Jane Eyre was written by Charlotte Brontë in 1847 under the pseudonym of “Currer Bell”, it took the public a long time before they found out who had actually written it. The book tells the story of a young woman, from the ages of ten to twenty-nine, as she leaves her Aunt’s hostile home, attends school, and tries to make her way in the world. Along the way she meets various characters, falls in love, and sustains several jobs. One of these jobs is a role as a governess at the resplendent Thornfield Hall where all is not as it seems... Jane begins her story as a ten-year-old girl at Gateshead Hall, the house belonging to Mrs Reed, her aunt. There, she lives under Mrs Reed’s watchful eye and with her cousins: John, Georgiana and Eliza. The most memorable event which takes place in this opening portion of the book is the infamous “Red Room” scene when Jane faints after she believes she witnesses the presence of her dead uncle’s spirit. Her only true friend at this time, aside from a doll, is a servant named Bessie. She helps Jane in whatever ways she can, often by bringing her food and the like. I very much enjoyed this setting as an opening to the book. As with David Copperfield, it gave us an insight into the childish mind of its character, before we jump several years (eight in this case) into their future. Much like in the opening chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, we witness a child abused by their cousin and locked in an unpleasant room. Parents are frequently absent from these coming-of-age stories and, though Jane never admits to missing hers, this ties us to her empathetically. The fact that she is mistreated when, had her uncle survived, she would have been much happier is another Dickensian-style tragedy of her life. The character descriptions in this book are a real highlight. Brontë frequently writes descriptions where she combines a character’s behaviours with their features, as if the one informed the other. Of John Reed, Jane’s bullying cousin, she writes: “He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks.” Immediately we understand this boy. He is sickly, but we also know him to be a voracious eater. Elsewhere in the book, Brontë describes characters such as the beautiful Rosamond Oliver and the monstrous Edward Rochester with succinct but detailed accounts. Not only the descriptions, but the characters themselves are very well realised. Of course, Jane stands out above the rest as the novel is written from her point of view. We get to know many of her thoughts and feelings throughout the book, not in a stream-of-consciousness style, nor indeed in a chatty or diary-like one, but in a refined mid-19th century way. The full title of the book is “Jane Eyre: An Autobiography”, so it makes sense that we come to know Jane so well through its pages. As a child, Jane is feisty, but, owing to mistreatment, often hopeless. She feels a great deal of self-pity which mingles with her anger at what she is going through. Witness this passage from chapter II: “My habitual mood of humiliation, self- doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire.” Despite the feeling of resentment Jane has for most of those that surround her, she is not a rebellious or malicious child. She knows to obey and respect her elders, but this won’t stop her from striking out at injustice. In the 2015 play of the novel, Jane apostrophises "unjust!" several times during her childhood. As an adult, Jane is far more philosophical and stoical. She doesn’t become less inclined to point out flaws in 19th Century Britain, but she does become a little less confrontational. Compare her early speech to Mrs Reed: “I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you” with the later line spoken with Mr Rochester who says, “remorse is the poison of life” to which she responds, “Repentance is said to be its cure, sir.” Jane has clearly learned much concerning justice and temperance. Indeed, later she will repent of the horrible things that she said to Mrs Reed, giving her at last “full and free forgiveness” for her wrongs. Mrs Reed, however, stays vindictive and unpleasant to the last. Not long after the book opens, Jane attends Lowood Institute, a school for orphaned girls. The institute is owned by the deeply pious, but also deeply cruel, Mr Brocklehurst. In a memorable scene, he forces little Jane to stand on a stool in front of the whole school and chides her, branding her as a “little castaway”, “an alien” and “a liar”. This scene works so well because it was telegraphed earlier in the book. Brocklehurst promised to say scathing things about Jane, so we knew it was coming, we just didn't know when. The universe seems to be contriving against Jane in these moments, doing all it can to turn her into a loathsome child, friendless and bitter. She resists. She is able to do so because she does in fact make a couple of friends whilst she is at the school. One such friend, who makes a big impression, despite only being in the book for a few pages, is Helen Burns. She is Jane’s first and best friend at Lowood Institute. In fact, it is due to her and one of the teachers, Miss Temple’s friendship that Jane really grows up to be such a well-rounded young adult. Helen, though only a young teenager, has a very mature view on life. Her deep-seated Christianity mean she has various precepts, but she is not overly moralistic. She argues gently with Jane over when we should enact revenge (never), and over how we should treat our enemies. She is well-read, very intelligent, but also modest. She is even ashamed of her “slatternly” behaviour, believing herself to deserve all the punishment she receives. And punishments are aplenty. Helen herself is forced to wear a board that reads “Slattern” on it, an event which brings hot tears to the eyes of Jane. Meanwhile, one girl is forced, in order to eradicate her “vanity”, to cut off all her curly hair. There is also an excruciating scene when Helen is hit several times with a rake of twigs. Finally, all the girls are effectively starved when the food proves, as it often does, to be inedible. I found this section of the book really deepened my pity for Jane. Her life at Gateshead had been made up largely of neglect, chastisement and bullying behaviour and her school life continues this trend. The presence of Helen Burns was a blessing. I loved her character. Some may read her as stale, old fashioned and preachy, but I thought that the friendship she shared with Jane was as beautifully defined as any of the other relationships in the story. Her absence is felt throughout the rest of the book, yet she proves to be an indelible role-model for Jane. As does Miss Temple who, I feel, should be given much of the credit in shaping Jane into what she becomes. It is she who must have inspired Jane to take up the profession of teaching. Her