is not a euphemism not a euphemism for anything anything at all.. my penguin requires a little decent gentle exercise so taking my penguin for walkies is great and he is unable to lift weights you ask why well because my particular penguin has flippers you try lifting dumbbells with flippers not recommended.. besides that and perhaps because he has put on a little weight his portly gait means his back is bent out of shape somewhere down there his vintage blubber is stoically marinating.. when i walk my penguin in the cold winter weather he dons woolly neon booties with sucker-soled grips so he does not fall over onto the unforgiving icy concrete penguins feet are so unsuited to negotiate human concrete.. and please do not get me started on why pavements do not have under-heated penguin air-bags so where does all our council tax go terrible i know i know.. i am walking my penguin no madam that is not a euphemism not a euphemism for anything you have asked me that once already that makes no sense at all.. and he never lashes on the lamp posts of dogs he is exceedingly well-mannered he stays in his lane and when he takes a shine to a neighbour he drops an egg in their garden for them alpha-bloke penguins have an extraordinary skill set penguin misandrists really need to visit their shrink-vet.. no offence meant madam i am simply walking my penguin only for a few furlongs after all do you not also walk yours yes i should hope so.. and madam i hope you know you should never let your penguin out on its own common sense is not so common now gangster pedigree penguin-nappers are everywhere they even write stupid songs glorifying it all conceptual double-albums about penguins finding themselves are a rare and treasured find the swirly album art work is always immersive and sublime.. yes i know and alas it is not like the days of yore when you could let your penguin out to relax in a deckchair on strawberryfied-krill summer days in the secure knowledge your penguin would always always remain in completely rude health and super-safe apart from when your penguin suffers the irritating seasonal malady of mildly fatal heatstroke..

Source: Walking My Penguin

wax seal stamp pngs ♡

"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones." - Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre (Chapter XXIX; paragraph 15)