I sought out Jane Eyre when I was trying to decide between the two career focuses that I had been struggling between. As we know Beowulf and Le Morte D'Arthur won out and I am now a fully committed Medievalist but there was a time when I was very close to committing my lifelong study to Victorian Literature. I know the Brontes don't necessarily fall into the usual Victorian category but there is plenty of gray area between the blissfully ignorant Romantics and the stylized realism of the Victorians. I had mostly been drawn to this ghastly and fantastic gray area by interest in the Gothic Novel. Frankenstein had been one of the most incredible novels I had ever read and I was seeking something similar. Perusals on Wikipedia led me to what some consider the first Gothic novel, the somewhat uninspired Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (which I will blog at some late point) but a former professor's suggestion brought me to Jane Eyre.
It took completing Jane Eyre for the full effect of the novel to sink in but what it ultimately left me with was a similar feel to the dark, fantastic magic of Frankenstein and the bittersweet denouement of Great Expectations (the first ending, of course). In a world of insulated nobility and romantic popular novels (we have established, of course, my disdain for Jane Austen) Bronte goes to great lengths to convey the unconventionality of the two lovers in her novel. Jane Eyre is plain and of common stock and thankfully is not found to be secretly the daughter of a Duke or any other such ridiculous deus ex machina. Mr. Rochester is a contemplative man who is kind yet has a checkered past and thankfully (spoiler alert) experiences an irreversible impairment before the tale comes to fruition. As unconventional of a pair as these two are Bronte never feels as if the match is fabricated with this intention. Her characters are imperfect people forced to make sense of a world that is grotesque and beyond their control and they do so in perfect, quiet, accepting English fashion.
Characters aside there is one moment that has stuck with me and probably with most other readers of Jane Eyre. Though I have above compared the novel to Frankenstein, Jane Eyre does not contain the magical or pre-sci-fi elements of the former novel. In fact there is only one scene that seems to evoke powers beyond the very human characters that Bronte creates. The reader may note the location of Rochester's proposal to Jane beneath a chestnut tree in the his garden. It is this very same tree that is struck by lightning the next day offering a plethora of symbolic interpretations to trouble the mind of the protagonist as well as the reader. I myself haven't exactly decided how to read this event but the effect it left upon me as a reader stems from a stark contrast with the rest of the novel. For the most part the events depicted in Jane Eyre could easily occur in the real world. Bronte's narrative shows a sustained need to remain within a realistic sphere but this scene makes an exception. It seems that in this lightning strike, despite what it might mean, it is a violent intrusion of the supernatural into a narrative that has developed a certain sense of comfort from the natural and therefore causes our reading of the entire novel to hinge upon it. 'This' thought I as I read 'is my Frankenstein moment.' Though the moment is brief the echo of thunder reverberates through the rest of the novel allowing each plant, shadow, and attic door at Thornfield Manor and beyond to pulse with an eerie life that lends Bronte's work that mysterious Gothic feel that came so close to capturing my professional interest.
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Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ann Arbor, MI, J.W. Edwards: 2006. (Borders Classics Imprint)
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