By K.A. Laity
This month marks the 164th anniversary of the publication of Charlotte Brontë's immortal Jane Eyre. Women love Jane—well, a certain kind of women love this heroine. Women who love Jane Eyre tend to appreciate her backbone. Jane does what needs to be done, she overcomes outrageous odds and she never gives up—or gives in to what she knows is not right. Her fans also tend to like middle-child Anne Eliott in Persuasion or the poor overlooked and overworked Fanny Price of Mansfield Park.
Jane is a real plain Jane; not an ugly duckling waiting to bloom. The truly plain know they have other qualities more worthy, but also know well that most people will never notice them. Her whole early life—slipped over in most film versions—shows Jane's real strength, her utter faith in herself, her complete self-reliance.
A lot of men I know hate Jane Eyre; not dislike, not ignore, but actively hate this book. I think the primary reason is Rochester. In my River Song voice, "Spoilers!": yes, he has done a lot of awful things like lock his crazy wife in the top of the house that show he is a weak man who's made a lot of mistakes. Your reaction to the book will largely depend on whether you think people can be rehabilitated.
Jane grows ever more fluid and resilient as the novel goes on, but it's really Rochester who changes the most, from a bitterly depressed and hopeless shell of a man, someone who at first selfishly tries to wed Jane despite the obvious impediment only to suffer further by losing nearly everything, including Jane. He becomes a literally broken man.
But Jane just gets stronger: she tries suicide-by-the-moors but she's just too damn tough. Against all odds, she finds a home with long lost relations. When her cousin St. John decided she would make the perfect wife for his missionary life (yes, it as almost that romantic) you might guess this would fit Jane's strict moral code, but know. Jane knows she's in love and when her Rochester-sense tingles, she head back to Thornfield and the maimed man she still loves.
Jane doesn't love Rochester because he's a bad boy, although he's often referred to as Byronic. She sees the man he could be if he just got a little backbone, too. She insists he come to her only when he can match her honesty. Rochester has made a lot of mistakes—those based on privileges of class and gender—but Jane believes in rehabilitation, she sees in him the man he can be.
I think it's the idea of rehabilitation that irks a lot of well-meaning, self-described-feminist men: why should Rochester get an upright gal like Jane when he doesn't deserve her? As Jane would surely say, that's not the nature of grace: you don't have to deserve it, you just have to ask for it.
If you haven't yet got around to reading Jane Eyre, I highly recommend the edition illustrated with suitably gothic images by Dame Darcy.
K. A. Laity reads a lot of nineteenth century novels and writes so much that she had to create some pseudonyms to keep her colleagues from thoughts of murder. A tenured medievalist at a small liberal arts college, she mostly tries to find ways to avoid meetings in order to write more . Find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter where she details her glorious new life in Galway, thanks to the Fulbright Foundation.