Sara's Space

Guillermo del Toro, the three-time Academy award winning director reveals that "Jane Eyre" is one of his favorite novels.

I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest — blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character — perfect concord is the result.

— Jane Eyre, Chapter XXXVIII. Charlotte Brontë

SATURDAY.𖥔 ! 16.08.2025 . . . 213/300

TICK, TICK . . . BOOM! ✦₊. dir. lin-manuel miranda [2021]✶⋆.˚  115m

how much time do we have to do something great? . . . MY RATING 5.0 LETTERBOXD 3.8

on the brink of turning 30, a promising theater composer navigates love, friendship and the pressure to create something great before time runs out.

starring . . . ANDREW GARFIELD , ALEXANDRA SHIPP , VANESSA HUDGENS

(this has been rattling around my brain for a little while and i feel the need to write it out. please comment/add your thoughts if you have any!)

hot take: it wasn't out of character at all - it was a trauma response.

throughout season 5, donna talks with josh more and more about how she feels like she can/should do more, which is generally dismissed by josh. in the moments when she does do more (e.g. in the budget meetings with angela), josh is overcome with discomfort at that idea (although that particular situation is, in part, because he's also getting part of his job taken away). i believe there are two things that josh is subconsciously blind to:

he still subconsciously sees donna as the underqualified but insanely professional & able young woman who he first hired. originally, he was helping her career beyond what was reasonable by giving her this job; he is blind not to her ability or her potential, but to the fact that she has outgrown the assistant position, and that she is now overqualified.

that he is desperately in love with her, and that it is a larger factor in his need to keep her as his assistant than he is willing to confront.

if you asked season 5 josh about either of these things, he'd immediately refute them - he knows that they're both logically irrational and unreasonable, but he is unaware of how much they are affecting his perspective towards her & her job.

eventually, he's unable to reason his way out of it without confronting either of those two things, so he sends her off to gaza... and we all know what happens there.

in late season 4, donna says to amy, "everyday he's afraid that someone he likes is going to die, and it's going to be his fault." donna suffered a pulmonary embolism - the same thing that killed his father - because he'd given her a greater task than her job required. for a moment there, he probably fully believed that she was going to die - the precedent set by his father's death clearly led to that belief - and that it was his fault.

while in germany, he cared for her and doted on her more than was professional. he was willing to express his feelings more than he should in the white house because she was dying/recovering and, besides, they weren't in the context of the white house.

but once back in the white house, those two things that he was subconsciously ignoring became too obvious to ignore - she was overqualified for this job, and he was in love with her. but, on the other hand, he'd let her go once before and she'd almost died - he needed to protect her.

he had the choice of either letting her move on professionally & confronting those feelings, or keeping her as an assistant (which he believed was protecting her) and distancing himself personally to avoid being unprofessional (e.g., not noticing that her bandages had been changed). he couldn't remain close in both ways. and 'protecting her' took priority.

although, i do believe that he knows that the first option is probably the logically "right" one, the logic set by his trauma wins him over.

everything that josh did made total sense for him when the precedent set by previous traumatic experiences is taken into account. the way he openly cared for her personally & professionally in earlier seasons is equal (in his mind) to the way he 'protects' her here.

okay, so josh was acting in character, though still not lovingly. what about donna?

in season 2, we learn about how donna left the campaign to go back to her abusive boyfriend, then left the boyfriend to come back to the campaign again. both of these were cut and run (i.e., once she left, she was no-contact). just like how josh's trauma set a precedent of protecting her, donna's trauma set a precedent that when stuck in a bad situation, the answer is to cut and run.

we also see how much the first time she left hurt josh (he was still hurt about it 3 years later), and how incompatible it is with his horrendous fear of people leaving him. we also know that donna is fully aware of this (see her conversation with amy).

but josh's trauma response traps donna. she knows she's overqualified, she knows she's in love with him - she sees this as a toxic situation. this, to her, is exactly how she felt in wisconsin. so she cuts. and runs.

something else to note is that josh probably remembers this situation as well, but flipped - to him, she left (to gaza), gets hurt, and comes back (to the white house). just like the first time, working for him is the final, better choice. he sees the white house as her first choice. she sees the white house as wisconsin.

i do believe that she knows that to talk about it and leave on good terms is probably the logically "right" option, but the logic set by her trauma wins her over.

to be completely fair to her, she really does try to talk to him about it. but, in line with him distancing himself personally to avoid confronting those very unprofessional feelings, it doesn't happen. she's stuck in this situation; she has to cut and run, despite how badly she knows it's going to affect josh.

so josh's trauma response clashes head-on with donna's, both of them acting "out of character" (josh being uncaring; donna being disloyal) because they are reacting to a horrible situation that bears a resemblance to situations they've been in before. they do what worked the first time. it doesn't work this time.

cue the complete relationship breakdown of seasons 6-7.

JANE EYRE (2006)

like rochester has been almost literally gelded by narrative karma in the end. all the symbols of his power have been stripped from him. his ancestral family manor, a symbol of his wealth and class privilege, has been burned to the ground. he’s lost a hand (remind you of anything?) and his eyesight, while his looks, which were his “weak” point to begin with, have only been made worse. one can argue over whether or not he’s been sufficiently punished for his crimes, but the fact is that he has been utterly humiliated and significantly weakened.

enter jane who, since she left rochester, after a whole odyssey of her own, now has her own independent wealth, a family/community who she knows will support her, knowledge that she is at least somewhat desirable to others besides rochester, and, most importantly, a newfound confidence, self-possession, and contentment. whereas before rochester held all the cards in the relationship, now jane does. by the standards of the time, this woman has options. 

one can speculate as to the reasons that she goes back to rochester (if, for whatever reason, you don’t buy the idea that she actually loves him,) but the fact is that by the end, she has about as much power over him as a woman could be expected to have over her husband at that time and place. she quite literally controls what he sees, where he goes, what he knows about the outside world, and she could absolutely leave him at any moment (and he knows that, as is evidenced by some of their conversations at the end of the book.) 

like…..you can say whatever you want about jane’s taste in men etc. but the fact is that, by the end of the story, this woman is completely in control of her own fate. 

I sometimes wonder why Charlotte Brontë decided to cut off Mr. Rochester's left hand after he was saved from the fire. It turns out the left hand was considered a sign of a bad omen and it was being less-favorable to use in ancient times. The Latin of the word left means "sinister" while the word right means "dexter". In modern English application, the word sinister means "evil" or "omnious" while dexter becomes "dexterous" meaning "skillful". Most people have historically use the right hand as dominant, and the right has been positively reflected to many myths, legends and cultures while the left has been frowned-upon. In some religions like Christianity and Judaism, the left is often associated with uncleanliness, weakness and evil. In Roman fortunetelling, birds that appeared on the left side is considered bad luck. Even the English language seemed more favored in the word right over the left. The word "right" developed from Old English riht, which meant "to lead straight; to guide; to rule." Left evolved from Old English lyft, which meant "weak".

This probably explains why Mr. Rochester's left hand has to be sacrificed. He committed deception to Jane and many other people by claiming he's not married and hid his mentally-ill wife in the attic. Losing his left hand means he is changed and he doesn't have a power to control Jane too much.