History of Romance Review #2 - Jane Eyre

3/5 stars - Number 2 on my self-imposed "History of Romance" curriculum.

So okay, there were parts of this book that were extremely compelling, like I stayed up until 3 am reading one particular part. But it was no Jane Austen.

So Jane is an orphan being raised by her aunt-by-marriage, as her parents and uncle have all died. Her aunt and cousins are all pretty mean to her and at one point lock her in the room her uncle died in overnight with no candles or fire or anything, and she passes out because she thought his ghost was in there with her. It takes her days to recover (which to be honest, I'd have probably just keeled over dead from fright, so good for her) and the apothecary who comes to check on her suggests she be sent to school. So of course her mean aunt sends her to the cheapest school she can get away with. And they are mean there, and they shame and humiliate the girls, and the main dude that finances the school just feeds them spoiled porridge and half pieces of bread and water, and all the girls are starving. But then there is an outbreak of typhus and half the students die and some of the staff flees. So when the typhus burns itself out, the school undergoes major reforms, and the guy that finances it and starved everyone is still around but has less control and more checks on his decision-making and the girls are given actual nutritious food to eat and Jane thrives there and gets a proper education. She works there as a teacher for a couple of years, and then she gets a position as a governess.

She enjoys her position, the girl she teaches, and the rest of the staff but there is a strange lady named Grace Poole who she hears laughing manically sometimes and can't figure out what her deal is. Eventually the master of the house, Mr. Rochester who she's never met, comes home, and he regularly engages her in weird conversations in the evenings where he is sometimes aggressive or accusatory toward her or it seems like he's trying to trick her somehow. But when he sees her during the day in passing, he smiles and bows and is cordial and she starts to like-like him.

Then he leaves for a couple of weeks to go to a house party and Jane misses him. While he's gone, the housekeeper tells her a lady named Miss Ingram will be there who supposedly has a romantic interest in Rochester, to whom he is well suited, and is rumored to soon be engaged to.

When he comes back he brings back everyone from the party, including Miss Ingram, to host his own party. Then Rochester makes Jane and Adele, the little girl she teaches, hang out in the room with the whole group of lords and ladies every evening after dinner, where Jane just sits quietly in the corner and doesn't engage much with anyone and the ladies are all kind of snooty and dismissive of her and Adele. She also has to watch while Miss Ingram and Rochester chat and sing and hang out together, but she can tell that Miss Ingram's feminine wiles have no effect on Rochester. But whenever they have a chance to have private conversations, Rochester repeatedly affirms that he IS going to marry Miss Ingram.

One night, Rochester is apparently called away on some business so everyone is just hanging out without him, when a servant comes in to tell them there's a traveler fortune-teller there and she won't leave until she tells the fortune of all the young single ladies in attendance. The ladies think this sounds like a real hoot and Miss Ingram goes first into another room to have her fortune told. When she comes back, she's all pale and disconcerted. She tries to play it off but everyone can tell she's heard some unfortunate news. So the other girls go in but go in all together and when they come back they're giggling and whispering. Then the servant comes in and says the fortune-teller still won't leave until the last unmarried young woman comes to see her, which of course is Jane. So Jane goes in the room. The fortune-teller is in shadows with a big hat on her head. She says all the usual things "something you want is very near, all your desires can be yours if you just reach for it, etc." Then she's like "I know you watch Mr. Rochester and Miss Ingram." and Jane starts getting weirded out and tries to leave, then the fortune-teller says something or other that makes Jane stop and take another look, and she realizes THE FORTUNE-TELLER WAS MR. ROCHESTER THE WHOLE TIME! WTF! This man dressed up as an old traveler woman and fooled everyone in his party and everyone on his staff somehow. No artificial appendages or stage make-up. Just good old-fashioned acting and shadows. >Shrugging

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At some point, Jane tells Rochester that if he marries Miss Ingram he should send Adele away to school and Jane would find another post because she knows Miss Ingram will make them miserable. Besides Miss Ingram being nasty, Jane has also decided that she's in love with Rochester and she can't bear to watch him marry Miss Ingram because she knows he doesn't love her.

