Jane Eyre

I initially started reading Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre more out of sense of duty than anything else, honestly; I'd somehow completed a Masters in English Literature without ever once giving Jane Eyre a crack. Not that I wasn't unaware of the oversight; I'd read and enjoyed Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights on my own, and had even read Villette by Charlotte for a class, a book that both Virginia Woolf and a friend from college said was even better than Jane Eyre. But somehow Jane Eyre itself had slipped past me. And when I one day casually mentioned this to a friend, a passing professor stopped, turned around, and all but dressed me down right there in the hallway for daring neglect this classic of English literature.

So now that I've graduated and can finally read whatever I want...I'm still reading stuff my professors demand. Go figure.

But besides, when I mentioned to a couple girls that I was planning on reading Jane Eyre, they both began gushing in hushed, reverent tones how that was their favorite book and had changed their lives. In fact, it seems almost every girl I meet has read Jane Eyre. So, I figured it wouldn't hurt me to read a book that other people actually read for once, especially one that the ladies seem to love so much; and since I will never read Twilight, Jane Eyre it was.

The first thing that struck me was just how unexpectedly dark Jane Eyre is; I certainly wasn't expecting kittens and rainbows from the sisters who brought us Wuthering Heights and Villette, and the narrative itself has a thoroughly happy ending, but I wasn't expecting such a consistently bleak portrait and damning portrait of English society at the beginning.

But it swiftly became apparent why so many young women love Jane Eyre--the titular protagonist is passionate, outspoken, honest, intelligent, uncompromising, and emotionally strong. She's not afraid to be alone, even when she craves love and friendship. She would be a rare character even today. What's more, the book makes clear that Jane is rather plain; after so many countless novels and poems about soaringly beautiful angels, Jane Eyre is a book about the other women. I can see how so many "plain-Janes" would be attracted to this independent young lady who refuses to be trampled.

One might be tempted to label Jane Eyre a proto-feminist, save for the ending; the aforementioned happy ending involves Jane telling the brooding Mr. Rochester, who protests that she cannot possibly still want to marry him now that he is maimed and blinded, that nothing would fill her with so much joy as to wait upon and care for him the rest of her days. After this passionate woman who has been willing, since a child, to endure beatings, privations, starvation, destitution, betrayal, heartbreak, extreme loneliness, despair, even daring damnation itself, all to never compromise her principles, I'm still not quite sure what to do with her considering this life of complete domesticity and romantic servitude her highest fulfillment.

One girl explained to me that the difference isn't that she marries, but rather that she marries a man who always treats her as an equal--she said the book changed her life because it convinced her that she needn't settle for marrying into an inherently subjugated role, but that she could be as stubborn and uncompromising as Jane in insisting that her future husband treat her as an equal. I'm still trying to decide about that one, because Rochester is enthralled with her a in a way that pedestalizes and therefore subjugates her. But at the same time, Jane and Rochester banter in an easy way that suggests each considers the other a worthy adversary.

One thing that did stick out to me was how much this novel couldn't be written today--divorce laws today would allow one to annul a marriage to a lunatic wife from an arranged marriage who keeps trying to burn down your house, thus freeing one to marry one's true love; and though the Protestant ethic continues to haunt us Anglo-Americans today like a curse, the sort of austere Calvinist preacher personified in Rivers St. John thankfully doesn't exist today, nor would he be able to exert such fantastic pressure on a woman to marry him if he did.

Maybe I'm just too male; maybe I'm just too modern; maybe I've never been passionately in love, to fully understand Jane's motivations. Not that I didn't like the novel--on the contrary, I find Bronte's prose to be impassioned and enthralling. Compared to Jane Austen with her passive women, lack of physical description, or even acknowledgment of servants, Charlotte Bronte is a breath of fresh air, a long draught of clear, cold water: Bronte is willing to explore the secret lives of servants; nature itself, with all its biting wind, snow, rain, lightning, blue skies and sunrises, is an active, participating character in Bronte novels; so is God, I would offer. Even after reading Villette, I was taken aback by how much divine Providence figures into this novel. Jane's faith is absolute, rendering her not only willing to suffer anything and everything, but also to stand up to anyone, whether cruel step-family, religious hypocrites, even passionate lovers; she has more in common with a Christian martyr who gains the kingdom than a romantic heroine.

In fact, the more I think about Jane Eyre, especially in this era of passive Bellas, gossip girls, and whores, women who can only be valued for their skills in sexual seduction, the more I wish we had more literary heroines like Jane. Three waves of feminism lie between us and Bronte, yet still Jane Eyre feels like a new woman, even a little dangerous (in a good way), like a mad-woman breaking out of the attic to burn down a house that needed to be burned down a long time ago.