I was most pleasantly surprised with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, which I just read for the first time. For some reason, I expected a combination of Wuthering Heights (which I didn’t like as well as I thought I would) and Dickens (who I generally don’t love). On the contrary, Jane Eyre is not derivative of anything – Charlotte Bronte has her own viewpoint and style, and with Jane Eyre she has created a unique coming-of-age tale.

SPOILERS

The book is divided into five major parts: 1. Orphan Jane lives with Mrs. Reed, her aunt, and the three Reed children. Mrs. Reed despises Jane and treats her terribly, eventually sending her away to school. 2. Jane goes to Lowood Institution, a Christian charity school that doesn’t seem to have a lot of Christian values or charity toward its wards. After a typhus epidemic, the school is much improved. Jane stays at Lowood, eventually becoming a teacher. 3. Jane wants to see more of the world, so advertises for a governess position. She is hired at Thornfield Manor, where Mr. Edward Rochester lives with his French ward, Adele Varens, the housekeeper Alice Fairfax, and his servants. Eventually Jane and Edward fall in love and Edward proposes. However, there is a slight problem – Mr. Rochester already married to a madwoman who lives on the third floor. 4. Jane runs away and is rescued by the Rivers family, three siblings who take her in and treat her well. In the meantime, through a series of coincidences, Jane inherits money. The brother, St. John, installs Jane as the village teacher. He also tries to convince her to marry him and accompany him on his mission to India. Jane does not love St. John and knows that he does not love her, so refuses. 5. Jane realizes who she truly loves, and journeys to find Edward Rochester, whose wife has since died in a deadly fire that also leaves Rochester blinded and without a hand. They marry and live happily ever after.

For me, one of the biggest surprises in reading Jane Eyre was that there was so much more to the novel than just the love story between Jane and Rochester. In reality, the section at Thornfield is about half the novel. Another surprise was that there were few scenes on the “wild moors.” In fact, Jane Eyre is much more of an internal story. Although “nature” is invoked, it is almost always human nature, not outside nature. And perhaps most surprising (at least to me) was that Bertha Mason, Rochester’s crazy wife, really didn’t play a major role in the novel. Yes, her existence caused some major problems, but for whatever reason I thought she would be a major character, too.

Charlotte Bronte explores many themes throughout the novel, including religion, love (romantic and familial), a woman’s place in society, the role of family in society, and the psychological reasons people do the things they do (human nature). On this first reading, I think I was most struck by Bronte’s exploration of the role of religion and its affects on people of different personalities, and the study of women’s place in society. With religion, it seems that Bronte is showing how extremes can be not only restricting and rigid (St. John) but downright cruel (Mr. Brocklehurst and his Lowood school). And the entire book is about Jane’s journey to find her place in society, and in so doing, Bronte advocates for women to be allowed to find useful pursuits that allow them to contribute to society. Of course, there is so much more here, but this is only a review!

I only had a few quibbles, mostly with the coincidences at the end. These strained credulity just a bit. However, by this time I was so absorbed with the novel that I was quite willing to suspend disbelief.

Overall, Jane Eyre is a great book, one I would happily read again. ( )

One of the best romance novels of all time.Charlotte was a gifted writer ( )

This is the first book in my memory that made me cry. I have only read it once for that reason, but it's been a while. I need to pick it up again and see if I like it as much. ( )

Jane Eyre was long, wordy and old. It was a recipe for instant dislike. While I didn't love the book, I certainly enjoyed it. The character of Jane Eyre was upstanding and brave. She showcased many qualities women strive for and find hard to reach even today. Mr. Rochester was both off-putting and strangely likable at times. The mixture of drama, romance and a bit of mystery was engaging. While I often put the book down, I never once thought of not finishing it. A deserved classic. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called literary "classics," then write essays on whether or not they deserve the label

