Why Jane Eyre?
When you read the novel or watch the film, you may feel that this melodramatic
Victorian tale is nothing but a soap opera in black. But look more closely, you may notice
that her story is not far-fetched, even today. Read the newspapers. Listen to the ten o'clock
news if you choose. The stories are there even this week.
It is not only Jane's difficult childhood we are drawn to in the book Jane Eyre. It is her innate dignity.
Her summing up, immediately, of those who would judge, harm or belittle her. Her intelligence is keen.
Her quiet reserve is admirable. And this book was written over one hundred and fifty years ago...long before feminism gave names to various
passive aggressive methods of dealing with one's oppressor. Have you seen the film starring
Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt? Plain is not really the operative word. More like self-possessed.
Fashionably dressed, but simple in style and manner. Not a face to launch a thousand ships, but certainly the kind of face one sees all about in the real world. And a heart pure
enough to say to her distant aunt that she "was not vindictive" and "harbored no ill feeling" for Mrs. Reed, in regard to her appalling early years in that abusive household.
Yet she does not appear to be saintly. She is not the angel in the house. Her urges are deeply human. Her emotions grounded in honesty and self-respect as each chapter slips past between the reader's anxious fingers. She is almost too good
to be true, but not. When Rochester tells her he is to be married, she answers "How dare you
toy with my feelings" and earlier, when Mr. Brocklehurst tells her she is to teach at Lowood School
she blows him off with little more than a polite adieu.
So where, so very long ago, did Charlotte Bronte get these radical ideas? While watching every known version of the
film, I am amazed at how many scenes take place in bedrooms. (Not a likely location in Victorian drama)
And when Jane enteres Rochester's suite, searching for the source of the smoke, she hesitates not a moment
in opening his door in the middle of the night without so much as a knock. Was this young woman not
fearless for her time? Was she not brave in womanly ways our current heroines still struggle to inhabit?
What was the source of her calm almost Zen expression during moments of extreme pressure? Her teacher said
it and it is as true today as it was on the heathered, foggy moors of England. In spite of the grueling treatment
she was accorded, she obtained a good education. And this, together with her even temperament and excellent mind gave her
the strength to view herself as an equal among others, whether it be her wealthy employer or her uptight parson. It was for these reasons Rochester was
attracted to her. He saw, in watching her generosity with Adele, her competence with other members of
his staff and her easy ability to quietly defend herself, that she moved with grace and inner peace, all the while knowing she had no dowry, no real estate, no promises
from anyone. How did Bronte learn these basic survival methods so early in life? She did lose two sisters to illness
and neglect during her childhood. Even her mother died very young, having six children in seven years. One biographer said that the small children
received so little nurturing that they clung to each other like tiny birds...giving the only solace they ever knew, to
one another.
Is a Victorian novel still valuable to young women after all of these years? As you read Reviving Ophelia ~ Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls ~ by Mary Bray Pipher, you become disturbingly
aware of the need teenage women harbor for role models which might relieve them of the oppression imposed by those who would
joke about their immerging womanliness; who would take from a young woman her intrinsic pride in her own curiosity, in her own
sense of herself.
Jane Eyre affords the reader strength as she identifies with the heroine. This book imparts to a woman
the assurance that she can go out into the world without fear and find not only self-pride but also a life rich with adventure through searching out people she admires and respects, who treat her with balance and generosity, who never behave with arrogance
or superiority; who never raise a hand to her in anger. When girls learn these abiding lessons, their womanhood becomes free
of battering. Free of the quiet sadness which overtakes so many good women in bad marriages and abusive relationships. Why Jane Eyre? Why
hope? Why now? If not now, when?
Sequoia
January 2000
If you have a daughter, granddaughter, sister or niece who might benefit from positive role models, join the forum at newmoon.org You may be surprised
at the myriad theories exchanged in this lively environment on the subject.
Another book which is essential to these questions is The Madwoman In The Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar (Yale University Press) It is a runner-up for the 1980 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and the 1979 National Book Critics Circle Award in Literature. Every bit as topical in the year 2000 as it was in the late seventies, and every bit as shocking. These simply spoken writers analyze the peculiar manner in which women have been depicted throughout literature versus the style real women exhibit in their worldly lives, proving the old illusions to be no more than figments of the misogynist imagination. An interesting tour of human circuitousness.
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