Jane Eyre

By Charlotte Brontë, 1847,

You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse. Teachers, you must watch her: keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save her soul: if, indeed, such salvation be possible, for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its prayer to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut – this girl is – a liar!

Close to a fairy tale, this autobiography and her narrator are yet deeply human, recording a life-struggle against the oppression of its time. Jane Eyre warns the reader she will be concise: “I am only bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some degree of interest”, and covers in these few “responses” the most passionate tale to the most frightful story.

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This is my second reading of “Jane Eyre”. By reading this novel again, I found what made me enjoy it the first time. I enjoyed the main character who is brave and clever, but far from an angel or an ideal hero. I enjoyed C. Brontë's ingenious style of mixing up a down-to-earth record and a fairy tale. I finally enjoyed its call for individuals to climb the ladder of success on their own and to live freed from social or religious oppression.

1. As states Arnold Shapiro (In Defense of Jane Eyre, 1968), “ she is not a saint; she is human, trying to cope with a world that she sees as completely hostile”. Indeed through every new difficulty Jane Eyre becomes someone more brave and more clever. A scene that stroked me a lot was when she boldly confronts Mrs. Reeds, the woman who mistreated her. The young Jane managed at last to inspire fear to her enemy, showing her that, by her misdeeds, Mrs. Reeds broke the oath of raising her as her own child. Nonetheless, the main character has emotions as any human, taking thus distance from an ideal hero. That is what makes the novel so lively.
   

2. The story is actually quite realistic, as would be a real autobiography. The reader can therefore learn more about the Victorian era: how people travel for instance. The realism also stands in Jane Eyre's precise eyes. For example, she describes with an impressive acuteness the character behind characters, even when the person is not essential. On the opposite, it sometimes looks like a fairy tale. A magic wand often seems to have been at work, and even the main character admits it: “a kind fairy, in my absence, had surely dropped the required suggestion on my pillow”. You can read “Jane Eyre and the Grimm's Cinderella” (Clarke, 2000) to see how fantastic and realism are mixed.
   

3. Arguing in favor of the novel, Shapiro writes that the author “is consistent in her call for openness and freedom between individuals.” Indeed she critices the use of religion as a way to enslave vulnerable people. She advocates on the contrary for a more personal faith, that is depicted in several scenes, for example at the death of Helen Burns. Social oppression is shown when it comes to marriage for the sake of money, in the case of Mr. Rochester for example. The individual has to fight this to live a better life, the life of Jane Eyre and Rochester at the end of the novel.

A novel full of hope that moved me once again, a novel that everyone should have on their bookshelf.

Medicis