Jane's Principles and Other Bits.

While I’m on the subject of literary characters, there’s something I don’t understand.

I’ve reached the point in Jane Eyre where our heroine’s marriage to her beloved Mr Rochester has had to be called off because some party pooper has snitched to the vicar that the bridegroom is already married.

Rochester declines to give up; that’s what Rochesters do (or don’t, if you see what I mean.) He points out to Jane that it can hardly be called a marriage when his ‘wife’ is a sub-human creature much given to growling, biting, stabbing, renting wedding veils asunder, and setting light to occupied beds. Jane doesn’t give up either – her principles, that is. She decides she has to leave, breaking her beloved’s heart and her own in the process, and walks off into the night. She sleeps on the moor, gets rained on, and wanders around a nearby village wondering how she can get a piece of bread to eat when she hasn’t got a single penny to her name. And her only excuse for this outlandish, counter-productive behaviour? Staying with Rochester in the circumstances would be offensive to God.

That’s weird, isn’t it?

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I’ll tell you what else is weird: I’m getting really into New York lately. I can think of four obvious reasons, but whether they’re adequate reasons is another matter.

There’s a shop in Ashbourne displaying several paintings of New York at night in their window, and I want one. It’s the next best thing to going there in person, which is out of the question because it would be far too expensive and I doubt that my poor fatigued self would even make it to the airport, let alone stand the stress of take off. And then there's the problem of who I might bump into when I got there.

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I’ve decided I really must stop being preoccupied with mortality and just get on with it for as long as I have left. That was a joke.

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Oh, and I just finished my weekly treat of a bottle of this Yankee IPA beer. It’s becoming a pleasant Wednesday habit.