Three passages from childhood favorite Jane Eyre are branded in my memory. The first is the one, where Jane hears Rochester’s voice calling to her across the moors, I still think is one of the most gorgeous and eerie scenes I’ve ever read. The second is the below quote:
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
which really resonated with me when I was thirteen. If my memory serves me correctly, I may have even copied part of this in silver paint pen onto my Trapper Keeper. I clearly recall reading this part for the first time and being like, YES, Charlotte Bronte, you really get it gurl. Or something along those lines. Little did my young self know that not only was there a plethora of feminist writing out there in the world, but that I would get to read scads of it in college.
Anyway, Jane Eyre’s significance in my life was mostly to awaken those feminist leanings, so I will be forever indebted to the book, which was one of the largest novels I’d ever devoured at that point. But I always liked how it was a little spooky and mystical and wild, despite being told through the eyes of a relatively rational, self-possessed, and principled young woman. (I should add here that I have always liked to think of Charlotte Bronte as the more traditional, overachieving elder sister and Emily as the weird, kooky middle child—the Marcia and Jan Brady of 19th century British literature, if you will.) That’s why I love this latest film adaptation, which you should go see now, so very much; like the 2004 Pride and Prejudice, it may skim over a lot of plot and exposition, but it gets the spirit of the source material so very right, and will hopefully make the book accessible to another generation. At any rate, there was a huge line for the matinee showing this past Sunday at my local art house theater, so perhaps there was never a need to revamp the story for a younger audience.
I would leave you with the third passage that has always stuck with me, but it would be a major spoiler for those who have never read the book—it’s the ending sequence, which outlines an institution which is still frequently misunderstood. If only more people read Jane Eyre, maybe they’d have fewer illusions about what that institution should be!
