JANE EYRE by Charlotte Brontë BOOK REVIEW [CC]
Hi, everyone.
I hope you are doing well.
My name is Juan and welcome back to another
book review.
So, today we’re going to talk about the
classic novel Jane Eyre by the English writer
Charlotte Brontë.
I’m excited to talk about Jane Eyre because
it happens to be one of my all-time favorite
novels.
I also recommend it as one of the novels you
must read if you want to get into classics.
For more classic recommendations, check out
my recent video on Where to Start with Classics,
if you haven’t already.
If you appreciate my reviews and would like
to show your support, please give this review
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Thanks!
So, Jane Eyre is one of the best-known English
novels from the Victorian period.
I don’t know exactly why but this novel
has always spoken to me.
Very loudly.
I am not ashamed to admit that I only read
it after watching one of those Sunday night
TV adaptations by the BBC.
I don’t think the show was that good, but
it made me pick up a novel I had never felt
particularly attracted to.
Jane Eyre was
The original full title is Jane Eyre: An Autobiography,
which is interesting because it gives us an
idea of what to expect from the novel, at
least, in terms of how it is going to be told.
Charlotte Brontë used her male pen name Currer
Bell to publish the novel and, indeed, her
other work.
Pen names are common to this day, but Charlotte
Brontë used a male one because she did not
want to be judged softly, which she thought
was the case with female authors.
We have long known that Currer Bell was Charlotte
Brontë, so let’s forget about that silly
pseudonym and talk about Charlotte Brontë.
So, Charlotte Brontë was originally from
Yorkshire in the north of England, and she
lived between 1816 and 1855.
She was only 38 years old when she died.
Charlotte Brontë was the eldest of the three
Brontë sisters.
Her younger sisters, Anne and Emily, are also
celebrated writers.
Charlotte Brontë worked as a teacher and
must have poured some of that experience into
her novel, Jane Eyre.
So, let’s talk about her book.
As usual, the first part of this review will
contain no spoilers, so it is suitable for
people who haven’t read the novel.
The second part will contain spoilers, but
I will make it clear when we get there so
you can stop watching if you haven’t read
the novel, okay?
Jane Eyre is a coming-of-age story or Bildungsroman.
The novel is told in the first person by the
main character, Jane.
Hence, the reference to “autobiography”
in the full title that I mentioned earlier.
The story begins with Jane as a child and
ends with her as an adult, so the novel spans
a few important years in the life of the character.
Jane is an orphan (Victorians loved orphans
in fiction), and she is the kind of character
designed to foster readers’ empathy.
You are supposed to root for Jane throughout.
Jane got my empathy from the beginning of
the novel.
I even felt a level of identification with
her.
I don’t know if this is a very personal,
highly subjective thing, or if other readers
also identify with Jane.
But I do think that you need to feel a degree
of identification with Jane to enjoy this
novel.
I suspect that people who don’t like Jane
Eyre feel like that mostly because, for whatever
reason, they do not see themselves, even a
little bit, in her.
But I could be totally wrong about that.
You tell me!
Regardless, I think you need to root for the
heroine for this novel to work for you.
What makes Jane appealing to me?
She is smart.
Jane is an intelligent person, and she is
honest.
Jane must deal with a lot.
Charlotte Brontë makes her heroine through
hell in this novel.
Yet, through it all, Jane continues to be
herself.
Jane asserts herself even in the most adverse
circumstances.
And I think that’s just so admirable.
And I think that continues to speak to us.
Like many people, Jane faces inequality.
She is poor and she is a woman.
A double whammy.
But Jane never conforms, she is not submissive.
Her belief in equality is unshakable, and
that makes her an example to us all.
Sure, we no longer live in Victorian times,
but it would be disingenuous to say that we
have reached full equality.
However, there is an aspect of inequality
that Charlotte Brontë doesn’t address in
her novel, which is racial inequality.
But that is something Jean Rhys addressed
in her great novel Wide Sargasso Sea, which
is a sequel to Jane Eyre.
And, if everything goes well, I will review
Wide Sargasso Sea next week.
So, keep an eye out for it if you want to
hear my thoughts on the post-colonial sequel
to Jane Eyre.
The other main character that even people
who have not read Jane Eyre often know is
Edward Rochester.
The famous Mr. Rochester.
The romance between Mr. Rochester and Jane
is at the center of the narrative, but I am
not going to get into it yet to avoid spoilers.
Mr. Rochester is a passionate character with
a mysterious past.
And that all makes him irresistible as a character.
Mr. Rochester keeps a dark secret that keeps
the reader on tenterhooks for much of the
novel.
Jane Eyre has romance, Gothic elements, suspense…
It is one of the
most readable Victorian novels I have ever
read and every time I read it, I have a great
time.
Some passages can be a bit strange for us
but, overall, I think the story would make
sense to most readers now and it is not a
difficult book to read at all.
In fact, I don’t think there is anything
particularly challenging in Jane Eyre, which
is why it is going to be one of my rare blank
recommendations to everyone watching this
video.
This is pretty much all I can say about Jane
Eyre without spoiling it for people who have
not read yet.
I am going to talk more about the plot and
go deeper into some of the themes of the novel
now.
So, if you have not read Jane Eyre or would
like to avoid any spoilers, you should stop
watching this video right about now.
And I will see you again soon, I hope, for
another book review.
Okay, for those of you who are still watching,
I am *not* going to summarize the whole plot
now.
This is something I have done for the last
few books I have reviewed, but I am not convinced
it works and it does take a lot of effort,
so instead of summarizing the whole plot,
I will just talk about sections that I think
are the most relevant.
