In an earlier post, I wrote about whether or not a character had to be likable, and came to the conclusion that a jerk could still be a good narrator if they were understandable.
Well, maybe I was wrong, because I can't stand Rochester.
Having not read Jane Eyre, my only previous exposure to the character is from Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, in which he's portrayed (perhaps satirically) the way a Bronte fangirl would see him: hunky, heroic, brooding, etc, battling evil alongside the protagonist even as his house burns to the ground. I was expecting him to be a pretty cool guy, though perhaps not completely understanding of the culture of the Caribbean.
Instead of being a funny action-rom-com leading man, Rochester comes across as (to quote Peter Walsh) an intolerable ass. He's in the Caribbean for no apparent reason other than to complain about the food, the people, the language, the names of towns, the colors of the landscape, and his wife's eyes. His disdain for (or at least discomfort with) the natural landscape might be what puts me off the most. If he was paying more attention to the hummingbirds and quail-doves than to his wife, I'd find it perfectly understandable, but he just constantly mentions how everything is wild and uncivilized without showing genuine interest in the wildness.
It's true that I can understand why Rochester acts this way: he's been raised in poo-poo-proper English society and has convinced himself that England has the most beautiful weather in the world, English people are the most civilized in the world, and English cooking is the most refined and properly flavored in the world. Unfortunately, this delusion doesn't do anything interesting to the story. It's not unusual enough to add an interesting twist to the story like Jake's attempts at full internalization of emotion did. He's just one of those guys who goes on YouTube and dislikes every video that doesn't show cats.
I wasn't such a big fan of Antoinette's choppy narration with all of the quotes 'like this' instead of using normal quotation marks, but Rochester makes me wish she had continued to tell the story.
End rant.
The quotes 'like this' are only abnormal in the United States. In Britain (whence this novel originates), the convention is reversed, with 'single quotes' for primary quotation and "double quotes" for internal quotation. (They also add unnecessary u's to words like "labour" and s's where there should be z's (or "zeds") in words like "civilization.") In other words, it's not something to hold against Rhys, let alone Antoinette.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think in our "global society," standardization across English would prevail. But it's just one of those charming little quirks that distinguishes us Americans from our colleagues across the pond (and in Canada).
All of your criticisms of Rochester's *cultural* rather than typographical Englishness, however, are well taken!