cinnamonrollwitchwhispers

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Why is it so hard to study when you're sad... Like okay, we are being dramatic about stuff that wouldn't matter in a couple of days, fine! I get it! Shit happens! But why it's so freaking hard to study? Like GIRL there's not much u can do rn, you literally NEED TO study, it's not even that hard... And it would probably make you feel better too... If you give it a try... But I can't make myself do it... Agrhhh

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"what did students do before chatgpt?" well one time i forgot i had a history essay due at my 10am class the morning of so over the course of my 30 minute bus ride to school i awkwardly used by backpack as a desk, sped wrote the essay, and got an A on it.

six months later i re-read the essay prior to the final exam, went 'ohhhh yeah i remember this', got a question on that topic, and aced it.

point being that actually doing the work is how you learn the material and internalize it. ChatGPT can give you a short cut but you won't build you the the muscles.

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Spring was late this year and the delay just made it even more unreal... Like all the grass and leaves are so green and shiny and kinda semi-transparent?? Which is extremely beautiful?? And there are those yellow flowers popping up everywhere?? And bird singing in the morning is so loud that you start to think that maybe the life is worth living it??? Omg...

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“The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong doubt was to prolong hope.”

– Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

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thinking about the parallels between bertha mason and st. john rivers... how they both die lonely in foreign lands by sacrificing themselves to the narrative... how they're both the main respective romantic interests of jane/rochester outside of each other and serve to teach both of them important life lessons... how one is male, the other female, one religious, the other deemed blasphemous, and how both of them are tied to colonial operations (one, the esteemed daughter of a wealthy english plantation owner in slavery-era jamaica, the other an esteemed missionary to a colonial operation in british-rule era india...), how they're both rejected by jane/rochester, one for religious madness delving into mania and the other for a general madness far surpassing mania. one (st. john) partly for his patriarchal attitudes which cling too tightly to the social order so as to bring jane internal ruin should she stay with him, and the other (bertha) partly for her anti-patriarchal attitudes which disrupt the social order too much and become scandalous to the point of threatening her and rochester with public ruin. one having a madness that is deemed respectable by society but is nevertheless a madness which gets him killed, and one having a purposeless madness which is deemed as such... the idea that some people can mask their symptoms well enough to become high-functioning productive people who therefore aren't deemed ill by societal standards because they're still "serving" in some way (and the idea of servitude in general) and the idea that the way society views disability and pain is tied to how they view productivity and the mere appearance of being normal and how that ties to jane/rochester who are also both mildly mad in their own ways. the idea that one of them (st. john) is humble enough to live a life of labor and servitude in the name of religion and the idea of how the other (bertha) treated her servants brutally and preferred the high life she was accustomed to. the idea that both of them represent some of the same qualities jane and rochester represent but in differing proportions. the idea that jane being tied up in the red room parallels/foreshadows bertha being tied up in the attic. st. john and rochester both refusing to wed willing beautiful young women (blanche and rosamond) and instead preferring jane but each wanting to marry her for essentially opposite reasons, one wanting her to live a life of harsh labor as a missionary and the other originally wanting to marry her so as to give her a life of luxury as a bedazzled lady.

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So another interesting thing about Jane Eyre is its take on relationship inequality.

Like, Jane is 18 at the beginning of the story and Rochester is said to be something like 35-38. And it's not casually brushed aside like that was normal back in the day. It wasn't. Concerns about the age gap are raised within the text. But the story emphasizes that Jane feels comfortable accepting Rochester's proposal, despite the age difference, the class difference, and him being her boss, because Jane feels that Rochester regards her as an equal. When they converse, Jane doesn't feel any tension, like she has to impress him or try to read his mind and say whatever he wants to hear. She feels that he respects her and values her thoughts and isn't compelled to use his power against her if she says something to displease him. Around the midpoint of the story, Jane believes that Rochester is going to marry another woman, and resolves to leave because she's heartbroken, believing that because she is poor and plain Rochester can't possibly be as hurt by their parting as she is, and he'll forget her and move on long before she does. But it turns out to be the opposite. After finding out about Bertha, Rochester begs Jane to stay and insists he'll be miserable forever without her, while Jane, still thinking she's too poor and plain to ever attract someone like him again, resists all temptation and leaves him. And she does this specifically because she feels that if she were to compromise her morals and self-respect to be Mr. Rochester's mistress, then he would lose respect for her and the relationship would fall apart. It was only by maintaining her integrity that the relationship could stay in-tact when the reconciled at the end.

St. John Rivers on the other hand, I don't think is given a definite age, but I think he's intended to be a much younger man, probably in his early 20s. He is poor and without relations aside from his sisters or any other connections, just as Jane. Jane finds out they're actually cousins at the same time she learns she's come into a vast fortune that was willed to her rather than the Rivers, but decides to share her fortune equally with them. So she arguably had more social capital, even though she made an effort to put St. John on equal footing with her, because the money was hers by right and she could've presumably cut him off at any time, just as easily as Rochester could've terminated Jane from her job.

And yet, Jane's relationship with St. John is vastly more unequal than her relationship with Rochester. Even though Jane practically worshiped Rochester but only cares for St. John as a brother and is acutely aware of his faults, she still finds herself desperately craving his approval in a way she never did with Rochester. And St. John is willing to exploit that intentionally. He asks her to do things she doesn't want to and make sacrifices for him just because he knows she'll do anything to please him, and that's why he thinks she's the perfect wife for him. Where Rochester tries to explain himself and persuade Jane not to leave him by addressing her concerns, St. John basically tries to command Jane to marry him and refuses to accept her "no" as final. He withholds affection from Jane as a tactic to get her to compromise in order to reconcile with him when he's the one who should be apologizing to her and considering her needs and not just his own. Jane knows that she can't ever be happy with him because he doesn't respect her and his lack of respect only makes her want to seek his approval, which he is all too happy to exploit for his own benefit.

But Jane ultimately stays firm and rejects St. John's proposal of a loveless marriage, just as she rejected Rochester's proposal of an unlawful marriage, because both situations were doomed to fail if she didn't put her own self-respect first.

So this novel from 1847 was really saying that power dynamics aren't pure black and white. Age and class and wealth and status can be a factor in making a relationship unequal, but you can also be equal on pretty much all social axis and still have inequality in a relationship. What's really important is that there's mutual respect.

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“You must want to spend the rest of your life with yourself first.”

— Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

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“Our generation thinks it’s cool not to care. It’s not. Effort is cool. Caring is cool. Staying loyal is cool. Try it out.”

— Post Malone

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Oh, to return to the book you've read and start noticing all the little points in which author prepares plot twists... So so nice

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(excerpted from Leila Chatti's poem: "Tea", published in Missouri Review)

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“I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to let down my window-blind. The consequence was, that when the moon, which was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course to that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk — silver-white and crystal clear. It was beautiful, but too solemn; I half rose, and stretched my arm to draw the curtain.”

– Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre