I like books on tape. Over New Years I was heading to Palm Desert to visit friends and thought I would pick up a book for the ride. Jane Eyre was on sale, and I bought it. It was the unabridged series, and it was 14 disks, so you can imagine how long it is; something like 64 hours. I have been listening to it ever since and finished it this past weekend. Six weeks. One book.
I forgot what it’s like to read, see, hear something that takes longer than an hour. Actually on TV now, it’s only forty minutes because with Tivo I skip the commercials. There were a few times I wondered if it would ever end, but mostly I just wished I could weave a tale so brilliantly, so smoothly with sentences like “I have difficulty in believing you any other than a mere voice and vision; something that would melt into silence and annihilation as the midnight whisper and mountain echo had melted before.” And, she penned it. No computer keys for Jane. How many times did she rewrite that page? Was her finger covered in ink?
Half way through listening, I ordered an old copy of the book on the Internet and followed along a bit. I have marked some of the passages and find myself looking at them, staring at the words wondering how she wrote them. Did she sit down and just write it? Did she rewrite over and over again the way I do? Did the prose flow, or was it painfully slow?
Then there was Charlotte’s sister Emily who wrote Wuthering Heights. Charlotte wrote one book about love and her sister another and it appears neither of them had it themselves. I love them both. I love the way they patiently tell their stories without fanfare, without drama. Even the most dramatic parts don’t feel like shrill drama. So, the sisters living together wrote parallel books, one with a happy ending and one where the protagonist dies a sad death. Did they argue about the different endings?
In today’s world we would know these things. These amazing women would have been interviewed on television and in magazines, and we would know. I’m not sure that’s a good thing or not. Maybe it’s good I can’t get an instanteous answer.
I am so grateful these women lived and gave me the gifts of their imaginations. It makes me want to use mine more often. And, I will tell you a secret. I like Wuthering Heights better than Jane Eyre. Don’t tell Charlotte.
