by Vicky and Laura
Despite our fears that our classics club members might judge Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel Jane Eyre as too long, too wordy and too dark to kick off the year, we were pleasantly surprised when the majority of readers enjoyed the book immensely.
Some had read the book before and were very grateful for the encouragement to revisit an old favourite. These readers said it was one classic that improved with age (both its own and the reader’s) observing that what they had originally thought was a love story became so much more on a second reading.
Those reading the novel for the first time could not believe the beauty of the language, the depth of the character analysis and the way the plot drew them in.
We all agreed that writing the novel in Jane’s voice was a clever device to make us relate to the protagonist from the beginning and that Jane’s honest assessment of her own character with all its flaws made us trust her as a narrator. Charlotte Bronte has been called a ‘minitiaurist of the soul’ and there is no doubt that the novel is a classic example of what is known in literature as a ‘bildungsroman’ or story of a character’s emotional and spiritual development over time.
We talked about Jane’s childish self. She was traumatised by losing her parents at an early age and was abused, ignored and treated as an outsider by her relations the Reeds, who she was forced to depend upon for shelter and survival. Some readers thought her struggle to repress her innate intelligence, passion and integrity in order to keep out of the poorhouse made her personality split into two people – the lonely, meek orphan who dared not show her true nature and the uncontrollable demon raging at the unjust treatment that was meted out to her.
We thought that every experience and relationship Jane had, both good and bad, helped to integrate these two opposing forces into a new Jane who by the end of the book was autonomous, calm, assertive and fulfilled and who could be true to her own conscience AND to her loving, passionate and intelligent nature.
Although on one level the book dealt with Jane, her personal journey and her relationships with others some readers emphasised its important commentary on religion, gender roles. colonialism and the class system at the time it was written. The hypocrisy of the Church as represented by Mr Brocklehurst pretending to care for orphans while treating them cruelly, the complete disempowerment of women without means or family to support them, the lack of morality and sense of entitlement displayed by upper class characters such as the Reeds and the Ingrams and the idea that a British clergy man would ‘save’ the souls of natives in India were all almost uncontested societal norms in 1847 when the novel was written. We marvelled at the courage of Charlotte Bronte who dared to question them in her novel and to challenge their power over her own life by doggedly seeking publication of her work and becoming a successful author.
There was so much to discuss about the intelligence of the writing. We talked of Bronte’s use of the weather to set the mood, the symbolic nature of the names of the various homes Jane occupied, the motifs employed throughout the book such as the moon as a guide and mother figure and nature as a great healer.
As usual the hour sped past and with the many insightful comments from our readers leading to still more interesting observations we could have gone on talking for many more.
Next May & June we tackle the smaller but no less challenging dystopian classic Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.