Jane Eyre

Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child?

Jane Eyre is another one of those classic novels where I thought I knew the basic plot – the storied romance between Jane and Mr. Rochester; a something in the attic – but until I read the book, I didn't really know it (and I really didn't know what the deal was in the attic). So, while this is the kind of book that – despite having its fingerprints all over Western culture 150+ years post-publication – rewards even the modern reader as a piece of entertainment, I am sorely disappointed that I will never have the experience of reading it in the full context of when it was first published. A bit of Googling around reveals that it was not only thought scandalous in its day (the independent, plain, unmonied young woman resisting her betters) but this was apparently the first literary use of a character's inner monologue – Jane is forever mentally weighing her options and comparing her desires to society's strictures, then choosing which she will accept and which she will reject as unfair. Although there were those at the time who found this device to be vulgar and unliterary, it was still groundbreaking – and so common today that even knowing Charlotte Brontë was trailblazing here, I can't mentally put myself in a place where it elicits sufficient awe. So many reasons for the modern reader to pick this up.

No wonder you have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet.

Jane Eyre often feels like it's borrowing from fairy tales, so it's not surprising that when Rochester first sees Jane he's put in mind of elves and fairies. The plot: Her childhood was straight Cinderella – orphaned and given to her mother's brother to raise, when Uncle Reed subsequently died, his widow met her barest needs, preferring her own children in all things – and while the boarding school she was then sent to (banished to the wilderness a la Hansel and Gretel) would eventually give her the space to prove her own worth, the physical and mental hardships that Jane suffered early on might have crushed a lesser spirit. It's interesting to note that while these school years also serve to reveal the hypocrisy of the supposedly pious Christian, Mr Brocklehurst – the director of the subscription charity school for the improvement of orphaned girls, his family wears silk while his charges go hungry – Jane never abandons Christian ideals: she may have questions about faith, but she is always charitable, forgiving, and adheres to a strict moral code that forces her to deny herself earthly pleasures. After graduating and then teaching at the school for two years herself, Jane suddenly realises that she has the power to leave – and after secretly advertising for a position as a governess, she accepts a role at faraway Thornfield; in the employ of the stormy Edward Rochester. For the first time, Jane is a member of a warm household – teaching the spirited Adele (who may or may not be the lovechild of Rochester and a French chanteuse) and spending her evenings in friendly conversation with the housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax. Has she escaped the fairy tale? No, for Rochester has a Bluebeard-like secret locked away in the garret, and while he and Jane eventually do fall in love, his secrets mean that they cannot marry; and she refuses to be a mistress. Jane runs away, and with no means of supporting herself, she is soon reduced to the sorry state of the Little Match Girl; gazing longingly into a candlelit parlour as she succumbs to the elements. Yet here comes another fine Christian man – the saint-in-the-making St. John Rivers – and he insists that Jane be brought into the home (though he feels no real pity or kindness; his duty as a future Missionary merely compels him). Rivers arranges for Jane to teach at a newly opened school for poor local girls, and while she is finally self-sufficient – and what more could a homely orphan girl have ever hoped for? – Jane misses her evenings of intellectual stimulation among Rivers' sisters. When Jane then learns that she is the sole inheritor to an unknown uncle's fortune – and then learns that the Rivers siblings are her first cousins and estranged relations of the same dead uncle – she divides the inheritance amongst them all so that they can retire to Moor House and resumes their happy days of study and leisure. This doesn't sit right with St. John – he will never gain a martyr's reward if he doesn't go on his Mission – and he tries to bully Jane into marrying him so she can come along to India; after all, as he points out, she's such a homely thing and will probably never get a better offer (and yet, at barely nineteen, this is her second proposal). Jane leaves to visit Thornfield one last time and discovers it in ruins; learns that her beloved Rochester has suffered a terrible accident, and like the protagonist from Beauty and the Beast, she is able to see the man within the monster. 

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but 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; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. 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.

Not only is Jane a protofeminist, but Brontë seems to have anticipated Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: When she was a child, Jane craved safety; at school she yearned for better living conditions and friendship. When she made the move to Thornfield, her mind turned to love and proving herself the equal of her social betters; she planned to save enough money to someday open a school herself. When circumstances gave her the little school she had always dreamed of, Jane realised that what she actually wanted was to spend her time in study and stimulating conversation – that's a long way to come for an abused orphan. And yet, she's still a young woman – and a young woman of her times – so the love of a man could make Jane forget herself. Consider her two proposals – that of the Byronic, unattractive but rich, Rochester:

You – you strange, you almost unearthly thing! – I love you as my own flesh. You – poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are – I entreat to accept me as husband.

And that of the gorgeous but sanctimonious St. John Rivers:

God and nature intended you for a missionary's wife. It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary's wife you must – shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you – not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign's service.

While it's easy to cringe at Rivers as he insists that a loveless marriage of convenience is God's will and Jane would be defying Him by rejecting the proposal, Rochester is no prize either: just what is that in the attic, and why doesn't he explain the full situation before leading Jane to the altar? When their marriage was called off and Rochester suggested that they could run away to France and live in sin – after all, Jane had no friends or family to answer to and he had had a string of such affairs across Europe – Jane still invoked a morality outside of herself to declare the plan impossible; as she later stresses to Rivers, Jane wants to do God's will, but just as she won't enter a loveless marriage, she also refused to enjoy love without the benefit of marriage: she may have been this shocking literary character who spoke back to power, and insisted on her equality and self-determination as a person, but Jane Eyre wasn't trying to tear down all the walls.

Reader, I married him.

And yet, in the end, she marries; even though Jane is an heiress who could spend her days working on Maslow's highest level of self-actualisation, Brontë goes for the fairy tale ending; Cinderella must have her Prince Charming; Beauty, her Beast:

“Am I hideous, Jane?”
“Very, sir: you always were, you know.”

I can imagine rereading Jane Eyre: it had some surprises for me, and moreso, it has given me much to think about after the fact. (Just please don't tell me that Rochester is the greatest romantic lead of all time. He's a heel.)