Essay #33: "Jane Eyre" (1847), by Charlotte Bronte

The story in a nutshell:
Originally published in 1847 under the masculine pen-name "Currer Bell" so that it'd be taken more seriously, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is in fact a largely autobiographical coming-of-age tale, or at least when it comes to the particulars and attitudes that inform this wholly fictitious storyline. In it, we watch our stubborn, nerdy titular hero progress from the age of eight to twenty, first as a put-upon orphan being raised by cruel relatives who don't want her there, then as an even more put-upon orphan at one of those notoriously harsh and unsanitary charity schools that the early Victorian Age is now so known for. But Dickensian reform comes to the school in Jane's teenage years, making it a much more pleasant place, eventually leading to her getting a decent education and even a few years of student-teaching under her belt; and that leads us to the meat of the story and the situation that takes up the majority of the novel's text, Jane's time as a governess at the dark, spooky, possibly haunted Thornfield Manor, which is where she meets for the first time the brooding master of the house, one Edward Rochester. Severe yet oddly compelling in appearance, cynical and brusque in manner, Rochester has been spending the last decade wandering among the artists and elites of continental Europe, trying unsuccessfully to find a romantic partner worthy of his keen yet sociopathic intelligence (in fact, this is how he ends up in custody of the French moppet who Jane is in charge of tutoring, the child of a dead opera singer who Rochester once had a torrid affair with); but it is plain ol' Jane who actually seems to be the very first person in Rochester's life to realize that what he really needs is someone who will simply stand up to his haughty intimidation, and serve back the same kind of witty repartee that he's so fond of dishing out, leading to entire chapters sometimes consisting of nothing else but flirtatious banter between the two, loaded with literary references and dripping with sexual tension. And thus do the two eventually admit their love for each other and make plans to marry, leading to what looks like will be a prematurely happy ending about halfway through the book.

(CAUTION: The next paragraph reveals important information concerning the end of this book.)

Ah, but this is a Victorian novel we're talking about -- of course there's to be no happy ending halfway through! Oh, and did I mention that it turns out that Rochester's actually already technically married? To a violent psychopath? Who's secretly kept locked in the attic for the sake of everyone else's safety? Well, of course he is! And thus does Jane react the way that most compulsive, upset 19-year-olds would under the circumstances, which is to leave all her possessions and run off in the middle of the night, using today's equivalent of her last twenty bucks to ride a random carriage as far as her money will take her, which turns out to be near the Scottish border; and it's there that she lives the life of a homeless beggar for nearly a week, until finally being taken in literally on death's door by a local liberal minister and his two fun-loving sisters, who slowly nurse her back to full health. And thus does Jane spend the next year of her life as the head of her own rural charity school, slowly bonding with the three until feeling that they are her own family; oh, and by the way, they are, when through an insanely improbable series of circumstances it's revealed that Jane has not only recently inherited today's equivalent of a million bucks, but that these three random friends are in fact her long-lost cousins. And so is Jane forced into a tough decision -- head off with her austere cousin to a life as a chaste missionary in far-off India, entering a loveless in-name-only marriage with him as a way to travel as a young woman without Victorian fingers being wagged? Or heed the ghostly voice she hears one night and rush off with her newfound money to check on the status of Rochester, just to find out that his crazy wife burned down the mansion six months ago, killing herself in the process and leaving Rochester blind and one-handed, but at least now in a position to finally consummate his still-burning love for Jane once and for all? Well, Dear Reader, this after all is known as one of the greatest love stories in history; which option do you think she chooses?

The argument for it being a classic:
Fans claim that there's a simple reason Jane Eyre should be considered a classic -- it's one of the best examples ever of the Victorian Novel (otherwise known as the Romantic Novel), one of those early success stories that in fact helped define what the term even means. (Abused orphans! Byronic heroes! Gothic mansions! Proto-feminism! Lunatic women locked in attics! Ridiculously convenient twists of fate! Criticism of the British class system! White Man's Burden! Subliminally erotic dialogue comparing one's lover to pagan mythology! Anglican colonial missionaries with chiseled good looks! Holy crap, this book's got everything!) But on the other hand, in many ways this book is everything the typical Victorian Novel is not, which fans argue accounts for its longstanding popularity even while most other books from the period are now virtually forgotten -- it's not a simple morality tale, not designed to support the upper-class status quo, has a surprising amount of critical things to say about the abuse of organized religion, and in no way at all ends with our hero doing the "sensible" (i.e. "right") thing, unlike that dowdy ol' Jane Austen. (And in fact, although only 50 years separate their work, Bronte in many ways considered herself the "anti-Austen" -- she considered the former to be the last great writer of the rational, reserved Enlightenment, while considering herself firmly in the vein of the moody, emotional Romanticism so popular during her time.) And of course no conversation concerning this novel's strengths is complete without a mention of the beguiling Edward Rochester, considered by many to be the greatest romantic hero in history (or as one carried-away online reviewer put it, "I'd jump him like a stalled car any day of the week"), the ultimate "bad boy" archetype that has heavily influenced everyone from James Joyce to James Dean to those stupid "Twilight" books. If you want the ultimate example of why Victorian literature was so great, claim its fans, as well as a clear snapshot of what life in Great Britain in the mid-1800s was like, you could do a lot worse than to pick up this very definition of a literary classic.

