Book Review: Jane Eyre was even better on a re-read. Along with her sisters' Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, this makes a powerful triumvirate of novels that almost compensates for the Brontes' limited literary output. It's difficult to pick one of the three as better than the other two, though I know all Bronte fans have their favorite.
A number of readers question how Jane Eyre could fall in love with Mr. Rochester. I ask, how could she not? She went from being ostracized and abused in her Aunt's house to the deathly nightmare of Lowood school, where she was as much prisoner as student. Her only male role model was the hideous Mr. Brocklehurst. She meets Mr. Rochester who, while moody and at times brusque (thornfield being a good descriptor), also speaks with her as an intellectual equal ("the friendly frankness ... with which he treated me, drew me to him"), a man who enjoys her company, and is unattractive but full of life, just as she feels unattractive, but knows that she too has spirit. She finds him challenging, a "choice dish," and finds that without his rough nature he would be "insipid." "You are a beauty, in my eyes," says Rochester, later asking "Look wicked, Jane, as you know well how to look," give me "one of your wild, sly, provoking smiles." This is a man in love. He's also rich, which may mean little to Jane, but could anyone in England at the time be truly oblivious to the safety and comfort of wealth. While he plays games with her at times, Jane gives as good as she gets in some of the most enjoyable scenes in the book.
What is most attractive about Jane is her intelligence and her feisty personality (too masculine, according to the critics of the time). She will not let herself be trod upon, she will take on any tyrant, and insists on being respected as a person: she lashes out at Aunt Reed, she takes on Mr. Brocklehurst, she challenges Rochester and St. John ("He had not imagined that a woman would dare speak to him as a man."). Her mission statement is: "If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people ... would never alter, but grow worse." She later says, "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained, I am, the more I will respect myself." While aware of her place as a woman, and knowing she is not beautiful, she knows she is equal to any man. Jane states this in Jane Eyre's powerful soliloquy: "Women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer ... . It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them; if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex." Bold words from Charlotte Bronte in 1847.
After leaving Thornfield Hall because her religious beliefs would not allow her to become a paramour, Jane is cast into the wilderness, punished for allowing her love for Rochester to supersede her religion. Then in what later becomes an implausible coincidence (but what's a good Gothic novel without an implausible coincidence or two?), she finds a safe harbor, a refuge, a home. There she also encounters the very antithesis of Mr. Rochester (not so subtly named "St. John"): a stunningly handsome man, young, cold as marble (his most repeated adjective, I'd wager), religious to the point of sainthood (though I think not as saintly as Jane or certainly little Helen at Lowood). But just as Jane would not live with Rochester without marriage, at first she will not marry St. John without love. In both cases we see her struggle mightily and painfully with her religion, and in both cases she does what is right as a devout. Ironically, Jane Eyre was heavily criticized on publication for its irreligious nature, but to me this is a religious book; the Biblical allusions are endless; religion is the foundation of Jane's actions. Mr. Rochester, however, also suffers a severe religious punishment, losing an eye and a hand, as prescribed in the Sermon on the Mount. Only after this retribution can the appropriate ending occur, and God, perhaps, intervene. On this re-read I tried to read carefully and deliberately. Jane Eyre is a classic that deserves to be read slowly, to savor all there is on offer. [5★]
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