Just Finished Reading: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (FP: 1847)

Orphaned at a tender age Jane Eyre is left in the tender mercies (actually anything but) of her Aunt, the cold hearted Mrs Reed who can barely stand the sight of her. Tortured and bullied by the Reed children Jane is relieved to be sent to school far enough away that any form of meaningful communication is impossible. There, despite the imposed hardships Jane thrives and eventually becomes a valued member of the teaching staff. Ten years have passed and the need to pursue further interests burn in Jane until she advertises for a Governess position. Her letter is answered and she begins her adventure in the employ of the spinster Mrs Fairfax. As fate would have it she meets her real employer quite by accident when his horse throws him and the diminutive Jane comes to his rescue. Despite his fearsome reputation Jane is quite taken with the less than handsome Mr Rochester as he is taken by her down to earth manners and her fearlessness in the face of his verbal assaults. Before long, despite their difference in social station and age, they become firm friends before tragedy strikes. Running to save her emotional sanity and almost dying in the process Jane starts a new life far away and hopes to live out her days in calm solitude. Fate, or God, has other plans however. Her feelings for Rochester have not diminished and he is often in her thoughts. Then, out of a clear dark night, she hears his voice and feels that she must find him again no matter the cost or the social scandal…

This book has been sitting in my TBR pile for a while now so I thought I’d dust it off and see what all the fuss was about. At 545 pages (in this edition) it was quite a challenge considering that classic love stories are not really my ‘thing’ (despite honestly loving P&P which I couldn't help compare this with). Of course this was ultimately a story of girl finds boy, girl loses boy and girl gets boy back. The barriers to true love where well drawn and rather Gothic to be honest but I suppose believable enough for the time. Both Jane and Mr Rochester are well drawn and I did like Jane quite a lot as a person and couldn’t but admire her fortitude. She was no Lizzie Bennett but then again who is? Two of the things I did like about the novel was its very clear criticism of the position of women in Victorian society – especially the relatively poor and powerless woman – and its rather acid criticism of the rich and indolent upper classes who did not come off at all well (again especially the women who seemed particularly useless and intentionally so!) About the only thing I found particularly irritating, though again understandable considering the publication date, was the surprisingly (at least to me) constant references to God and religion. To be honest I almost skim read these parts. The character of St John Rivers, the intended missionary, was particularly repellent I thought. Constantly referred to as a ‘good man’ he is clearly suffering from some kind of religious mania and I had no problem is labelling him as probably psychotic and probably some kind of sociopath. He totally creeped me out!

I suppose because of its subject matter and its age it took me about twice as long to read this as expected. I always seemed to find something more interesting to do after 4-5 pages so tended to read it in micro-bursts. This is not to say that it was a bad novel – it wasn’t – and clearly deserves its classic status. Maybe it’s that I need to hunt out some classic adventure novels rather than classic romances. That might be the way to go.

 [2015 Reading Challenge: A Classic Romance – COMPLETE (5/50)]