'Victober' is a good time for reading and re-reading some Victorian Classics. It's a regular meme on bookstagram each October, and a habit I'm happy to buy into. I plucked this good old standby off my shelf, since it's been a good while since I last read it. (Here is my last review.) And coincidentally, it coincides almost perfectly with its publication date back in 1847. There are always fresh insights from each reading of an old text. Here is a list of what jumped out at me this time around.
Beware, there may be spoilers.
1) Jane is a refreshing reverse-Cinderella. Her physical appearance is plain and her character is quite human and not saccharine sweet. The nurse, Bessie, says, 'If she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness, but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that.' Whew, and Bessie is one the more sympathetic characters in young Jane's life. Charlotte Bronte was traversing new territory with a homely heroine in an era steeped with traditional fairy tales, that suggested that inner beauty surely must be reflected in outer. How liberating this book must have been for anyone whose appearance didn't live up to the social benchmarks at play around them. At last, even ordinary looking people are permitted to have lovely souls.
2) Is Helen Burns the real Cinderella persona here? Some Bronte scholars suggest that this sweet and pious girl was written as a tribute to Charlotte's sister, Maria, who died tragically at school under similar circumstances to Helen's. When severely punished for paltry offences, Helen's coping mechanism is to, 'look at what she can remember, not at what is really present.' It's a great habit that has aided many suffering souls. It's also Helen who leaves Jane with the lesson that, 'life is far too short to spend nursing animosity or registering wrongs.'
3) Famous motifs keep repeating themselves throughout classic novels. For example, the way in which her Reed relatives treat Jane is a perfect 'snap' scenario for how the Dursleys treat Harry Potter. Jane is excluded from Christmas celebrations and receives no presents. Put a big, spoiled bullying cousin in Victorian knickerbockers and he's John Reed, yet in 21st century jeans and windcheater he becomes Dudley Dursley. It could be the same dude, in terms of nastiness, smugness, and being the recipient of their mothers' mollycoddling. There gets to be a, 'Hello, haven't I seen you before?,' quality to famous books.
And Aunt Reed's final act of tyranny to Jane is ensuring that she starts off on the wrong foot at Lowood School, similar to how David Copperfield's reputation as a 'biter' precedes him. Jane is locked in the Red Room and faints with fear, and a similar incident is repeated in early 20th century Canada when Aunt Elizabeth Murray punishes Emily of New Moon by locking her in an equally scary room in which an elderly male relative died.
I find it credible to imagine some sort of collective unconscious phenomenon at play here across time and space, since these authors surely didn't have each other in mind when they wrote their stories.
4) Jane is refreshingly free of name-dropping and big-noting herself. She's in no position to bung it on as we're encouraged to do in the 21st century in terms of platform building, which she's totally okay with. Her first grilling by Mr Rochester is great. Not only is Jane honest about having no family connections to boast of, but she feels no desire to 'fake it til you make it.'
'Have you read much?' he asks, and she replies, 'Only such books as have come my way, and they have not been numerous or very learned.'
Her refusal to bluff is one of the attributes that makes her so interesting to him, and later, she refuses to let him dress her in fine clothes and jewellery. 'You won't know me, Sir. I shall not be your Jane Eyre any more, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket, a jay in borrowed plumes.'
Her humility makes her exceptional, and it's no wonder that he deems her 'sagacious, novel and piquant.'
5) Jane exhausts her verbal eloquence pretty quickly when her cousins, Diana and Mary Rivers are around. While they're deep in discussion about whatever they're reading or studying, Jane is always first to run out of things to say. Even that's refreshing to me, since I'm just the same in class at Uni or around tables. I've often longed for the gift of the gab, but with Jane, I'm in good company.
6) Giving somebody a piece of your mind isn't always as satisfying as it sounds. Several times in my life, I've found myself in the position to think, 'I wish I'd told her/him... (finish off with something cutting or snarky). But being quick-witted in the moment simply fans the flames of resentment and makes matters worse. As Dale Carnegie is famous for pointing out, people don't want to be cut down to size, so giving them pieces of our minds isn't the best way to win friends and influence people.
When young Jane tells Aunt Reed what a nasty, horrible guardian she's been, it truly backfires on her. Aunt Reed now bears an even huger grudge to shape both the short term and long term future for Jane. First she establishes Jane's reputation as a troublemaker at Lowood School, and later she holds back news from Jane's wealthy uncle on the other side of her family, simply out of spite.
7) Don't get burned by people like St. John Rivers. This guy, whoa! He really is happiest when he's pushing himself to be miserable, and dealing with as much hardship as possible. A pleasant, pastoral lifestyle doesn't suit him at all, yet since he's performing acts of charity and working on God's behalf, it's so easy for him to place guilt trips on other people. I think that performing charitable acts is actually St. John's form of selfishness.
Girls, run a mile if you come across anybody as pious and manipulative, even if he does resemble a Greek god.
8) Don't get burned by people like Rochester. I admit that in some ways, our hero seems sexier with each subsequent reading, to the extent that I found myself thinking, 'I wish Mason and Briggs wouldn't come and pull the plug on his wedding this time.' Rochester's passion-driven reasoning for his engagement to Jane does carry its own sort of weight. Since Jane has no relatives for any backlash to hurt if she lives an unwitting lifestyle as his mistress, she may well go for it. Yet the fact that she refuses to discard her solid principles makes her one of the most admirable characters of English literature.
We must have lines we wouldn't cross, or we have nothing.
Check out for my review of Wide Sargasso Sea, in which Rochester's wife, Bertha, gets the understanding she arguably misses out on in Jane Eyre. Even though he clearly pictures himself as the victim in his relationship with his first wife, that's not entirely true, since he exploits her fortune, making full use of it for himself.
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