Okay, so I don't know HOW Jane Eyre has slipped by me all these years of me loving reading my whole life and reading well over 50 books since I got married. I never had to read it in school, and I never had anyone push me to say "you have to read this book!"
Well, now I'm going to say it: You have to read this book! It wasn't just the book I loved. After I finished reading it (the key is"after"), go to your library, and check out Masterpiece Theater's recent making of it. It was only made a couple years ago (it aired on PBS in Jan. 2008) and it's almost 4 hours long. (The cover has a close-up of her profile on it.) That's how you know you'll get the right movie. It has to be the right one! They've made different versions dating back to the 1940's (I think), and this is BY FAR the best version.
It made me remember all the good and noble attributes we should have like patience, temperance, forgiveness, modesty (not the clothing kind), and love. There are some beautiful illustrations to each of these virtues given in the book. It will make you remember what TRUE love is supposed to be like between spouses. It will make you wonder how quickly you could forget how madly in love you were during your engagement and first year or so of marriage and then when children came, that kind of love got set aside for arguments about who's turn it was to take out the garbage or bathe the kids. This book will remind you that there are such deeper kinds of love than just physical attraction (although that is the icing on the cake that makes it so much sweeter). It will remind you that when your minds and hearts are one with each other, there is no greater satisfaction and joy in a relationship.
When I turned off the end of the movie last night around midnight, the channel came up that I last had it on (NBC, I think), and they were advertising for some comedy (I can't remember which one), and the crassness and the baseness that I saw in just a 10 second commercial for some raunchy comedy that's on network television almost made me cry. Just compared to the purity and the goodness of character that a book (or movie) like Jane Eyre can conjure up in our heads, and then you see something like that on TV--it was almost as if someone splashed ice water on my face.
I love the modern conveniences of today's life--I am grateful to be alive at this time where we have the fullness of the gospel restored, and we have modern medicine and heating and air conditioning!! We can travel and experience more in a few days than most people 200 years ago couldn't experience in a whole lifetime. But it doesn't come without a price. Sometimes I think life was more fulfilling for some people back in those days than it is now. They had to work so hard (mostly physically hard) for every single thing they got out of life. People were hardly "bored." Is that why the moral standards were so much higher? People weren't so rude and inconsiderate as they are now. (Of course people in previous time periods were still rude and had bad qualities--I'm talking about society in general.)
Anyway, Hailey is needing me (she wants me to paint her fingernails), so that's my soapbox for today. So here's the lesson of the day:
Go start reading "Jane Eyre", take one attribute you want to have more dominant in your life, and we can all feel more satisfied and fulfilled with life!
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