humbling of herself to become Jane’s friend proved to her that authority need not be tyrannical and distant, but can be friendly and even loving. Jane will later re-learn this lesson from Mr Rochester. When she eventually leaves Lowood, Jane wends her way to Thornfield Hall, a house belonging to the rich Mr Edward Rochester. It is here that the central part of the book takes place, both literally and metaphorically. Jane’s slowly-building love for Rochester is probably what the book is most famous for. Their romance is detailed, nuanced and subtle. Rochester himself is a great character. He is haggard and rough, brash and cutting. Unfortunately, he is also sometimes cruel. I couldn’t really forgive or understand him for convincing Jane that he would marry Mrs Blanche Ingram. Certainly, if he had mentioned her only once in passing, it would not have been so vindictive, but he seemed to want to test Jane almost to breaking point. In spite of this, I found this gruff man to be one of the most compelling male leads in a romance novel that I have read. His character is mysterious (deliberately so) and his personality is offish. It was fascinating to learn of his past. The prose of this book is rich and full of advanced vocabulary. Sentences often wind on for several lines and there are lush descriptions of both setting and character. Thanks to a feature on my Kindle, I was able to determine that I encountered over one-hundred and sixty unfamiliar words whilst reading this book. Among the best of these were: “Contumelious”, meaning scornful and insulting; insolent, “animadversion”, meaning criticism or censure, and the verb to “coruscate”, meaning to flash or sparkle. It was a joy rather than a hinderance to have so much to learn whilst reading this book. Discovering this new lexical world really drives home the fact that one is wrestling with an intellect and a genius of English Literature. As well as being a Romance, the novel is a true Bildungsroman or "a novel dealing with one person's formative years or spiritual education." Many things happen to Jane along this "formative" path, and she instigates some of them. In this way, it is rather similar to David Copperfield in so far as the main character is shown to be a mere pawn in the great chessboard of life. There are many twists in the plot which, for the most part, I genuinely didn’t see coming. In hindsight however, the plot seems remarkably simple and quick to summarise. It is the mark of a good book, that it can make its simple and logical tale appear unexpected and mysterious. The great mystery at the centre of the book is one of the most intriguing things about it. The events which take place at Thornfield Hall in the dead of night are gruesome and gothic. The book does a very good job at drawing you in with the plot, whilst withholding enough information to keep you reading. In a “Crash Course” video, novelist John Green reads this grim and gothic mystery plot as a mirror of Jane’s own personality. All of the ill happenings seem to take place “every time that Jane gets upset” points out Green. I like this reading and wish I could talk about it more but, alas, down that path lie major spoilers. In places, Jane Eyre is unfortunately slow. Sometimes characters can have a conversation, and it can be protracted for several pages and even over several days. A prime example of this is a conversation towards the end of the book held between Jane and St John, the man who saves her life. They discuss whether or not Jane is willing to give up her current situation in exchange for something quite different for what felt like an hour, treading over the same ground again and again in fractionally different language. Even some of the central dialogues between Jane and Rochester sometimes felt indulgent and bloated. The book is sentence-to-sentence a masterpiece, but it does seem to know it sometimes. One of my favourite moments in the book was a King Lear-style moment on a heath. I have a vague memory of walking in on a film production of Jane Eyre when it was on television and witnessing this scene. There’s no “Blow wind and crack your cheeks” style aggrandisement, but the descriptions of the suffering endured are heart-rending. I really feel as if I had been with Jane through her dark night of the soul. This makes her subsequent recovery, and the care that is thrust upon her so much more rewarding and comforting. The stretch of book featuring the Rivers was up there with my favourite parts. Their friendship and the joy they shared with Jane was such a relief after all that she had suffered in the lead up till then. Towards the middle of the book, there is a truly idiotic scene in which Mr Rochester disguises himself as a gypsy. He does this in order to “cleverly” tell Jane how he feels about her, whilst also having some fun with the rest of his house guests. I just can’t believe that a muscular man of forty could pass for an old woman, especially as everyone present knows him so well. There is also the distressing fact that he seems to have blacked-up for the role, which doesn’t bare thinking about. In the play of Jane Eyre (2015) this scene was cut, and I’m very glad that it was. Unfortunately, the book suffers from a similar problem to Star Wars. That being that a rather large portion of the characters in the book are related. Without spoiling too much, I can say that there are a collection of characters towards the end of the book that, in my opinion, it would have been better had they not been related to Jane. She is generous with them, splitting all of her money equally amongst them and I feel that this act would have been even more noble had no blood ties existed. On top of this, it just seemed so unlikely that Jane should stumble upon their very doorstep. I can’t say it spoiled the latter half of the book for me, but it did briefly take me out of the story. I thought that Jane Eyre had one of the best closings of any book I have ever read. I’m not referring to the eventual destiny of Jane and the rest of the characters, but to the actual final few sentences. They really cast the book in a different light and make you consider what was important, and who mattered. It’s a bit like what J.K. Rowling’s “19 Years Later” epilogue could have been. To summarise then, this book is excellent. It is impeccably written and its plot, though simple, proves to be a real page-turner. The characters in the book are engaging and well-drawn (you could probably distinguish them by their silhouettes). I think if it hadn’t been for the unfortunate gypsy scene and if it hadn’t dragged at times, this book would have been a contender for my favourite of the 19th century. 9.7/10 Angus - 13/04/20 “She’s an underhand little thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover.”
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