Plain Jane

It is a well-known fact that heroines are meant to be beautiful, or at least that they clean up to be so. Grand gentlemen and dashing princes are meant to fall for lady or princess material, not humble sidekicks. This is just one of the controversies Charlotte Brontë presents to us with Jane Eyre.

Jane does not have an easy upbringing. I definitely didn't enjoy the first few chapters of Jane's life, not because it wasn't written well or because it didn't grab my attention, but because it was pretty depressing. I didn't really want to read about a ten-year-old orphan being beaten up by her obnoxious fourteen-year-old male cousin, even sometimes in front of her aunt, when nothing is being done about it. So when Jane went to Lowood School for orphans, I was pleased for her. And then her aunt went and spoilt it all by telling the headmaster, falsely, that she was devilish and wicked, leading him to tell the whole school. I was close to closing the book by this point, wanting to go and give all those horrid adults something to think about wickedness. I didn't, obviously. I carried on reading.

Jane Eyre is a wonderful love story. I assume most of you know the story, and if you don't then stop reading because I'm going to break my tradition of keeping schtum and spoil the plot, because otherwise this would be a terrible review.

As I earlier mentioned, Jane Eyre is an educated but unattractive girl, as is mentioned several times by different points of view. As she is the titular character and it is a novel written in the first person, there is no choice but to accept her as the true heroine, not that the Victorians would have liked this. Though they had their slightly odd obsession with orphans, pleasing them in one respect, they didn't like the thought of an ugly protagonist. So when Mr Rochester, albeit extremely romantically, proposes to Jane, they probably didn't like that either, because she was the governess of this stately gentleman's ward. He was meant to marry a lady, not a woman. We modern readers, however, love it.

Brontë includes a host of biblical quotes in the novel, most probably to reflect Jane's piety and additionally to create a greater sense of horror and betrayal when Mr Rochester's secret is revealed. The mad woman in the attic is the wife of Mr Rochester. She is not dead, they are not divorced, and hence there is no way that Jane and Mr R can marry. Jane finds this out the hard way: at the altar. Does she still love him? Of course. We modern readers may find this entirely acceptable, but I doubt the Victorian readers did. After all, he has broken more than one of the ten commandments: he is a terrible sinner and should not be forgiven. However, when he threatens to use violence against Jane when she insists she leave him, a modern reader (or at least I did) would find this shocking. How can he use violence against her? She hasn't done anything wrong! Why should he be the perpretrator and she the victim? But then again, domestic violence wasn't really an issue then, in that it was totally accepted. Which is a bit messed up, in my opinion.

But Jane does get what she deserves. After days of barely any food and traipsing around the Peak District (the most exciting bit about this is that I went to the town she finds refuge in on my Duke of Edinburgh Gold Practice Expedition) she is taken in my two sisters and a brother and their servant, changing her name to Jane Elliott and not divulging any details of her recent past so as to avoid recognition. It turns out that dear Miss Eyre is the heiress to a large fortune from her recently deceased uncle in Madeira and that the two sisters, Diana and Mary, and their brother, weirdly named St John, are her cousins. So Jane is a very happy lass.

Of course, she has not forgotten dear Edward Rochester, her true love. Brontë brings in the idea of Fate by having her hear his voice and sending her running to him and from a marriage proposal from her cousin (with a trip to India included – not a bad offer, but for all the wrong reasons). She finds Mr Rochester, but his loony wife burnt down Thornfield Hall (where she lived with him and his ward and everyone else before) and he was inside, leaving him blind and his left arm mutilated. But does she care? Of course not. It is true love, and Brontë understands all us girls by telling us that true love has no boundaries. After a very romantic entrance back into his life and a wonderful wedding without all the jewels and luxuries Jane had to so unwillingly accept the first time, the epilogue leaves us with Mr Rochester regaining his sight in one eye. I don't even care if it's not scientifically accruate, it is love for goodness' sake. And I'm so glad I stuck with Plain Jane until the very end.


By Jess