"50 Shades" and "Jane Eyre"

Holidays tell us a lot about how our world is changing.

As I reflect on the meaning of Valentine’s Day (some of you may recall a similar column from last year), I have been struck by an uncomfortable realization. The very nature of love and romance is being redefined before our eyes — and how better to trace this change than through that supreme leader of moral enlightenment … Hollywood?

This year, the only newly released movie that can be even marginally connected to Valentine’s Day is “Fifty Shades Darker” — a movie full of perversions of love and romance and things I can’t even bring myself to find out about.

It’s even so pervasive that it is staining stories about good, true and beautiful love and devotion.

I was delighted to discover the 2011 “Jane Eyre,” one of my all-time favorite movies (romantic or otherwise), at Wal-Mart this Sunday. I have loved the book by Charlotte Bronte since I first encountered it in middle school, and the movie is a beautifully done adaptation.

However, my delight at finding “Jane Eyre” was tempered by the realization that the slipcover was bleached of all color, leaving it in black, white and grey — and the movie came with an expired coupon for a ticket to “Fifty Shades Darker.”

I am mortally offended by the implied connection between “Jane Eyre” and “Fifty Shades.” It’s a gross insult to Bronte’s genius and sensitivity. And what of this comparison to “Fifty Shades” — that “Twilight” fanfiction that is disgustingly degrading at best and outright dangerous at worst? From what I’ve gathered, it is a story of a man abusing a woman in the name of love, and of her eager submission to it. That’s not love. That’s abuse.

On the other hand, we have “Jane Eyre,” which does have surface similarities but also (and this is the important part) profound differences. It is these differences that “Twilight” and “Fifty Shades” have neglected and lost by.

The hero of “Jane Eyre” (if you can call him that) is Edward Rochester — powerful, wealthy, well-educated and well-traveled, violent, rude, passionate, rough, tormented by his inner demons and by his mad wife in the attic and Jane’s social superior in every material way.

By contrast, Jane is “poor, plain and little” by her own admission. She is an orphan despised and cast off by her aunt and cousins, abused through childhood and sent to a boarding school where her best friend and many other girls died of disease and malnutrition. She is a governess, caught between the servants’ class and the middle- and upper-classes. She has no apparent worth in the world and is alone, unbeautiful and loved — but her saving grace is her faith in God (found while suffering in boarding school) and in her strong moral principles.

When comparing Jane Eyre and Mr. Edward Rochester to Bella Swan and Edward Cullen and to Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, there are a lot of similarities (much as it almost physically hurts me to admit that). All three heroines are ordinary, plain, ignored by the world at large and powerless. All three “heroes” are strong, wealthy, powerful, experienced, worldly and tempted to use their power to dominate and to hurt those weaker than themselves.

But the difference, and the reason I love Jane while I always hated Bella and can’t bear to read a word of “Fifty Shades,” is that Jane is principled and faithful. She comes to love Mr. Rochester and is loved by him not for her weakness but for her love, moral fortitude and wisdom. But it is those same things that leads her to leave him when it is revealed that he is already married, and his mad wife yet rages in the attic.

And when Mr. Rochester — Edward — comes back and pleads with Jane to come and be his mistress, to be together where he will love and cherish her far away from his violent, mad wife, she is sorely tempted. However, unlike Bella or Anastasia, Jane resists him and finally left. (Can you imagine Bella saying ‘no’ to Edward?)

Jane has nowhere to go — no home, no family, no hometown. She leaves to head into certain exile and probable death, but goes anyway. Granted, she comes back after Rochester’s wife dies in a typical Romantic exercise of Deus ex machina, but it is Jane’s fortitude that has always been a gleaming gold standard of heroism to me.

In this, Jane has the power. Her power, though, is not the power of bitter revenge or cold disdain, nor is it the power of wealth and prestige. Her power is that she sees clearly that her love for Edward, and his for her, is unlawful and even harmful while he is still married. His marriage to Bertha Mason is a burden that cannot simply be discarded. Jane must protect both herself and Edward — hurting both of them while seeking to cause no harm.

And so she slips away in the early morning, leaving behind all her beloved’s gifts and striking out on her own with no money, no home, no family except what she discovers by happy accident only just before she succumbs to exposure and starvation. It is dramatic — almost melodramatic — and it is indisputably a story of the Romantic period, but Jane always seeks not power of her own but a higher standard of virtue and purity.

It is because of this core thread of gleaming gold running through “Jane Eyre” that I am driven this week to question how far we have fallen. The book was first published in 1847, 170 years ago this October. The book’s similarities to our modern notions of romantic love should not be taken lightly, yet in 170 years, that gleaming gold thread of virtue, purity, faith and hope that immortalized Jane Eyre has been stripped from modern bestselling romances, leaving us with books of black, red and white or just shades of grey.

If the book had been written today according to our modern sensibilities, Jane Eyre would not have had the principles and, yes, true love required to leave him. Instead, she would have stayed with him, living like a leaf in the wind and driven by Edward Rochester’s every whim.

