News flash, hotshots. Not everyone has read every classic ever,
several times over. Some people (i.e. me) still look at catching up on
said reading as a pleasurable thing, including NOT KNOWING HOW IT
ENDS. Though I like Penguin’s particular line of classic novels for
their clear and useful footnotes, these same clear and useful
footnotes (along with introductions and prefaces) keep screwing me by
telling me how the damned book is going to end.

Spoiler alert: for those who haven’t read “A Tale of Two Cities” or
“Jane Eyre” and care how they end.

I was reading “A Tale of Two Cities” the other week and several of the
footnotes alluded to how Sydney Carton was going to DIE, before I was
even halfway through the book. Last night, reading Jane Eyre, separate
footnotes alerted me that Jane and Mr. Rochester would get married
(OK, that I kind of knew just through the wisdom of being alive) and
that Charlotte Bronte made lots of allusions to Mr. Rochester’s eyes
BEFORE HE WENT BLIND (which I had no idea of). The latter actually
made me shout out loud with annoyance: “AAAAAAAAAAANNNNNGH!”. I’ll
feel kind of stupid now if he DOESN’T go blind, but the damned novel
would have been a spot more agreeable to read if I didn’t know that
already (and I would find it easier to ignore Jane’s somewhat insipid
biblical monologues).

So this leaves me in a tough spot. I like Penguin’s footnoting because
it makes sense of things that don’t make sense to ignorant modern
readers like myself (e.g. explaining all the different kinds of
carriages in “Vanity Fair”). But I also hate it because it gives away
the ending. I wish these two things could be separate. That’s all.