Later, Jane finds out that her aunt is dying and wishes to see her for the first time since she was sent away to school. She gets permission from Mr. Rochester to go see her and sets out. When she gets there, her aunt from her deathbed tells her that a few years ago, an uncle on her father's side was looking for her because he was rich and childless and wanted her to be his heir and the mean aunt told him Jane was dead and sent him away. The aunt dies, Jane stays to sort out her cousins' affairs, she's gone about a month.

When she comes back, she sees Rochester outside. She tries to get by without him seeing her, but he does and calls her over to come sit with him. He starts talking about how he means to be married in a month and asks her what she wants to do and maybe she can go work for this family he knows in Ireland. Then Jane starts crying because she doesn't want to go to Ireland, but mostly she doesn't want to be away from Rochester. And then Rochester is like "Great. Because YOU are whom I'm marrying in a month. I just pretended I was going to marry Miss Ingram because I knew making you jealous was the only way to make you fall in love with me."

So they're deliriously happy for a month, all except the housekeeper who tells Jane to be careful of her heart, she doesn't want to see Jane hurt. The night before the wedding, Jane goes to bed and dreams that a scary deranged woman comes in her room and rips up the veil Rochester gave her to wear for the wedding. Jane just lays there quietly hoping to wake up, then the woman gets right up in Jane's face and blows out a candle and everything is plunged into darkness and Jane faints (same. I would have also fainted. That's terrifying.). Jane wakes up later and is like "That dream was the worst" but then she finds the ripped up veil on the floor and knows it wasn't a dream. So she tells Rochester and he's like "oh that is weird and kinda scary. But you know it was probably just Grace Poole. You know she's a weirdo like that so don't worry about it too much."

So the morning of the wedding they head down to the chapel, just the two of them, the minister, and a city official to witness it. The minister gets to the "speak now or forever hold your peace part" and a guy in the back of the church, who happens to be a lawyer hired by the uncle her dying aunt confessed about, is like "Me. I object. This man is already married. Tell 'em." And the other guy with him, Rochester's friend Mason is like "yeah, he's married to my sister." So then the whole party treks back to the house and Rochester lets them into the 3rd floor where Grace Poole lives and there is another woman there with Grace Poole, whom Jane recognizes from her room the night before, and who immediately attacks Rochester as soon as she realizes it's him and he has to grapple her to the ground and restrain her.

Having seen enough, Jane and the rest of the party leave. Jane goes to her room to think about things, she decides her only course of action is to leave. When she exits her room, she encounters Rochester who has been waiting outside the door all night and implores her to listen to his explanations. He tells her it was basically an arranged marriage between their fathers and that he was game at first but that no one told him that insanity ran in her family and that even before she went mad, she was mean and terrible and violent with him, and that he's been very sad and lonely and has just been hooking up with ladies all over the world because he's been so sad and lonely, woe is him. And Jane is like "well that's quite a story but you didn't tell me any of this and you were going to make me think I was legitimately married to you, essentially tricking me into being your mistress. So I'm probably gonna go." Rochester is floored that his story hasn't moved Jane to stick around and live in sin with him. He starts to cry and tells Jane if she leaves him she's going to be responsible for anything he does to himself or anyone else. (Emotionally manipulative much?)

So she goes to bed and waits until she's sure he's also gone to bed, then she packs up and leaves, taking only 20 pounds. She finds a carriage to bring her as far as she can get for 20 pounds and then forgets her belongings on the carriage when she disembarks. She wanders around this town and the surrounding countryside for a few days and finally collapses on the doorstep of a house where 2 sisters and their minister brother are living and mourning the death of their father. They take her in and nurse her back to health. When she's well enough she tells them a truncated version of her story and gives them a fake name and tells them she doesn't want to impose on them but could they help her find work somewhere. The brother, St. John, agrees to help her find something and in the meantime, she hangs out with and becomes friends with the sisters, who are also governesses.

