Going through the 101 Greatest Books List put together by the College Board. Their original list is in alphabetical order. I am approaching it in no particular order of my own….
While I am on a Bronte kick I thought I should go ahead and tackle Jane Eyre. Jane, Jane, Jane you and I have a complicated relationship. On again off again for years. I feel like I have a high school relationship with this text. Moving from love to hate in a blink of an eye only to make up one raining weekend when there is nothing else to do and starting the cycle over again.
You see the problem is I have read Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. I know Jane is supposed to be the first great feminist hero way ahead of her time and redefining the claustrophobic boundaries of her female contemporaries. But you see, I can not unread Wide Sargasso Sea and Rhy’s Bertha is a intertextual sledge hammer to the original text. So stretched somewhere between 1847, 1966, and now I look for the space to fit the pieces of Jane Eyre back together for me. I may have to wait for a rainy weekend.
I am interested to know if you have ever read one book that has forever changed the way you will read another?
Roots & Reflections 