Jane Eyre and the reality

..is a stark contrast.
I read Jane Eyre just last night. In about 6 to 8 hours, I finished the 600-something pages novel right away (the Indo translation). I remember the last time I read something that fast was for Pramoedya's tetralogy (which one I quite forget), Da Vinci Code, and a book about Mossad's operation in Middle East somewhere (it's fast paced plot so I was intrigued to complete it). Anyhow, what struck me about Jane Eyre is that this character is so similar to mine, and perhaps, many of my female friends' I reckoned.  We dreamt of being heroine like her, strong in character, independent, free, has dignity. In our time of emancipation, I knew person like her, many, I'd say that include my own, 'though of course, less novel and dignified than her and her character. But a male character like Edward Rochester, or St. John Rivers is not so many in stock today in real life. That's why many women love to read romance stories like this, like any other Austen's stories and ample of those from Victorian's era., because it's like something they can find only in books, in novels, not in reality. That helps them to escape the real life, entering the vague state of dreaming, of personification of characters like this Rochester guy, or Mr. John Thornton in Gaskell's North and South or, eh, of course, Mr. Darcy in Austen's legendary Pride and Prejudice.

pic from: http://newspaper.li/static/8d96f0c744f4d4b7ec1cf99e42ded44f.jpg

So my opinion is, if we want to look for characters for model of our novels such as those aforementioned, don't look the models from real life. One will face a shortage of male models I suppose. I reckoned that reality bites, and it hurts sometimes, to me, to my friends. It's just my guess. Raw and unsubstantiated, but of course, I have the rights to tell stupid things, or any non sense in here. I can, can't I? [I'll find the DVD this weekend by the way, to see if it fits the book, because I found North and South's novel is much mesmerizing than the miniseries, too much spices and to much skips of events].