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A review by johnrcs
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
3.0
This is by no means a criticism of the prose itself, because Jane Eyre is so beautifully written that you could open it on any page and pull out a quote that still speaks strongly in today's society, but I'm slightly concerned that I seem to be the only person who sees Rochester as an emotionally manipulative control freak?! Sure, the novel was written in a different time, but why do readers - even today - seem to set him on a pedestal? At no point did I feel he went through a serious character transformation and become a better person. He was still twisting Jane's words til the very end.
Honestly, even when Jane's life was literally in danger for being in his home, he didn't actually do anything. He kept secrets from her, intending not to tell her about his secret wife until she was married to him and it was too late for her to back out, and he generally guilt-tripped her from start to finish. It just so happens our heroine was mostly - but not always - strong enough to put herself first. That's not to say she saw through him, unfortunately, but she had enough of a backbone to occasionally stick to her guns even whilst questioning herself. Jane's amazing, Rochester is most certainly not.
One of the most frustrating things is that even when she flees, she doesn't truly reach a happy ending until she receives a miraculous sum of money from a dead relative. It's a bit depressing that her happy ending came from a windfall. She's supposed to be a role model of female independence, but her happy outcome just came from good luck - nothing she did herself.
I know I should bear in mind that this was written in the 1840s, and how the message at the time was still incredibly strong... but why have so many overtly feminist passages to set the tone for what became a really feeble outcome, where she benefits from chance and a bad last-minute decision to return to Rochester... gah! Frustrating!
(It still gets 3 stars though, because as I said, the writing was beautiful, even if the content was not.)
Honestly, even when Jane's life was literally in danger for being in his home, he didn't actually do anything. He kept secrets from her, intending not to tell her about his secret wife until she was married to him and it was too late for her to back out, and he generally guilt-tripped her from start to finish. It just so happens our heroine was mostly - but not always - strong enough to put herself first. That's not to say she saw through him, unfortunately, but she had enough of a backbone to occasionally stick to her guns even whilst questioning herself. Jane's amazing, Rochester is most certainly not.
One of the most frustrating things is that even when she flees, she doesn't truly reach a happy ending until she receives a miraculous sum of money from a dead relative. It's a bit depressing that her happy ending came from a windfall. She's supposed to be a role model of female independence, but her happy outcome just came from good luck - nothing she did herself.
I know I should bear in mind that this was written in the 1840s, and how the message at the time was still incredibly strong... but why have so many overtly feminist passages to set the tone for what became a really feeble outcome, where she benefits from chance and a bad last-minute decision to return to Rochester... gah! Frustrating!
(It still gets 3 stars though, because as I said, the writing was beautiful, even if the content was not.)