Similar
to Wuthering Heights, I enjoyed Jane Eyre. While Jane
Eyre is not something I would have picked off a shelf at a bookstore, I was
pleasantly surprised by the Charlotte Bronte’s novel.
The
plot was simple, and easy enough to understand.
The novel also gives the reader a taste of what life was like in the
past. While Jane isn’t as strong of a
character that I would normally like, I enjoyed watching Jane grow throughout
the novel. Jane tries to follow social conventions
throughout the novel, but there are times when she stands up for what she
believes in. As Jane said in the novel, “I
would rather be happy than dignified” (Bronte 550). I was glad when Jane refused to marry St.
John even though he kept asking for her hand.
In a way, I think that Jane knew that she would eventually return to
Rochester and marry him. However, I think
that she needed time to sort herself out before returning to Rochester. After Rochester’s wife Bertha was revealed to
Jane, she refused to marry him. This showed
that Jane had some respect for the woman that Rochester was married to and she
has respect for herself. I think that it
will be interesting to read about Bertha’s backstory in Wide Sargasso Sea.
Rochester
was an interesting character. He was
mysterious from the first time he was introduced to the readers. Once on piece of the puzzle is found, the
reader’s left asking more questions because more secrets and mysteries surround
the man. The reader could never find
enough information about the man until the very end when everything comes full
circle.
Lowood
School is portrayed by Bronte to be a horrible place that, to me, seems like
the closest thing to juvenile prison (and you don’t even have to commit a crime
in order to go). The conditions were absolutely
appalling. I don’t care if Mr.
Brocklehurst doesn’t care about the girls that attend Lowood, he shouldn’t have
at least made the conditions livable.
Brocklehurst was absolutely no help when many of the girls fell
ill. I think that the school should have
been closed down after Helen died, but at least Mr. Brocklehurst was forced to
leave and the school came under new management.
If he admired “consistency in all things” (Bronte 47), then he should
have had a doctor at the school to ensure that all of the girls wouldn’t fall
ill.
All in
all, I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the book. Bronte wrote the novel in a way so that it
could easily be understood and not have a translation on the opposite page (no
offense Shakespeare).
