L'incipit di questa settimana è di una delle mie scrittrici preferite, Charlotte Brontë e il suo Jane Eyre.
Prima di iniziare vi riporto un commento tratto dal mio libro di letteratura inglese:
"From the day of its appearance Jane Eyre has been credited with having added something new to the tradition of the English novel. The new quality is the voice of a woman who speaks with perfect frankness about herself ... The public preferred women to be presented with something of the unreality of romance; ... Jane Eyre is moderately plain, and this made her uncomfortably real".
La prima delle sorelle Brontë, utilizzando la prima persona, immerge il lettore direttamente in quanto la protagonista sente e vede;
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.
I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
Nonostante il "I was glad of it", l'atmosfera creata è però "sospettosa" e si avverte una nota negativa "There was no possibility". Quanto segue è la fotografia di un salotto ottocentesco:
The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner—something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were—she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.”
Notate il commento tra parentesi "for the time neither quarrelling nor crying", la linea ironica con "looked perfectly happy" e il suo essere messa da parte dalla zia "Me, she had dispensed from joining the group". Quest'ultima citazione è veramente molto bella e mi ha fatto ricordare l'Ulisse di Dante quando questo dice "Ma misi me per l'alto mare aperto": anche se qui le parti sembrano essere inverse dal momento che è Jane l'esclusa.
Tuttavia, rimane esclusa fino a un certo punto:
“What does Bessie say I have done?” I asked.
“Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”
A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.
I returned to my book—Bewick’s History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of “the solitary rocks and promontories” by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape—
“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.”
Interessante come narrativamente l'autrice passi a focalizzare l'attenzione dal libro al posto a sedere vicino alla finestra per poi volgere l'attenzione al paesaggio che si vede da questa e ritornare al libro (con citazione e critica).
Jane è particolare: è intelligente e percepisce la conformità dell'ambiente in cui vive. Nonostante queste procede avanti verso le sue convinzioni, anche se la sua morale non le consente di scendere a compromessi e si trova costretta a ritornare dal suo amato.
Mi piace terminare con questa citazione che ben spiega il forte carattere di Jane, e probabilmente anche di Charlotte:
“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”
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