But Charlotte Bronte gave Jane, that “poor, plain and little” woman, a core of fire that allowed her to serve as a humble servant and to love devotedly and submissively, but to recognize the difference between right and wrong and to act on it when the time came.

When did movies such as “Fifty Shades Darker” define Valentine’s Day? When did darkness, violence, sadism, masochism and the like become the pinnacle of love and romance, rather than principle, love, honor and devotion?

And how can we go back to that old standard, or to an even older and more beautiful standard?

Snow Day! A Sarcastic Response to Wyoming Winters

You have to love snow days sometimes. They give a lot of opportunity to reflect on why we live in a state where interstate closures are not only a possibility but are expected on a regular basis.

It is thoroughly entertaining to get up in the morning and scrape a quarter inch of determined-to-stick-there ice off of your windshield, as well as every window and even at least one side of your car so you can prize the door open. Or, if that last part is too difficult, you can manage to crawl in the passenger side and shove with all your might to dislodge the door (and hopefully not hit the car next to yours).

If a lot of snow fell since you last climbed into  your car, a lovely, soft white substance might fall onto your seat from the roof to keep you nice and cool as you drive to work. It’s a perfectly natural seat cushion, too. And don’t worry — you’ll never brush off all the little snowflakes. Chances are, enough will stay behind to melt a bit to make your commute all that much more pleasant.

Sometimes it is cold enough that the defroster on the rear windshield can’t keep up with the refreezing water droplets, so you have a lovely set of ice beads on the back window (at least it provides better visibility than the other option, which is rough, pebbly and white-scraped ice).

Oh, and remember that fluffy cold snow cushion that fell onto your seat? When it melts, it will inevitably evaporate and then freeze on the inside of all your windows, so when you finish scraping the outside of you windows in subzero temperatures, you might be given the delightful the opportunity to play a bonus round, which includes the chance to use your ideal-for-convex-surfaces ice scraper for a concave surface. Major bonus points!

(Note: If you don’t care for this sort of fun, you can be a spoilsport by parking in a garage or cracking the windows open overnight to let the evaporated moisture escape.)

Of course, another possibility is if you don’t shovel off the roof of your car, the jet stream will cause the snow on the roof to play hide-and-seek on the back window, except that clearly it forgot you can see it if it hides there. Or maybe it’s just playing at hiding all the cars behind you.

Just after last week’s 24-hour snow flurry, I was pleasantly surprised to find my normal parking spot completely covered by 4-5 feet of snow that had been plowed off the parking lot. I’d estimate that was a minimum of 12’x48’ of pavement covered by about 4 feet of at least somewhat compacted snow. So approximately 2,500 cubic feet.

Then there are the 3-foot and even 4-foot drifts every so often, which beautifully balance out the windswept areas. Some of those drifts, though, like to make their way to the road on occasion. It’s like mud-bogging in the middle of winter!

At times, you look out the window and wonder which way the wind is ACTUALLY blowing, because one minute the snow is falling straight down and the next  it’s flying at a 45-degree angle (or, if you’re really lucky, almost completely perpendicular to the road). The direction is prone to change, too. At you, to the left, to the right, blowing you forward — it’s all just one grand adventure.

One of my favorite parts of winter is when it is <1 degree outside, so when I walk outside for a few minutes, I can feel my nose trying to retreat into my face, or shrivel into an adorable little purple baby pickle — and are those my tear ducts freezing? It’s a gentle reminder that, if I stay outside for too long without proper clothing, who knows how much longer my life might go on?

And you don’t have to worry about seeing your breath; the playful Wyoming breeze will helpfully rip the mist away to keep your line of sight clear. Of course, you can choose between the slight chill of a 10-20-mph zephyr in freezing temperatures that bites and numbs your mouth, nose, chin, ears and eyes — or you can choose to forgo your ability to see by wearing a scarf that lets your breath fog up  your glasses. (Of course, the fog is inevitable; if you go inside, you lose your vision, too; you just get to pick “more” or “less.”)

Last Thursday, I briefly opted for the scarf that fogged up my glasses — only to find that my glasses were getting more than fog. They were getting a thin rime of frost around the edges as well.

The best part about winter is driving in it, though. Not that it isn’t fun to shovel behind each of my tires in the cheerful hope that I will be able to get enough traction to get out of the parking lot. But the very best part is driving at 5-10 mph yet enjoying the process of inexorably sliding toward a stop sign while the antilock braking system goes into overdrive and I gently (or maybe more than gently) pump the brakes.

It is also fascinating to look at the road conditions for the state of Wyoming. As I write, there are 11 seasonal road closures, two chain law level 1 restrictions, 22 black ice advisories, one black ice advisory with no trailer traffic allowed, two “no unnecessary travel” designations, 11 falling rock advisories and one road closure due to winter conditions. Each one of those 44 advisories, closures or restrictions represents a different stretch of road in the state.

