When I first read Jane Eyre in freshman English at fourteen years old, I hated the book. I found the story—bereft of the routine, cathartic violence to which I was accustomed—thoroughly pointless. The eponymous Jane Eyre was uncomplicated and tedious (so I told myself). She was mopey and dull, sluggishly proselytizing about others with more money, superior looks, or better luck, and continually, stubbornly downtrodden. Reading it again, a full fifteen years later, I’ve realized that my initial take on the classic story (I consider it no great stretch to call a book a classic after 172 years of commercial success) may have been less ingenious than I thought at the time.
I picked up the book again with reluctance. Was I about to waste ten hours of my life, wallowing in a fictional woman’s fictional pool of fictional self-pity? Yet the adult who occasionally resides in my brain wondered whether my impression would remain the same. Was I, at fourteen, fully equipped to make a universal judgement call on a book that generations of English teachers have assigned to their reluctant pupils?
For the first thirty pages or so, I’ll admit that I felt my distaste vindicated. The cheerless heroine I had awaited with what some might call “overeager anticipation” was encouragingly disappointing. Her unhappiness filled me with disdain. I remembered the joy I took in reviling the book and reveled, briefly, in that cleansing scorn. That my low opinion of Jane was mirrored by Jane’s objectively unpleasant Aunt Reed caused only a fleeting concern. I remained stubbornly devoted to the impression of a fourteen-year-old high school boy with the compassionate nature of a hungry tarantula.
Jane forced me out of my comfort zone, however, when she stood up to her Aunt Reed:
“You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.”
Boy, was that a literary kick to the nards. I wasn’t precisely worried that I had personally offended a fictional character from 1847, but I won’t pretend that my face didn’t burn as I read that passage. Had I not begun the book in at least partial hopes of disliking both it and its narrator? Was enjoyment of a ten-year-old child’s misery, however fictional, not unbecoming in a grown-ass man of nearly thirty? Suddenly, my camaraderie with Aunt Reed began to feel uncomfortable. My juvenile opinions seemed abruptly stifling, limiting…even troubling. They would have to be jettisoned.
As Jane proceeded to Lowood and beyond, to the home of Mr. Rochester, I found myself newly sympathetic. Not just sympathetic, really, but thrilled. Jane rarely exudes the dashing wit of, say Elizabeth Bennett – another character whose brilliance was entirely lost on the imbecilic barbarian who shared my skull space until at least 2010. Charlotte Brontë favors sincere observation over the fast-paced irony of Jane Austen (who was not really a contemporary in life, but has become so in high school English courses). Still, Jane is far from the wet blanket my (normally spot on) memory made her out to be. Though no great comedienne, Jane is intelligent and dependable, lending her observations an authority that would be lacking in a funnier, flightier protagonist. As an educated outsider to English aristocratic circles, Jane fairly criticizes both the aristocratic system, and a social hierarchy that seems determined to keep women subdued.
Even so, Jane Eyre isn’t all 19th century feminist critiques. Though its humor obviously passed right over my sweet, thick, teenaged head, Jane’s relationship with Mr. Rochester is great fun to read. Charlotte Brontë is quite as capable of quippy dialogue as Jane Austen. Mr. Rochester’s speech abounds with the stuff. He is clever and quick, adept with metaphors and flattery. One gets the impression, however, that Ms. Brontë regards such affect skeptically. While Jane undoubtedly falls for Mr. Rochester, she cannot help but mistrust him. As a young reader, I couldn’t understand her uncertainty. He was wealthy and infatuated. What more could she possibly want? Of course, endearments like “little bird,” “fairy,” and “tiny angel” sound suspiciously more like affectionate condescension to an adult than they did to an adolescent. “Paternalism” was an unfamiliar word to a child raised on militaristic pulp novels. Yet the concept was already deeply ingrained in my psyche as an unalloyed good.
Indeed, as a high school freshman, I was wholly unequipped to grapple with Jane Eyre in any capacity. For a simple mind, unencumbered by loss and unfamiliar with adversity, Jane Eyre seemed merely a morose listing of grievances, a tabulated account of sad events, endured and bleakly recited by a sadder person. It took, apparently, fifteen more years of life (and a slightly less homogeneous reading list) to appreciate Jane’s character. She may be earnest and sincere, but she isn’t grave or unfeeling. Jane loves deeply, laughs readily, feels joy and wonder and affection. I’m not inclined to call her playful, but she is hardly the monolithic Eyore of my underdeveloped literary analysis.
So, what changed? Certainly, the book has changed as little in the last fifteen years as in the 157 years that preceded them. So, what have I learned in the fifteen years that so altered my perception of Jane Eyre? One reason for this newfound appreciation is surely wider experience with a range of classic literature. Language that seems anachronistic to a high school reader raised on Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy is more accessible when you begin to read books that were written before 1980. A passing acquaintance with Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Patrick O’Brian renders this passage:
“I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre”
ironic and insightful, rather than stubbornly incomprehensible.
The other reason must, however, be attributed to some level of emotional maturation. I have experienced more difficulty and heartache than I had at fourteen—though my list of grievances could never compete with those of Jane Eyre (or of Charlotte Brontë, for that matter). I could scarcely call myself a sorrowful or melancholy person with any honesty, still less an unlucky one. If I am generous with myself, then, I may have uncovered some latent reserve of humanity that was masked in my hormonal adolescent brain. It is, as a 29-year-old man, easier to relate to an eighteen-year-old English woman than it was as a fourteen-year-old boy, despite a far greater disparity in age. I also observe that at age 29 in 2019, performative masculinity has lost some of its luster, and I find it correspondingly easier to identify with heroines of all eras. It is my sincere hope that age continues to temper masculine fever with some semblance of humility, provoking ever-deeper engagement with classic texts that my puerile mind was apt to dismiss with all the unshakable confidence of ignorance. Should I, for instance, re-read and reconsider The Great Gatsby, another book I love to hate?
Nah, that book sucks.