when prose becomes poetry, the prosaic heroic

Posted by greg on October 04, 1997 at 16:38:23:

i can't let ch. 23 pass without paying homage to perhaps the most exquisite prose, in my most favorite chapter, in all of fiction. it seems that bronte uses this "sweetest hour" to not only favor us with such a picture in words, and to set the mood for jane's encounter with rochester, but she does something else that i hadn't noticed until this reading. the phrase "...skies so pure, suns so radiant...seldom favor, even singly, our wave-girt land." this strikes me as a metaphor for how rare this love of theirs is in the world, or in a life, and that when a love like that comes to us it is more earth-shaking than any "historic" event. this is the watershed event in the "history" of young jane eyre, so everything else literally becomes insignificant. it seems somewhat ironic, then, how literally "historic" and celebrated this chapter has become.

REPLIES:

• Oh, I agree Maggie 19:44:56 10/05/97 (1)
  • Just enough description Amy 21:05:07 10/05/97 (0)

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