And all this is absolutely nothing in comparison with the delightful weather stretching across some parts of other northern states as well. What was it — record-breaking low temperatures for some parts of Wyoming? The 40-degree heat wave forecast for the past couple of day or so is practically bikini weather. Just throw on your swimsuit and leap into the melting slush; it’s the Wyoming equivalent of an outdoor pool!

One thing is for sure: the best part of every winter is the January stretch of winter, which reminds us all just how wonderful the snow, ice and subzero temperatures are.

I’m positively dreading June’s light snow showers!  

Two hymns and a choral experiment

An Advent hymn for Christmas Eve

Learning to play Handel's "Messiah"

White Space in a Busy Season

As we look out upon glazed roads and white-brushed landscapes, the natural white space has an important lesson in what sometimes seems to be the busiest time of the year.

That’s because it provides natural white space. And in the world of design and art, the concept of white space is central.

In music, for instance, white space can be pauses, quiet sections or longer notes in music. If a piece is all quick notes with no respite, it tends to have less shape and direction than music with notes of different lengths, and variety with volume is also important.

In newspaper, magazine or book design, no one wants to read something with no margins or spaces between the words, or separation of some sort between paragraphs. That’s why the invention of spaces between words, for instance, was so revolutionary.

There is a reason the first page of a chapter tends to be pleasing to the eye — there is a lot of white space both to provide separation between sections and introduction to new ideas.

In drawings and paintings, if every square centimeter is filled with lines and texture and detail, it can be overwhelming. There needs to be some “plain” section — background, solid colors, something to set off the subject of the piece.

It’s why portrait artists rarely draw a complex background; the person’s face is the main point of the work. And even a face isn’t always full of details; the eyes are the focal point and are full of details like shadows, lines, eyelashes, eyebrows and colors — yet they are surrounded with areas of less detail like the cheeks, forehead and nose, which draw the light.

The beauty of art, though, is that there are lessons to be drawn even about our own lives. It’s not just limited to a paint-daubed canvas or ephemeral music: the concepts we explore artistically are just concrete ways of exploring what sometimes look just like abstract concepts in our lives.

This is particularly important to remember in a season full of white space and overwhelming business — winter, and especially the Christmas season.

I hate the cold, but almost everyone I know loves how snow looks — including me. It provides that white space that allows us to focus on other details, like the bowed-down, bristling branches of the evergreen tree, or the delicate tinkling icicles hanging from the lip of every home’s roof.

The same applies to the temperature. Again, I am no fan of the cold, especially of subzero temperatures like we have had recently. (I clearly live in the wrong state for that.) But what’s interesting about cold is that it is the absence of heat. Motion generates heat; cold, by its nature, tries to freeze us into immobility.

Immobility is the key. Cold temperatures slow and eventually stop water’s motion, causing ice. Snow and ice can lead to road closure (we all know this by the Sisters). Closer to home, extreme cold can cause frostbite, meaning it slows and eventually stops your body’s workings, starting with the most exposed skin such as your nose and fingers. But if you are ever in a life-threatening situation, what’s your body’s priority? To protect the core — your extremities are important, but it’s more important to keep your heart, your lungs, your brain and all your other vital organs functioning. 

In order to survive in the cold, especially extreme cold, you have to keep moving. But you also have to prioritize; you want to move, but you generally need to move toward something, especially somewhere warm. It does no one much good to be doing jumping jacks to stave off hypothermia when you’re only 15 feet from a warm building.

In a season of frantic busyness — with a flurry of holidays, shopping, end-of-year events, school concerts, family visits, travels, final exams and more — snow, the quintessential white space, holds a special reminder for us, as does nearly everything else associated with snow and cold.

As we work to get through one of the busiest holidays of the year, this is a good time to remember that there is a reason for the season. Your holiday doesn’t have to be perfect, and likely won’t be. (After all, very little, if anything, ever is perfect.) But the white spaces around us are a reminder to allow background things to stay where they belong — in the background. And at the same time, we can’t freeze in place and wait for life to pass us by.

It’s easy to let things like presents, food, events and the need for perfection take center stage, but in reality, most of those are background — not white space, but more like white noise that can distract from what’s most important.

Especially in a season where anxiety and depression are rampant, it’s vital to take at least a few minutes whenever needed to refocus on what’s really important, and a good way to do that is to step back and ask why the holiday was set aside in the first place. Christmas songs like “Silent Night” are a good reminder of that. “Silent Night” is a very simple hymn and is in fact like a lullaby, arguably one of the simplest types of music there is. But that doesn’t mean it is silent or that its meaning is unimportant, just that distractions have generally been cleared away, or at least sent to the background.

At the end of the year, in the midst of ice, interstate closures, subzero temperatures, delicate snowflakes and thick blankets of snow, this is a good time to reevaluate priorities and establish enough white space so you can spend time and energy on who and what are most important.

Preparing for Advent