But do let me know if you have strong feelings
about this and would like me to continue including
a full summary of the plot of the future books
I review.
I feel like most of you don’t care for that,
but I could wrong.
Anyway, the novel begins with Jane as a child,
and I must say that this is my least favorite
part of the novel.
Just because I don’t like reading about
children.
I prefer my main characters to be adults.
But the novel begins strong.
Jane is an orphan who lives with a mean aunt,
Mrs. Reeds.
Her life is so horrible that she is relieved
to be sent to a boarding school.
But things do not really get better there.
Throughout the novel, Jane goes through a
lot.
But it is particularly hard to read about
a child being in pain.
And this could be why I am less fond of the
early chapters of the novel.
Jane Eyre gets better for me when she is hired
by Mr. Rochester to take care of his lovechild
Adèle.
I love the novel from that point on.
I like how Jane falls secretly in love with
her boss.
There is something appealing about that slightly
wrong relationship.
But what fascinates me is how the roles are
often switched between Jane and Edward Rochester.
Even though Rochester is this mysterious,
manly man, very often it is Jane who saves
him.
Like, he grows dependent on her, rather than
the other way around.
And I find that so refreshing.
Because despite being a rich man (so, wealthy
and a man), Edward ends up totally dependent
on Jane who was born poor and female.
Jane saves Edward from a fire.
And that fire has to do with the dark secret
that Edward has been keeping.
When Edward was younger, he went to Jamaica
where he married a local woman named Bertha
Mason.
Bertha is presented to us as demented.
This is why Edward has her locked up in the
cellar.
Bertha is the person who causes the fire and
when Jane finds out about her existence, she
runs away.
Jane finds out about Edward’s wife on her
wedding day with him.
So, you know, Charlotte Brontë knew how to
write for impact.
The first time I read the novel I was shocked
when I got to that part.
And I had seen a TV adaption, so I should’ve
seen it coming.
But that’s one of the benefits of not having
a sharp memory, I guess.
I hated Jane being away from Edward in that
part of the novel.
But not as much as I hated St. John who is
this minister who becomes Jane’s benefactor
while she is away from Edward.
In so many ways, St. John is the opposite
of Edward.
On paper, St. John seems all right.
But, in reality, he is cold and ambitious.
While Edward sounds all wrong on paper, he
is this passionate, loving man, in reality.
Well, that’s if you are willing to overlook
his relationship with the madwoman in the
attic.
But I’ll talk more about that in my review
of Wide Sargasso Sea next week.
For now, let’s pretend it is okay to lock
up someone with mental health issues.
Even though St. John and Jane are cousins,
he wants to marry her and take her to India
where he is planning to go as a Christian
missionary.
She refuses to marry him, but she is game
for going to India.
St. John tries to convince her, but that only
makes Jane realize that she loves Edward.
So, she goes back to him!
But what she finds is not exactly what she
had left.
During the time Jane was away, Bertha burned
down the house and died in the process.
Edward lost his eyesight and one of his hands
in the fire.
But true love doesn’t care about any of
that, so “reader, she married him”.
We find out that later that Rochester recovers
his eyesight partially and they have a child.
And I guess, I have just pretty much summarized
the plot.
But I have left out some key stuff particularly
about the early parts of the narrative, like
Jane’s school friendship with a girl who
dies of consumption as a child.
Or stuff about Jane’s cousins.
Something I really like about Jane Eyre is
what it has to say about love.
Jane grows up unloved and I guess unloving.
That’s until she meets Edward.
And later she must choose between him and
St. John.
I think she doesn’t want to marry St. John
largely because she has grown dependent on
him.
She met him when she fled Edward and she had
nothing at that point.
She was only able to survive because of St.
John’s charity.
Someone like Jane would only accept that as
a temporary solution.
And she accepted it gracefully, but she was
not willing to tie herself up to someone just
because that someone helped her.
And she would never accept being dependent
on a man for life.
That idea, even now, is almost revolutionary.
There are so many people who are dependent
or co-dependent.
I mean, I don’t know if her relationship
with Edward becomes one of co-dependency when
they get married because the novel does not
go into that.
And you can only judge a novel from what is
in the text.
So, at least, we can say that there is no
co-dependency between them in the novel.
We do know (as an aside) that Edward recovers
his eyesight partially, so he wouldn’t have
remained fully dependent on Jane forever.
I also love how the novel deals with social
class differences by having a protagonist
who is poor and, from her description of herself,
ugly.
This is a Victorian novel.
Social class structures were incredibly rigid
in England at the time, and I feel like Charlotte
Brontë is almost subversive in this novel
by having such an intelligent and strong main
character who is both poor and a woman.
I love that.
It’s not something I’ve seen in other
Victorian novels, and I think it is one of
the reasons I always enjoy reading Jane Eyre
so much and why it continues to speak to me.
Another thing that speaks to me in this novel
is how precarious Jane’s situation is.
She keeps moving between different places.
She doesn’t really have a home to go to.
But that does not seem to affect her.
I think a lot of readers now could see themselves
in that.
I have moved around quite a bit in my time.
I don’t have a family home, either.
I am not an orphan, thankfully, but I lived
in three or four different places growing
up and as an adult, I’ve lost count on the
different places I have lived in.
It is hard to see something like this so well
represented in fiction.
And I think that is one of the ways I liken
myself to Jane, despite the obvious differences
in time period, gender, or location between
us.
But now I am dying to hear what you have to
say about Jane Eyre.
So, please let me know your thoughts if you
have read it and if you haven’t read it,
let me know what you think of my review.
If you enjoyed this video, please like it
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This is all from me.
I hope to see you again very soon for another
book review or bookish video.
Bye for now!
