But before Republican spinners could dismiss the matter as merely a one-bad-apple episode, the affair morphed into a scandal threatening Republican leaders of Congress, most notably the House Speaker, Denny Hastert. Last week, the news broke that Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican who chaired the House caucus on missing and exploited children, had taken a sexual interest in male congressional pages, who tend to be 16 years old, and had apparently engaged in internet sex with at least one of them Foley quickly quit Congress. A criminal investigation of his conduct was announced.That was, of course, highly embarrassing for a party that proclaims fidelity to family values. That means that if the Republicans pour enormous resources (and plenty of frightening and negative ads) into these contests and hold on to only a third of them, they can defy the obvious political tides and squeak by to victory. That said, the aforementioned sex scandal is hardly helping them. To be fair, anyone who accepts the most ungallant proposal in history (he tricks her that he's engaged, makes her cry and then tells her, rather than asks her, to be his bride) deserves pretty much everything they get Though not bigamy, maybe. Nor the classic 15-year-old boyfriend's line that "if you loved me you'd do it". But resisting Rochester's subsequent entreaties to be his mistress is the only decent move that Jane ever makes.Taking him back is a disaster But in a weird way, Jane has got exactly what she wants She teases him, and he is jealous His stubborn pride is gone.

He is "a poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand ... a crippled man, twenty years older than you, whom you will have to wait on".When the "Gallic sylph" and the "beautiful Miss Ingram" have "deserted" him and he is old, blind and finished, Jane gets her man - if you can call him that.Sure, the beast is tamed Her schoolgirl crush is a "caged eagle". But reader, could you live with him? I'd rather shack up with Wackford Squeers.. Were the United States a European-style democracy, the Republicans, who control 231 of the House of Representatives' 435 seats, could expect in the 7 November elections to lose a hundred or so seats in a complete turnabout.

But a Republican war gone bad and a Republican sex scandal may not be enough to remove George W Bush's party from power on Capitol Hill. Americans tend to vote for individual candidates, not party representatives, and the borders of congressional district are so manipulated that of all the House seats, only 40 to 50 - about 10 per cent of the entire body - are considered to be competitive races. Perhaps the problem is that she has been so bashed up by her brattish cousin John that she thinks that's what boys are like. She is the archetype of the battered daughter who goes on to marry a batterer She thinks that she can change him And about that marriage. As much as Rochester ought to go over Grace Poole's knee, he has a point when he calls her irritating.