Think Small.

I can’t really even begin to explain how much I am loving Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”. I know I’m “late to the boat” with this one (think 165 years late) but previously I’d read Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” and didn’t overly take to it. Too emo, and gothic for me.

But Charlotte has a little more humour, sentimentality, optimism and joie de voire than her sister - without losing the trademark Bronte bookishness and tendency to overanalyse. You know, they like to mull over things with dark clouds hanging over their heads. Just my kind of gals! In short, I am totes girl-crushing on Charlotte and wish she were around today so we could be BFFs.

There are moments in the book where I pull myself away from it, fighting the magnetic force the pages seem to draw, because it all becomes too much. I so strongly identify with the thoughts and feelings of Jane that it’s like I’m in her body, wriggling her fingers and toes, and everything that’s happening with Mr Rochester is just so breathessly wonderful and painful that I can hardly bare it.

Now THAT is one helluva writer.

I know back in that day women’s worlds were just so much smaller (especially women without means) - their breadth of experience and exposure to world affairs and places and people so limited. And this would inform why Bronte writes with such acute detail about this little cast of characters and their feelings and thoughts. I, on the other hand, - hurrah to feminism! - was blessed with the ability and opportunity to experience and know of much more.

And yet, lately I am enraptured by The Small, and so disheartened by The Big. I think if you look at the work of David Sedaris, and This American Life, and Jane Eyre (three things I have lately been reading) you’ll see there is so much power, depth and beauty to be had by the small and the personal. And perhaps there is more truth to be had than the churn of the 24 hour news cycle (be it television, web or what have you) - which is so filled with vitriolic debate, fake stories, hysterical editorials, rumours, mirror reflections and general rancidness.