Eventually, St. John tells her that he's opening a girls' school in the village and she could be the teacher, which is right up her alley. So she does that, and enjoys it mostly. Then one St. John comes over to the house and tells her he has received a strange letter. That people are searching for someone named Jane Eyre (she's given her alias as Jane Elliot so, not that big of a stretch), she admits that that is her name and reveals the rest of her story of almost marrying her boss who is already married to a "lunatic". After she reveals everything, St. John tells her that her uncle has died and left her a bunch of money and now she's a rich woman and never has to work again if she doesn't want to. Then he tells her that the reason he has received this letter is because that uncle is also his uncle, one who snubbed him and his sisters in his will. Jane is so happy to have family that she immediately decides to split her new fortune evenly with her newfound cousins and have them all move into the family house so they can be together, which they do.

They're all pretty happy living together and all of them are involved in some sort of scholarly pursuits. All three women are teaching themselves German when St. John decides Jane should learn Hindi instead. He's learning it because he's going to be a missionary in India and *for some reason* thinks Jane should learn too. She's an eager student and finds she's overly anxious to please him and receive any kind of praise from him and it isn't long before he's completely dominated her and everything she does is in pursuit of his praise. (Jane might have some codependency issues stemming from her childhood as an orphan.) It's no surprise to any reader at all when St. John decides they should get married and she should join him in his ministry in India. Jane is taken aback, but she declines and tells him she'll go to India but as a sister or assistant, not a wife because they don't love each other. St. John is like "Look here, you're not making any sense. The only way this works is if you go as my wife and eventually we will love each other." Jane is so dominated by him that she almost agrees but then shakes herself out of it and refuses again. St. John gives her a week to think it over but during that week he ices her out completely - which is abusive and manipulative, but hey, Jane's got a type. When the week is out she tries to again persuade him to let her come as his sister but he insists they be married and again comes very close to convincing her but she hears a ghostly voice that sounds like Rochester calling her. She snaps out of St. John's spell and starts looking for him shouting "I'm here!" She excuses herself from St. John, runs to her room to pack her belongings, and finds the quickest coach to Thornfield Hall.

When she gets there she finds the whole place burned to the ground. When she goes into the village to inquire about it, she's told the "lunatic" wife set the house on fire and then threw herself from the roof. Rochester got out but then ran back in to make sure all the servants got out, and the house collapsed with him still in it. He's rescued but is now blind and missing a hand. He dismissed all the servants except two and they live at one of the Rochesters' country estates.

So Jane immediately goes there. There is a tearful, bittersweet reunion. He's sorry he tricked her, she's sorry she left, they heard each other's spirits cry out to the other, and now Jane is here to stay whether they marry or not and she will help him and be his eyes. Of course, they do get married since he's now free. He eventually regains sight in one eye and he's able to look at his first son when he's born and they live happily ever after. The end.

The heart wants what it wants I guess, and I can see how this is a classic romance and Jane wanting to be in control of her own choices is clearly a feminist idea at the time it is written. I hated that Jane's choices in love interests were two manipulative, emotionally stunted men. Both of them made me do a lot of eye-rolling and scowling as I read. I was really rooting for Jane to decide to just live as a wealthy spinster with her female cousins, learning languages, and making art, and maybe patronizing schools for girls and orphanages. Oh well. It was obviously a beautifully written book, and I'm glad I picked it up post-high school reading assignment.

Side note: Jane Eyre is a favorite of my sisters and I bought her this Mr. Rochester candle for Christmas and it is probably the best gift I've ever given somebody. Here is the description and it tells you everything you need to know about my feelings for this book, so much so that I wish I had seen it before writing up this whole review.

Have you read the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte? No? Well, that’s fine, because the Mr. Rochester-Scented Candle will tell you everything you need to know:

The book has a character named Mr. Rochester. He’s the dashing love interest who locks his wife in an attic. It has a protagonist named Jane Eyre. She’s the governess who starts to fall for her boss, Mr. Rochester. Do you think the wife-locked-in-attic thing will turn out to be a dealbreaker for her? (Here’s a hint: No it will not.) Mr. Rochester smells like cigar smoke. Mr. Rochester smokes a cigar, so Jane can always smell him coming. And since this candle smells like cherry tobacco, YOUR governess will always smell YOU coming, as you wander the halls pensively, late at night, holding a novelty candle. Mr. Rochester’s palatial estate, Thornfield, ends up getting burned down, leaving only smoking ruins. Sometimes when you lock your wife in the attic and propose to the governess, your house gets burned down. Actions have consequences!