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 A Beloved Classic & Remarkable Literary Work August 2, 2005
91 out of 95 found this review helpful
Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre," a beloved classic and remarkable work of literature, has long been one of my favorite novels. The book received high praise when first published, under a pen name, in 1847: "It has little or nothing of the old conventional stamp upon it ... but it is full of youthful vigour, of freshness and originality..." However, the novel also brought about much controversy because of the passionate and intense natures of both the heroine, Jane, the anti-hero, Mr. Rochester, and many of the issues it addressed, i.e., the "grosser and more animal passions," (sex). Oddly enough, and I never knew this until recently, the novel, when initially published, was subtitled, "An Autobiography," and Currer Bell was identified as the editor rather than the author. The subtitle was dropped in subsequent editions. In any case, I have revisited this work often over the years, and each time have discovered new and exciting elements in the narrative which never fail to move me.
Orphaned as an infant, Jane is taken in and cared for by her aunt, the mean spirited Mrs. Reed of Gateshead Hall. It is clear from the beginning that Mrs. Reed favors her own spoiled children and despises Jane, punishing her harshly for her perceived impudence. After a particularly cruel and unjust episode with her older cousin, John, Aunt Reed locks the ten year-old girl up in the dreaded "red-room," where her uncle died. Jane has a nervous fit as a consequence of being enclosed in a place she so fears. But not even the caring servant, Bessie, consoles her. She tells the child, "And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because Missus kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money and you will have none: it is your place to be humble, and try to make yourself agreeable to them."
Mrs. Reed, no longer willing to cope with her niece, sends her away to board at the prison-like Lowood School. Charlotte Bronte and her sisters were, in fact, sent to the Clergy Daughter's School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. "The food was poor and insufficient and they were treated with inhuman severity." Two of the Bronte sisters actually died as a result of the treatment and the sickness contracted there. Lowood was modeled after the Clergy Daughter's Institution. Mr. Brocklehurst, the headmaster, an evangelic hypocrite, deprives his charges of basic necessities, while lining his pockets with charitable donations. There is some goodness, however, even at Lowood. Miss Temple, the kindly superintendent, mentors Jane and shows her affection. And Helen Burns, another student at Lowood, becomes her first friend. Jane is captivated by learning. Her intelligence becomes obvious to all, and despite the suffering she experiences at the school, once her education is complete, she chooses to stay on and teach.
One of the most amazing aspects of the vivid early scenes at Gateshead Hall and Lowood is that childhood, as we now understand it, simply did not exist in the 19th century. Children were seen as miniature adults, easily corrupted and inadequate, in need of stern education, discipline, and occasional corporeal punishment. Jane's strength of character becomes evident in that she is able to thrive in such sorry, often brutal, circumstances.
When Miss Temple leaves Lowood to marry, Jane places an advertisement in the local newspaper for a position as governess. She is offered a job at Thornfield Manor, where she is received by kindly housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax. Her young charge, the precocious Adele Varens is the ward of Thornfield's owner, Edward Rochester, a brooding, passionate man with a dark past he cannot escape. He travels frequently, but when he does return and meets Jane, there is an immediate connection between the two, although there remains the great difference in their social class and ages - he is a worldly-wise forty, and she a mere nineteen. And of course, there is a terrible secret, which inevitably will cause tremendous suffering. It is at Thornfield that the reader meets a wide range of characters who will effect Jane's future happiness.
This is a dark gothic romance - in fact, "Jane Eyre" epitomizes the best of gothic, post Romantic fiction. Unlike her sisters, Charlotte rejected the convention of the beautiful heroine. While writing "Jane Eyre," she told them, "I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself." The young woman does blossom beautifully when she falls in love, however. Although readers tend to visualize Mr. Rochester as handsome, he is not. This is no Heathcliff. Jane's and Edward's attractiveness lies in their inner selves, and their capacity to love and grow makes them both such splendid figures.
"Jane Eyre" has many recurring themes including: relationships between men and women, their roles and limitations in society; relations between social classes; religion and morality; the need to fulfill the desires of loved ones versus the necessity to maintain one's personal integrity; the conflict between reason and passion, and, of course, Jane's deep need to love and be loved. However, primary to the tale is the magnificent, complex character of Jane herself.
Long before the women's suffrage movement, Miss Bronte created, in the character of Jane, an intelligent, independent, strong-willed female, determined to make her place in the world. Equality between the sexes is not brought up in the novel, neither legally nor politically. What the persona of Jane addresses here is obvious in the following very famous lines: "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."
Their society did not encourage women to fulfill their talents. Twenty-year old Charlotte wrote to Robert Southey, the poet laureate, for encouragement in her writing. His response shows the barriers creative women faced: "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation."
