Jane Eyre

                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).