Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons and LaRuth.
A cold day, sickness consuming the poor charity school girls. Well, almost all of the girls. Those special girls reading their Psalms, robotic and unliving unaffected. When I read this portion of Jane Slayre , it reminded me of the 1980’s movie The Gremlins. A set of rules that the reader knows will be broken, and terror shall break through its petrified flesh. Of course, just like in The Gremlins, some well meaning but stupid person errs in just one small detail. The instructions are clear–don’t feed the Gremlins, don’t get the Gremlins wet. How hard is that? Perhaps, we should consider the rules of Lowood. Don’t cook meat. Don’t feed the “special students.” Don’t let them taste flesh…or brains. But with so many losing strength, a bit of meat pie can’t hurt?
So what if the cook makes some meat pies?
Oh yeah, those special girls. Shit, the cook’s entrails are everywhere. Oops. In this case, stupidity cost the cook and a few others dearly. But you could certainly see this coming, right? From the time Jane entered Lowood, we know that something is rotten, undeadly rotten. Just like Jane couldn’t endure without incident in the home of her cousins, neither can she avoid defending the school from the undead. It is her fate as a Slayre.
Sadly, Jane needed this incident to reveal her stronger nature. Determined to be good, she tried morphing into the background. Good girls looked poor. She wore the proper clothes of the school. Good girls said the lessons. She said her lessons. But even Jane couldn’t endure under the iron fist of goodness. At this moment, she begins embracing her true nature–her strength, will power, and ability to give the undead their final blow.
What do you think? Did Jane need the zombies to awaken her true nature? Let us know in the comments!