BOOK REVIEW: JANE EYRE BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË.

6:32 PM

Original title: Jane Eyre

Author: Charlotte Brönte (Currer Bell)

Year of Publication: 1847

Number of pages: 451 (Paperback)

Available in: Nearly every language

I read it in: Spanish

"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."

Jane Eyre is the story of an orphan child that lives with her aunt and petty cousins, who humiliate and hurt her, until she's sent to Lowood Institute where she has to spend her days eating cold and burnt porridge, be harshly disciplined and suffer her first loss. When she becomes older she gets a job as a governess for a little French girl living in a big mansion and that's when, without her knowing so, the rest of her life changes.

The book is an autobiography of Jane Eyre herself, who narrates to us with adult gaze the adventures of her childhood all through adulthood as we see how her life changes before our eyes; always talking directly to the reader, sharing her thoughts while life was happening to her. Although it's fairly known that this book is a romance, like Wuthering Heights by her sister Emily, what's really important is the journey we do with her until she reaches emotional and spiritual independence. We read her consciousness and tribulations, her fight between love and duty, between limiting herself and being who she really is, between suppressing her strength and desire of independence and finding love: her journey to reach a balance between her emotions.

We begin the story with a 10 year old Jane, smart, constantly questioning her actions and those of others, with great will to live. When she arrives to Lowood we can read between lines the emotional struggle of Jane, the first of many, when she finds herself in a restrictive and lugubrious environment, with social classes perfectly stipulated and discipline in the best Victorian style. However, our free and little Jane adapts to survive a life in Lowood and little by little we see how she accepts without longing repressing herself to fit into the molds of the time, molding herself to be simple and organized. Without her knowing, a little of this restrictive discipline fills her mind as well, however Jane stays free in spirit for the most part. As she was well educated and having aspirations beyond the four walls she has been for all her life and without family to tie her behind, she gets a job in Thornfield Hall as a governess. The benefits seem excellent, and she travels to fulfill her duty, which she does with discipline and parsimony, remnants of Lowood. Here in her new job, as we mentioned before, her life gives a 180 degree turn.

The most interesting thing for me wasn't the possibility of a love story, but the development of it, the growth of Jane and her questioning of the different options that presented to her trough time, It is a story of personal growth against adversities that some might think are petty, while awful to others.

Being this book a widely loved classic of literature, it has been analyzed left and right by all who have read it, so from this moment on we have different options. We can read Jane Eyre ad a simple love story about all that she has to go through to finally be with Edward Rochester; we can read it analyzing Jane and her transformation, her fight for independence and to get rid of the Victorian values of her time, of doing things her own way to finally be happy under her own terms; or maybe in the more gloomy way: seeing the ghost that torments Thornfield Hall as a reflection of Jane's real passions and wishes, seeing all the impediments as Jane herself wanting to reveal against the destiny that pursues her and seeing her finally and once more, adapt to the structure of society to finally be with the one she loves.

Even if Jane Eyre has many of the characteristics of a good classic, especially the length, it differs from many in the way the story is constructed, light and quite forward for her time: Charlotte Brontë first published the book under the pseudonym Currer Bell, for that very reason. Women writers weren't well received in her time and the book was referred to as anti-Christian and as going against the public values.

What else is there to say? This book is a master-piece and I wouldn't in recommending it.

Bonus! One of my favorite dialogues in the story happens between infant-Jane Eyre and Mr. Brocklehurst during chapter IV.