The argument against:
Ironically, the main complaints that are made by critics of Jane Eyre (and they're out there, believe me) have little to do with the book itself, but rather are more critiques of Victorian literature in general -- like the fact that the day is ultimately saved by a ridiculously contrived deus ex machina ending ("Really? The random strangers in the random town where Jane randomly ends up at just happen to turn out to be the biological cousins she's never met? Really?"); or that Jane has a remarkably poor attitude about both race and the mentally ill; or that this was the novel that started the bad trend of legitimatizing the falling in love with abusive boyfriends under the justification that they're the only ones who "truly get him," that they will be the ones to mend the wing of this broken dove and allow him to soar in the way he was always meant to. But like I said, none of these things are really criticisms of Jane Eyre per se but more of all literature from the mid-1800s, so I'm not sure how valid they are as an argument against the book being a classic.

My verdict:
So I have to confess, reading Jane Eyre for the first time this month really brought out my inner 12-year-old girl, and I found myself literally swooning during big parts of this in a way that made me freaking disgusted with myself. And really, if you want to understand the almost supernatural popularity of this book (for example, as of today it's still the 900th most popular book on the planet according to Amazon, even as this year it celebrates its 162nd anniversary), simply understand that Bronte's masterfully subtle prose precisely brings out the inner 12-year-old girl in all of us -- the part of us that's in love with the very concept of love, the part of us that can look at the "I hate kids and I hate the rich and I hate you too" bluster of a passionate, misunderstood soul like Rochester and make us think that we too are the only ones who truly "get" him. (And in fact, all three of the Bronte sisters who survived into adulthood eventually became known as masters of Romanticism, creating a literary triumvirate that has fascinated the general public ever since -- for example, also scheduled for review a little later in the CCLaP 100 is Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights from the same exact year, just as famous as Jane Eyre and containing just as obsessively passionate a Bryonic hero at its center.)

Now combine this with all the exquisite Victorian details already mentioned, stuff that delighted audiences even then and that just continue to become more and more historically quaint with every passing year -- the echoing halls of centuries-old Gothic Revival mansions, the cold beauty of the northern moors, the desperate conditions of Jane's childhood orphanage, a time when people still died of things like "consumption" and "the humours." There's a very good reason this is known by many as the ultimate Victorian novel, even while it's quite factually also very atypical of what at the time was the average Victorian novel, the kind of flowery claptrap that long ago faded into out-of-print obscurity -- because both of these seemingly clashing facts actually end up feeding off each other, creating at the end both a fine historical document but also one that stands the test of time, precisely because of the unique details that hold together the stereotypes like glue. It's one of those books you don't simply read but literally get lost in, the kind that can literally shut off the distractions of the real world around you; and this is why people become fans of literature in the first place, why the novel format became so popular during the 19th century to begin with, because of its almost magical ability to shut out the real world in a way that nearly no other artistic medium can, to transport us to a place where our imaginations are free to run far and run wild. Bronte was an undisputed master at this; and in our visual, postmodern age where more and more artists are losing the very ability to do such a thing at all, such mastery over storytelling simply becomes more and more important to those who still love sitting down with a great book, accounting not only for Jane Eyre's continuing popularity but explaining why books like these are more important these days than ever before. Like its fans say, it is literally the definition of a classic, a designation I don't see it losing anytime soon.

Is it a classic? Verily, I say unto thee ( )