Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Read Jane Eyre for the very first time, in Elizabeth Klett's excellent audiobook version. Lives up to the hype. But St. John Rivers is clearly given short shrift in the popular imagination, compared to Eddie "Pretty Boy" Rochester. Rochester wouldn't be what he is without Rivers; this is a book that reminds one why structuralism had a high point. Two colonialist voyages, one secular and one sacred, one west and one east; two ways of imprisoning a wife--in the attic vs. in heaven; and two mirror-image personalities, the irascible vs. the cold. Hindustani? Jane Eyre? Really?