ShmoopTube

00:00

language can be a great tool for capturing and describing the external

00:07

world. especially if you happen to forget your camera on the plane and brought [man and woman watch sunset together]

00:10

eight reams of lined paper and pens on your vacation. however it's also a great

00:15

tool for revealing internal states. well Charlotte brontë does this masterfully

00:20

in Jane Eyre as we can see in the following passage. "no sooner did i see that his attention..."

00:29

alright well take your second to pause

00:32

and give this a gander here. so apart from being some pretty great prose

00:40

a lots going on here. for one thing that entire passage is just two sentences [Bronte pictured]

00:44

long so there's an undeniable feeling of excess. it isn't just some piddling tiny

00:50

stream of observations but surging waves of thoughts and emotions. hopefully you

00:55

were wearing a poncho. and take note of the alliteration. all the p's have

01:00

precious poignant pleasure pure point and poison and all the d's of drinks

01:04

divine and drafts intensify the feelings of excess. well using two literary

01:09

strategies simultaneously is a pretty ingenious tactical move on the Bronte's [large chess set shown]

01:14

part. because what says access better than more and more stuff. however the

01:20

real literary victory comes from how well these literary devices match up

01:24

with feelings of the character delivering the lines. the passage comes

01:28

at a point in the book when Jane's pretty upse.t after Rochester spends

01:32

weeks cozying up to her out of the blue he ditches her and goes off to flirt

01:36

with some other woman. then brings her back to the house. yeah not exactly the

01:40

best behavior if you're looking to endear yourself to your partner. however [couple with "other woman"]

01:44

despite the fact that Jane is suffering she loves Rochester enough that she

01:49

can't help but take a kind of sick pleasure in the whole messy situation.

01:53

and this unwieldy surging mix of emotions and thoughts is perfectly

01:56

mirrored in the unwieldy surging prose of the passage, almost as if that was

02:01

Bronte's intent. that said it's not like Bronte to the one-trick pony.

02:05

gains emotions and sense of self change over the course of the book as does the [horse does tricks]

02:11

language Bronte -uses to express genes qualities. take

02:15

this much much shorter passage, which has been censored for spoilers. no more long

02:20

sentences, no more alliteration. here we have straightforward assertive language

02:25

which is just what we'd expect from a certain straightforward assertive

02:29

character we happen to know. whether assuring fourth torrents of prose or

02:33

uttering the simplest of statements Bronte definitely had a great feel for

02:36

using language to reveal inner states. that said we're not sure we trust her to [Bronte in front of food truck]

02:41

take all the photos on our vacation. digital cameras weren't exactly okuu all

02:45

in the 19th century and there's a bit of a learning curve there.

Full Transcript