My parents had Jane Eyre in the front room. I was drawn to it because of the blue binding and gold letters on the spine. I’d learned to read quickly, so Jane was no problem even if Eyre was difficult. I would have been eight when I first took the book from the glass-fronted case.
The opening chapters, where Jane is shut in the Red Room, made a big impression on me. I knew all about unfair grownups, brothers getting their own way, and being sent upstairs.
Jane Eyre was also a school story. Charlotte Bronte was like Enid Blyton, except Lowood was odd. It was stricter than St Clare’s and there were no lacrosse matches. Once the narrative shifted to Jane’s life as an adult, I gave up.
I only read the whole book after my English degree. The university syllabus had stopped with the Romantic poets and left out novels. (It left out everything women ever wrote.) I was eager for female authors, for badass heroines slaying the patriarchy. And Jane Eyre delivered.
Because Jane gets ahead by demonstrating independence of mind, refusing the roles that others map out for her. Her wedding to Mr Rochester takes place after she has become self-sufficient — and when he’s been reduced to dependency.
I revisited the book at thirty-five. It was winter. I was in Cornwall, in a storm so violent I couldn’t leave my cottage. This time I was struck by the novel’s fairy tale aspect. Jane’s story was less about the status of governesses, more about magic. If a persecuted heroine is virtuous and clever, she can evade the series of traps that have been set for her, and find Happy Ever After.
Three decades go by and I’m with Jane again. What Jane Eyre says this time, most emphatically, is that the world is dangerous for those of us who are adult human females.
Girls and women who speak out, get put in the Red Room or rebuked by Mr Brocklehurst or re-educated by St John Rivers. Usually all three. To avoid this fate — whether we are in school or the workplace — we censor and subdue ourselves. Like Jane at Thornfield, we are lied to. We struggle with crazy ideologies that aren’t just confined to the attic, but which threaten to burn down the whole building.
Some of us think it’ll be okay. We can ask the Senior Leadership Team to sort it out. Except Mr Rochester is Senior Leadership. Which means we’re in deep shit.
Rochester is a disaster on legs. (On horseback too) The man isn’t just a red flag. He is a whole CCP parade of flags. This guy’s a serial predator, getting handsy with everyone he half-fancies — Bertha, Celine and Blanche. He is a glammed-up Gregg Wallace. For Rochester, sex is about laying the blame on others. His family. The women themselves. He is never responsible.
So does the narrative offer any escape route? Not really. Jane Eyre is a post-modernist text. Women get multiple choices but no right answers.
First, we have conservative feminism, in which it’s a heroine’s duty to be savvy. For the good of wider society, she must calculate which bloke is most likely to stick around, who is the safest bet to make babies with. (Handy tips: avoid missionaries. Also anyone who’s got a wife already.)
Option Two is liberal. Jane must break free from the repressive establishment (the Reed family, Lowood) and open herself to new sensations. Which brings us to the thorny question of sex at Thornfield.
Yes, there is physicality in your average nineteenth century novel, but it is mostly vanilla stuff — perhaps a few charades, maybe an accident that nudges the hero and heroine towards intimacy. Charlotte Bronte pushes further with her portrayal of Rochester as King of Kink.
This isn’t romance. It’s grooming. Those cosy after-work chats are not “banter” but bullying. He is the tomcat, while she is Jerry, the nimble mouse. Having awoken her affections, Rochester humiliates Jane who gets to see him flirt with super-bitch Blanche. As if that wasn’t enough, Rochester disguises himself as a female gypsy to tell Jane’s fortune. (Make no mistake — today the man would identify as non-binary.)
Jane Eyre is a tragedy where only the chorus has common sense. Trouble could be averted if Jane would only listen to Mrs Fairfax. “He might almost be your father… Try and keep Mr Rochester at a distance.”
The third solution requires us to go RadFem. After what the heroine’s been through, it seems only fair. Especially when, with a flourish of the authorial wand, Jane becomes a woman of independent means. She is free to set up a high-minded commune with Mary and Diana, her newfound cousins.
Like some zealous NHS Manager, her imagination won’t allow female-only space
And yet, with the end in clear view, Charlotte Bronte goes fourth-wave on us. Like some zealous NHS Manager, her imagination won’t allow female-only space. With a late plot twist — and it could hardly be more twisted — Jane goes into reverse, scuttling back to sit on the knee of her so-called Master. Her modern equivalent would use Instagram to boast, “Reader, I married him!”
My instinct is to unfollow. Unfriend.
I would do this, but I know myself too well. Before long I’ll be engaged with Wilkie Collins or East Lynne or Lady Audley’s Secret. Thinking myself content, until I hear a voice. (Jane! Jane! Jane!)
And I’ll be off again. There was no possibility of taking a walk that day…
