Hey everyone! Its Lydia here. I finished Jane Eyre yesterday and thought I'd voice my views on the well beloved classic.
Author: Charlotte Bronte
Published: 16th October 1847
Publisher: Smith, Elder and Co
Pages: 448
Genre: Romance, Gothic, Romantic
Description (from Amazon)
Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage.
She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. All of which circumscribe her life and position when she becomes governess to the daughter of the mysterious, sardonic and attractive Mr Rochester.
However, there is great kindness and warmth in this epic love story, which is set against the magnificent backdrop of the Yorkshire moors. Ultimately the grand passion of Jane and Rochester is called upon to survive cruel revelation, loss and reunion, only to be confronted with tragedy.
Review
I've had Jane Eyre on my bookshelf for some time and I started to read it at the beginning of this year. However, I only got about a third of the way through before school work intervened. But my sister this year bought me a really lovely limited edition of the novel for my birthday, so I said to myself, "come on, now that you've got the time, you have to read Jane Eyre".
Jane Eyre is a novel with quite complex language, so if you're new to reading classics, I would perhaps start off with an easier book, like Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, or 20th century classic like The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mocking Bird, which are some of my personal favourites. I urge this as the first time I started to read some of Jane Austen's novels, I was around twelve or thirteen, and for good part of the time, I didn't understand the language.
Now, like in all my reviews I like to discuss aspects I both liked and disliked within the book. The first quality I enjoyed about Jane Eyre was Bronte's creation and style of narrative. The first person narrator (Jane herself) has a welcoming and polite tone, as she directly addresses the reader occasionally, creating a confidant relationship between the narrator and reader, forming a close and personal atmosphere. This adds wonderfully to the plot and direction of the story, as Jane is retelling her life experiences.
Jane is a lovely character: she's strong minded, independent and direct in speech - qualities I find in myself, and it seems other people find compelling in other reviews I've read. The characters traits are quite interesting given the time and age of the book. As I've written above in the details, Jane Eyre was published in the 19th century, and directness and openly opinionated women weren't seen to be very attractive (but that seems to be a different case in the book, I'll discuss this further down). It's additionally evermore curious that Bronte published the novel under a male name, Currer Bell. As a reader, I can see that Bronte was able to secretly express her personal characteristics while avoiding the female hypocrisy in society.
Judgement is something that Jane is confronted with all her life, with her Aunt Reed (her legal guardian), at school and even by some of the minor characters of the book. From a little girl, Jane has been cruelly judged. Personally, I think she is judged for many reasons, all very unreasonable, but mainly because she is forthright and expresses her opinions. Most women of that time didn't directly challenge people, as society would have seen it to be unfeminine. However, when Jane meets Mr Rochester, I think that it's what he likes most about her, that she openly speaks her mind.
Continuing with Mr Rochester, I'm brought to the theme of love and passion in the novel. It is clear, not at first, that Jane and Mr Rochester love each other. But what I like about their romance is that it isn't based on their physical appearance, which a great deal of Romantic novels are based upon. The couple fall in love because they find each other equally unattractive. At the beginning, it is made quite clear that Jane isn't beautiful, other characters and Mr Rochester even expresses that she is 'plain' looking, yet equally Jane comments that Mr Rochester isn't an attractive being either, and occasionally tells the reader he is ugly. This conveys that they love each other for sense of conversation and intelligence, and the colloquial term 'it's what's on the inside that matters'. This gives a certain warmth and sentimentality to their relationship throughout the novel. However, there are some moments in the story where I thought Mr Rochester to be quite an abusive lover, not physically, but mentally. He tricks Jane into jealousy, becomes possessive and becomes quite aggressive when he doesn't get his way. Yet he does openly express he loves Jane and doesn't convince or force her to marry him, like another marital interest attempts to do.
The last aspect I enjoyed about Jane Eyre was the Gothic side to the novel. Amongst all the beautiful pastoral language were dense and dark concepts. There is a sense of supernaturalism at the beginning, and scenes of morbidity and horror. I really enjoyed these moments, as it gave the novel a balance of both affection and hatred, as well as light and dark sentiments. I'm a big Gothic reader, I studied Frankenstein and Dracula for my coursework in my A levels, but even when I was slightly younger I enjoyed reading The Woman in Black and I'm the King of the Castle, which I studied for GCSE. These are all brilliant books, and if you like horror books, I'd give these a read next.
I hope you enjoyed my review of Jane Eyre! Sorry if it was very long, I had a lot to say about this wonderful book.
Now, like in all my reviews I like to discuss aspects I both liked and disliked within the book. The first quality I enjoyed about Jane Eyre was Bronte's creation and style of narrative. The first person narrator (Jane herself) has a welcoming and polite tone, as she directly addresses the reader occasionally, creating a confidant relationship between the narrator and reader, forming a close and personal atmosphere. This adds wonderfully to the plot and direction of the story, as Jane is retelling her life experiences.
Jane is a lovely character: she's strong minded, independent and direct in speech - qualities I find in myself, and it seems other people find compelling in other reviews I've read. The characters traits are quite interesting given the time and age of the book. As I've written above in the details, Jane Eyre was published in the 19th century, and directness and openly opinionated women weren't seen to be very attractive (but that seems to be a different case in the book, I'll discuss this further down). It's additionally evermore curious that Bronte published the novel under a male name, Currer Bell. As a reader, I can see that Bronte was able to secretly express her personal characteristics while avoiding the female hypocrisy in society.
Judgement is something that Jane is confronted with all her life, with her Aunt Reed (her legal guardian), at school and even by some of the minor characters of the book. From a little girl, Jane has been cruelly judged. Personally, I think she is judged for many reasons, all very unreasonable, but mainly because she is forthright and expresses her opinions. Most women of that time didn't directly challenge people, as society would have seen it to be unfeminine. However, when Jane meets Mr Rochester, I think that it's what he likes most about her, that she openly speaks her mind.
Continuing with Mr Rochester, I'm brought to the theme of love and passion in the novel. It is clear, not at first, that Jane and Mr Rochester love each other. But what I like about their romance is that it isn't based on their physical appearance, which a great deal of Romantic novels are based upon. The couple fall in love because they find each other equally unattractive. At the beginning, it is made quite clear that Jane isn't beautiful, other characters and Mr Rochester even expresses that she is 'plain' looking, yet equally Jane comments that Mr Rochester isn't an attractive being either, and occasionally tells the reader he is ugly. This conveys that they love each other for sense of conversation and intelligence, and the colloquial term 'it's what's on the inside that matters'. This gives a certain warmth and sentimentality to their relationship throughout the novel. However, there are some moments in the story where I thought Mr Rochester to be quite an abusive lover, not physically, but mentally. He tricks Jane into jealousy, becomes possessive and becomes quite aggressive when he doesn't get his way. Yet he does openly express he loves Jane and doesn't convince or force her to marry him, like another marital interest attempts to do.
The last aspect I enjoyed about Jane Eyre was the Gothic side to the novel. Amongst all the beautiful pastoral language were dense and dark concepts. There is a sense of supernaturalism at the beginning, and scenes of morbidity and horror. I really enjoyed these moments, as it gave the novel a balance of both affection and hatred, as well as light and dark sentiments. I'm a big Gothic reader, I studied Frankenstein and Dracula for my coursework in my A levels, but even when I was slightly younger I enjoyed reading The Woman in Black and I'm the King of the Castle, which I studied for GCSE. These are all brilliant books, and if you like horror books, I'd give these a read next.
I hope you enjoyed my review of Jane Eyre! Sorry if it was very long, I had a lot to say about this wonderful book.
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