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Sunday, January 29, 2006

Phew... that's all I can say.

When I came across this from The Observer, I thought at first that the novel mentioned was 'Adele' but that was written by Tennant. No, no this would be much worse:

When, after her death, I went to her house in Clapham and pulled out the drawers of the filing cabinet in which she kept drafts and discards of her work, I hoped to find some unpublished stories, or notes on the novel about Jane Eyre's stepdaughter for which she'd submitted a synopsis: Adele was going to fall in love with a schoolteacher, seduce her own father and watch her mother being guillotined; it was going to play 'some tricks with history ... But then it is a novel'.

What is that supposed to mean? I'm not a professional writer but I have always found the importance of historical accuracy stressed both by other writers and by readers. But... Adele seducing her father? Why do so many adaptations of Brontë novels have to be so ludicrous? I've heard of one in which Mr Rochester's son is older than Mr Rochester- if you do the math but- really, this is a novel so anything can happen I suppose!

And then, the Duke of Wellington appears and...

You may read the rest of the article here. I've never heard of Angela Carter, but I hope she came up with better plots than this.

2 comments:

mysticgypsy said...

hmm..that mention of Adele seducing Rochester gives me the goosebumps :-/ ewww.

Angela Carter is a bit *singular* like that, but really intriguing nevertheless. I've read her book called "The Bloody Chamber" where she takes a lot of traditional fairy tales and turns them into adult magical realism tales with ghastly twists. In the book there is one story about Bluebeard's chamber with his dead wives,which is supposed to represent a skeleton in one's cupboard. It reminded me of Rochester hiding Bertha.

Brontëana said...

I think she might mean the vicomte by 'her own father.' But either is really uncalled for. Are we to think of Adele as being so perverted?

The Bluebeard tale is definately brought up in JE. I haven't read a GOOD article on it yet... I've read articles on it, but they fail to really examine the text closely enough, so their conclusions are sloppy. I believe Mesrour was one of Bluebeard's guards and is the name of Mr Rochester's horse. Also Jane describes the third story as looking like a Bluebeard's castle. ;)