Jane Eyre

This is a slipknot review to hold place until I can read this again. I’ve had to read Jane Eyretwice, both times for school. The first was the obligatory high school read, and then the second was the obligatory English major read. I liked it better the second time, because the class I took it in rocked like crazy, and I do remember fun things about it, like how Rochester outlines his various romances, and how each romance is with a woman of non-English background, and how each of those women are totally wrong because they are not English. I remember wanting Rochester to die in a fire a bit, because he’s such an arrogant fucking asshole, and then bang! he totally gets burnt in a fire! That’s some good writing. 

Weirdly, the thing I remember best about Jane Eyreis going to see a production at the Children’s Theatre here in Minneapolis when I was in the 5th grade. This was back in the Children’s Theatre’s heyday, before the sexual abuse scandal almost completely destroyed that institution. I had completely forgotten about this production until I recently got free tickets to go there again, and being in the building shook the memory loose. The play was based only on the parts of Jane Eyrethat detail her childhood – her unhappy time with the Reeds, her even more unhappy time at the Lowood School, her friendship with Helen Burns, Helen’s death by typhus. 

The production was really moving to me, and I remember seething with irritation when my classmates sent up a chorus of Oooohs when Jane climbs into bed with Helen to warm her as she dies of mistreatment and disease. Motherfucking homophobia starts young, and is stupid and unsympathetic at any age. Anyway, I guess I just wanted to say that I really loved Jane for her portrait of a mistreated and abused child who develops this incredible moral compass out of her experience. She makes incredibly hard choices, like the one to leave the man she loves because he’s an amoral would-be bigamist. 

Think about it. This is not some minor impediment to marriage, the kind of thing thrown up in dimestore romances to cause more sexual tension. This is not a misunderstanding or a mistake. This is a serious moral failing in the man she loves, and, you know, a legal failing too. For the lack of love, Jane’s childhood is cruelty and abuse. It’s wonderful for her to find love with someone who can appreciate her strange gifts. But love is not an ethical elixir that will magic away the difference between right and wrong. The most famous line to come out of this novel is “Reader, I married him.” I think sometimes this overshadows the fact that, Reader, for a very long time, and based on moral choices that materially damage her life, Jane does not marry him. Marrying him would be wrong, and all the love in the world will not make it right. That’s why I love Jane Eyre.