主题：【原创】简.爱 于 我 -- 映日荷花

as "Wuthering Heights"

The first half (before the wedding) is truely great. The depiction of their mutual attraction and Jane's struggle and determination to maintain her self-esteem belongs to the best passages I've ever read. But after the wedding, the novel becomes worse and worse, and I find the last several pages almost unbearable.

The whole novel is a day-dream, which is fine since almost all novels contain at least some element of day-dreaming. My problem with it is that the ending is the best possible result for Jane I can imagine. I can accept her marriage with Rochester, even though it is almost impossible for a governess (which belongs to the servant class) to marry a gentleman at that time. But suppose the story ended with the wedding and no gruesome past was revealed, do you think their marriage will be a happy one? He was her superior, in both social standing and intellect. I can imagine Jane (or Charlotte Bronte?) finding such an unequal relationship painful or even sufforcating. So they must part, he must be punished (some feminist critics read his blindness as a symbol for castration), and she must gain her financial independence before they can be reconciled. When they finally married, she became his superior. I can still swallow such wish-thinking if not for the ending. When Rochester finally regained his eyesight, that is too much for me.