JANA
a young woman's book that transcends feminism and dogma November 21, 1998
62 out of 73 found this review helpful
I first read this book when I was ten and reread it every decade as a special treat to myself. It is one of the great classics of English literature. It is, essentially, a Cinderella story, and I STRONGLY recommend it as an andidote to the Woman-Hear-Me-Roar (or is it "Girl Power"?) stuff being pushed on young ladies nowadays as a means to making the sex strong. The story begins when the heroine, Jane Eyre, is a young orphan of about nine, and follows her through school and her career as a governess in a wealthy but mysterious man's home. She falls in love, learns of an impediment to her immediate gratification, does the right thing and suffers for her pains, but in the end is rewarded for her suffering. Very irrelevant to the late twentieth century, obviously. Charlotte Bronte (the author) is frquently encountered around the same time in life one encounters Dickens--youth--but, like Dickens, she most definitely wrote for adults. Therefore, the book is probably a difficult read for all but the most tenacious middle schooler, but as it begins from the very real, very painful point of view of a powerless child, it has a good hook to draw in the young reader. Its literary style is Romantic, with the liberal use of semi-colons, inverted sentences, and detailed descriptions. This book is a MUST for all well-educated young ladies--the next step after Little Women and before the Jane Austen novels. And sorry for the gender stereotyping; I'm sure there are boys and men out there who read this book and loved it, but I never met one.
Do not miss out on this book... February 28, 2000
51 out of 54 found this review helpful
You know all those 'classic' novels you read in high school? How many of them do you actually remember? Well, if Jane Eyre was one of those long-forgotten books, pick up a copy. To read it as an adult is a joy: it's a sweeping, disturbing, intense, thrilling, very romantic gothic love story, written in the voice of a very intense, almost claustrophobically self-aware young heroine. Jane is no Ophelia - she's a complicated, remarkable character, and a very strong female character in a genre that usually draws women as beautiful victims at best.
There's something for everyone in this book: Windswept castles, difficult and neurotic family members, dark secrets about tragic former lovers, good triumphing over evil, all that good juicy stuff that makes a great romantic story. What elevates Jane Eyre is Bronte's remarkable style & skill and her sharp and complex characterizations.
Trust me on this: If you don't remember it from your teens, you should give it a try now. Here is one novel that more than lives up to it's 'classic' status.
How on earth can anyone find Jane Eyre boring?? June 1, 2003
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
I'm sorry and rather shocked that our kids apparently find this marvelous novel a drag. I'm 53, and I've read it about once a year since I was 12. . .never once as a school assignment, much less a punishment. I've read for pleasure all my life. . .voluminously, addictively. . . and Jane Eyre is my alltime, number-one favorite novel. Dull?!? Good grief, silly girls, it's the first fullblooded feminist novel in English, and still the very best! It has a bright, strong, creative, misunderstood and abused kid heroine who nearly dies of her maltreatment, but survives, thrives, ignores her era's view of women as brainless porcelain dolls, experiences passionate love on her own terms rather than his, refuses to give up her enormous integrity for a false heaven, lives homeless and nearly dies of it rather than become anyone's plaything, fends off patriarchal religion with rare spirit and honesty, and finally. . .well, I'll let you read the absolutely splendid ending for yourselves, if you haven't been rendered incapable of understanding it by today's
alleged educational system. Suffice it to say that it was sufficiently radical in its day to get the author a lot of hate mail. . .to which she replied with a spirit that would've made Jane proud.
It Brought Passion to my Sighs, and Tears to my Eyes June 11, 1999
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
I read a lot. I mean, really a lot. I'll pick up a novel and finish it on the same day. Crime and Punishment? Took me half a day. Middlemarch? A day and a half. Because I read quickly, I tend not to be overly moved by the triumphs and travails of literary characters. I exult with them momentarily, but their brightness fades quickly once I set down the book. Jane Eyre was different. So many of the book's elements defied nineteenth century convention; so many of the book's elements set my heart racing and my mind on edge. The unexpected first person perspective. Charlotte Bronte's mesmerizing lyrical prose. The strength--or, as the British might say, the pluck--of the book's indomitable heroine. The tenacity of Jane's love for Rochester and the reciprocal power of his love for her. I don't often cry when I read novels, but for the last twenty pages of Jane Eyre, I read transfixed while tears streamed down my face. I doubt a novel has ever made a heroine come to life as vividly as did Jane Eyre. Read this book. Love it. Treasure every breathtaking passage and every witty turn of phrase. Watch as mere ink and paper breath life into Jane Eyre's heart--and your own.
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