Saturday 2 March 2013

The Jane Eyre Challenge - Part 22

Loyal readers, yes, both of you, may have noticed that although Grape St John has been in Grape Jane Eyre for two posts already, I have not actually named him.

This is because St John is a stupid name.

Firstly because who calls their kid St John?  It's either INCREDIBLY pompous 'my kid is a saint', or really harsh 'you'll never become a saint so I might as well stick that bit in here now' because there's never going to be a St St John, is there?  Or maybe you're just a HUUUUUUGE fan of one of the 82 or so Saint Johns and you want to name your kid after him.  In which case, crazy idea but CALL YOUR KID JOHN.

Secondly because how the hell do you pronounce St John?  Is it Saint John?  No.  Is it a sort of Norwegiany sounding Stjohn?  No.  Is it Street John?  Not even that.

No it's something like sinjin.  Or sinjun.  Or snjn.

Perhaps Brontë was going for an obvious 'this character is saintly so I will call him St John', to really hammer the subtext home.  Here's Jane, always wanting to live up to Helen's example, but failing and giving in to her fiery passionate nature, especially around Mr Passionate Nature Rochester... and then that all going wrong as if God is telling her off, so she has to put her passions aside and become that Helenesque woman after all and here is the saintly man to help her do it... oh the subjugation.

But Brontë was writing this stuff down.  She didn't have to say it out loud.  She couldn't have.  Because snjn is A STUPID NAME.

So what is Grape Snjn up to today?



Grape Jane gets her second marriage proposal.

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