A review by larkinj
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

5.0

I remember having Jane Eyre as required reading in high school and vaguely liking it, for what reasons I couldn't tell you now, but this book was never going to resonate very much with the version of myself at 16 years old. Now almost in my mid-twenties I have the life experience and maturity to begin understanding why and how Charlotte Brontë put pen to paper.

Jane in the novel from a young age and to the end of the novel is possesed with a spirit beyond what is expected of her sex and time period, a strength of will and passion she is forced to deny time and again. Her existential struggle with what is right and what her heart feels called to do I believe is a struggle many can understand even in the modern day and what keeps this novel relevant and moving many years beyond its first publishing.

I don't see Jane Eyre's triumph as her marriage to Rochester and happiness at the novel's end, but in her rejection of marrying Rochester initally when she learns he is already married. Her triumph - even in its pain and suffering - is in her spirit's strength in doing what she knows to be right. She holds fast to her sense of self and the part of the mind sacred to only you, which is noble to the highest degree in my mind.