(no subject)

[tiamatschild]

I read Charlotte Bronte's The Professor today.

...I did not expect it to be that much of an OT3 novel.

Comments

[star_swan]

OOh? That sounds interesting. I am always on the lookout for even more books to read.

[tiamatschild]

The OT3 is great! It's charming and fun and emotionally believable, if not as revelatory and startling as Bronte's later novels.

But I am kind of unsure about the book itself, or at least about reccomending it, because it's rife with anti-Catholicism, which isn't as complicated and qualified as the simular comments in the later (and much, much better) Vilette. Even in Vilette it gets eyebrow raising. And Bronte hasn't reined in her fascination with theories of physiogomy yet, so they tend to take up more of the description of various persons than is wise. Also, it's narrated by a man, so the faults of the young women in the novel are... ... ....Treated with less sympathy than in her later work. (Women work much better for discussing the complexity of women's lives and the reality of real women who are not angels and play social games and aren't always very pleasant.)

As I said, though, the OT3 is charming! Really good. The relationship's between our narrator, who's pretty clearly a prototype of Bronte's later heroines, despite being a man, and a young woman working for a way to support herself who has a will of steel, and a young industrialist who is a hilarious obnoxious fairy godmother and enjoys poking the other two with verbal sticks to see what will happen.