Iâm literally going to fucking scream I do not understand how you can so fundamentally miss the POINT of this book. Rochester is flawed! Jane is flawed! He admires her so much (literally says âyour mouth is one that should speak much and smile oftenâ), he loves her wit and loves bantering with her to bring it out of her, he constantly praises her talents and interests (in his own dickish way which Jane goes to great length to say she enjoys), and more importantly when Jane wants to leave, he doesnât stop her.
The book is many things but one of them is that itâs a power fantasy of a young women deemed unattractive in her day, finding that the Pure, Moral, Christian Love that is expected of her is not fulfilling. The conventionally attractive men Jane encounters do not excite her intellectually. She quite literally calls them boring as hell, especially the nice ones.
The book IS feminist. Itâs just not fourth wave feminism. Jane literally talks about how the sexes are equal and women deserve and need the same intellectual stimulation and pursuit as men are afforded, and one of the reasons Rochester falls for her is bc of her intellect, which he notes and compliments SEVERAL times.
Again, the point of the book is that two people, who have been deemed unattractive in both the physical and spiritual form by their societies standards, find love and acceptance within one another. Jane, in the narrative, has immense power over Rochester the second he sees her. He constantly compares her to a divine creature with a force he cannot resist. In an era where beauty=purity, where a women could only rely upon male relations to protect them, and often had little autonomy, Jane Eyre is about how Jane defies the ideas of her time and makes a choice to be with the flawed, complicated, but ultimately kind man instead of the âproperâ choice in her clergyman relations. Thatâs the POINT of gothic romance, especially in this era! That love isnât the fairytale told to little girls and that grown women are creatures of depth able to handle this grotesque depictions of love! There was constant moral panic over literature that was written and read by women and Jane Eyre was no exception! Jane does not WANT âpure loveâ! She doesnât want the societally accepted âloveâ that she sees as superficial and unfulfilling. Jane, even as a child, is drawn to the morbid, and this carries even as she adopts a more positive outlook on life. Those parts of her didnât just disappear, and with Rochester she feels safe to experience those feelings of jealousy, anger, and disappointment. Because AGAIN. THE POINT OF THE BOOK. IS THAT WOMEN ARE CAPABLE OF HAVING THESE COMPLICATED EMOTIONS AND CHOOSING FOR THEMSELVES HOW TO DEAL WITH THEM.
Also bc Iâm annoyed, Bertha is treated with great sympathy by the narrative through Jane. Neither Rochester nor Bertha wanted to marry each other, but thatâs the thing about their time period, a lot of ppl didnât want to marry but had to. He quite literally wasnât made aware of her illness. The tragedy in Berthaâs character is that her illness is poignantly not her fault, as Jane says, and that there were no real solutions for it at the time. Bertha is a victim of a society that did not yet have in place ethical standards for treatment of the mentally ill, but on a meta level, sheâs a victim of what it means when women are in a place where they do not have autonomy. The whole problem is that there were no systems in place for her and Rochester to divorce, and best case scenario, if they did, Bertha would end up in an asylum that were (not always but often) overcrowded and underfunded. You cannot apply 21st century standard ethics to a book that was written BEFORE THOSE STANDARDS WERE EVEN ENTERING THE POPULAR CULTURE OF DISCUSSION. The whole point was that Rochester was doing what he thought was the most humane solution, and the book even discusses the question does he deserve happiness? Is it penance for him to suffer the rest of life? The point is that under the system of class in this era, Rochester also suffers bc he is forced into being Lord when he doesnât want to, forced into a marriage for the sake of status and wealth which was the EXPECTATION, and that bc of the expectations of that era of patriarchy and white supremacy, there is no help that Rochester can reach out to. There were no centers for caregivers or facilities or therapy groups. And thatâs the tragedy and that is why Rochester is morally grey. He is doing his actual best in a situation where many ppl (like Miss Reed) sent their relative away and washed their hands of them, not caring if they lived or died. Bc that was all that was available for them TO do. Rochester knows that Berthaâs anger is directed at him and her brother (she doesnât go after Jane even when she has the chance to) which is also a part of Why he stays away from the house. The servants wonât be in danger bc Berthaâs anger isnât directed at them.
It is so deeply reductionist to refuse to analyze the historical context of a classic and try to apply modern morals and ethics to deem if it is âfeministâ enough. It is a product of its time in that it is a gothic romance in which the point of the genre was to challenge Christian notions of purity, love, womenâs autonomy, and the tragedy that comes from the class system that affected everyone.
