Charlotte Brontë created one of the first feminists in Jane Eyre. Jane was willful, made up her own mind, and didn't take crap from the other characters in the novel. It's very refreshing to read a character like Jane. She's all too absent in modern fiction, having been replaced by women like Candace Bushnell and Bridget Jones. Bronte's novel about an independent woman in Victorian England must have been shocking. It's got a woman going off on her own, finding employment, inheriting her own money, and deciding who and when she marries. Women in the US didn't find this sort of independence until the 1970s. Hell, I even have issues explaining why my husband and I have separate checking accounts, and it's 2011. Jane was a woman who was far before her time. I feel like I could teleport her out of the novel, plop her in modern day Austin, and she'd thrive.
As much as Bronte's novel is ahead of it's time it also reads like a Lifetime Movie. Now wait, don't get upset with me Bronte lovers. My wonderful husband asked me the plot of the novel so I started to tell him, right at the point where I said, "... and Mr.Rochester keeps his clinically insane wife tied to a chair in his attic."
He started laughing. I did too. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It means that the story resonates. As habitual readers, we will see echos of this novel in other places. Bronte understood that shock would sell, and in her time, tying clinically insane spouses to chairs in attics was rather shocking.* It's one of those out of the blue plot twits that is completely unpredictable.
This post is sort of begging the question of whether or not I'd recommend Jane Eyre for pleasure reading. I'll admit, the only reason I picked it up was because it's on the list for a book club. Had it not been, I more than likely would have kept passing it by in bookstores. After all is said and done, I would. Eyre, for most, would be a large undertaking. It's over 500 pages and contains well over 200 footnotes (mostly to translate the French spoken in the book, but also to fill the reader in on Biblical and Shakespearean allusions.). It's worth reading because as long and tedious as the book may seem from the outside, Bronte knows how to keep the story compelling. In a sense, it's why novels like Eyre have been around for so long. Take a chance on this one, it's worth it.
My next book is The Dervish House by Ian McDonald. The Dervish House will round out my Hugo Award nominee readings. I'll do a post on McDonald's book, and then do a summary of the books over all. Should be a fun writing week for me.
*Let's be honest here, it'd be shocking today. Headline News would get so excited it'd renew Nancy Grace's contract for the next six years.
(Image brought to you by: matej kren. The piece is called Idiom and is in the municipal library in Prague.)
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