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Friday, April 13, 2007

Should There Be A Moratorium on Nonessential Charlotte Brontë Paraphrases in Criticism?

posted by on April 13 at 11:55 AM

From Manohla Dargis’s review of Year of the Dog (which opens in Seattle next week):

What gets everything moving, including [the writer-director’s] somewhat sneakily or perhaps cautiously articulated intellectual interests (this is, after all, a studio-bankrolled comedy), is [the beagle] Pencil’s untimely death, which tears a hole in Peggy’s world and eventually her psyche. For Peggy, a woman who greets her beloved four-legged friend with a toothy smile that rivals the sun for warmth (Pencil shines right back), this isn’t the death of some adopted stray, one in a line of carelessly loved dumb beasts. It is a shock to the system, a life-altering tragedy, a terrible end that becomes—movingly, through one odd story kink after another—a radical new beginning.

Reader, she becomes a vegan.

Now, I am an ardent fan of the reigning queen of American film criticism. Especially that time she compared Santa’s bag of toys to a scrotum. This is a more general query.

Aren’t Jane Eyre paraphrases getting a bit tired? The, um, attempt at bathos (? I think that’s what’s happening here—“Reader, I married him” is this terse climax in the original; veganism is always good for a laugh) is overwhelmingly ridiculous. And it’s such a slutty phrase! As long as you start with “Reader,” pretty much anything goes—first to third person, slightly transgressive active verb to the flaccid “become.” And it’s everywhere. Unfortunately, Google won’t do caps-sensitive searches with commas, but trust me on this one. I’m sure I’ve done it myself.

Is it time for a moratorium on nonessential Charlotte Brontë paraphrases in criticism? Perhaps we can get with some Milton or George Eliot instead? “Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme”? “So spake the grisly Terror”? “Imagination is a licensed trespasser”? “Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities”? There must be a solution.

RSS icon Comments

1

That device should be used ONCE and once only. Maybe again, by someone else, in twenty years or something. C'mon, how hard is it to write a sentence?

Posted by Fnarf | April 13, 2007 12:16 PM
2

Oh no, I think it's got a couple more years before it gets old. Jane Eyre was only published 160 years ago. When the fad had hit 165, then it may start to seem a little tired.

Posted by exelizabeth | April 13, 2007 12:43 PM
3

Everything in Seattle is a week behind everywhere else that counts.

Posted by Boomer in NYC | April 13, 2007 2:00 PM
4

yay! a slog post about my favorite bronte. the week is complete.

Posted by stacy | April 13, 2007 6:50 PM

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