Required Reading: “Jane Eyre,” Charlotte Brontë

By Justin Wymer
St. Albans High School

If every person has a distinct inner self, then they also possess a mask to veil those parts that they don’t want others to see. In “Jane Eyre,” a Gothic romantic suspense novel, Charlotte Brontë weaves a tale of bitter trial, secret triumph and hidden temptation that probes the psyche while sweetly ravaging the heart.

Damned from the start by the early death of her parents, Jane Eyre, a homely orphan, is sent as a baby to live with her cruel and wealthy relatives, the Reeds. She is taunted and shunned — not even considered up to their class, much less a relation of the family. Slowly, Jane retreats into herself, creating barriers between her and the callous world, finding solace in silence and solitude.

It’s not until Jane is sent to an austere boarding school for orphans, Lowood School, that she finds reason to relinquish her shell. Through schoolwork and newfound friendship, Jane becomes a rugged but faithful individual, meeting oppression with a stern glance and calmed by her faith in God.

After becoming a mistress at Lowood, Jane is hired as a governess for a private family. She nurtures the intellectual birth of a young French pupil, Adèle, and discovers a plethora of things about her own desires and personal worth.

In time, Jane falls in love with the brooding and melancholy master of the house, Mr. Rochester, and almost marries him until she finds out that he is already wed — to a raving, cur-like lunatic named Bertha. Unceremoniously, Jane flees into the raw night air, leaving her love alone with an invalid wife and making herself sick at the thought of a life without him.

Eventually, Jane finds that she has remaining family, inherits an enormous amount of wealth and almost marries her missionary cousin in order to move to India. The novel closes with a reunion of separated hearts, a warming embrace and a bittersweet ending that has made “Jane Eyre” an essential title on library bookshelves.

Aside from plot, one aspect that makes the novel so unique is its highly introspective narrator, Jane. “What does he expect of me? What happens when I’m brought face to face with Necessity? I can’t — I mustn’t —compromise myself, my individuality, but shall I?” Brontë’s work is polished with such queries, and they seem to ring of a grave understanding of Jane’s own destiny — fate at the hands of love.

“But does ‘love’ exist?” she seems to ask. Repeatedly, she tells herself that it does, that it’s true, pure, requited, strong and overflowing. She becomes consumed in a blood-rich miasma of dreams, starving herself on memories of the time she spent with Mr. Rochester.

Towards the end of the novel, Jane has grown accustomed to a life barren of Mr. Rochester’s love. But once she finds him again, she also finds that miles have only strengthened the bond between them.

Perhaps this is why “Jane Eyre” has cemented its role in literary history: the fact that a lonely orphan can find love with a patrician and abandon her misconceptions of inferiority, content to die in his arms as his dark, impassioned voice lulls her off to silent rest.