The Problem with Jane Eyre

 

The problem with Jane Eyre

 

I am expected to like Jane Eyre because it’s a classic.

No, let me rephrase that. I am expected to like Jane Eyre because of the way Brontë chose to present her story, introducing elements such as first-person perspective and feminist themes in a revolutionary manner, much different from the approaches of her time.

Much like Hippocrates revolutionised medicine almost two and a half thousand years ago. Yet, medical students no longer learn his outdated methods. He is the father of medicine, but medicine has evolved so much that he is now only seen as a historical figure who established medical ethics and the scientific method.

Yet I am expected to like an outdated author and “copy” her techniques when there are so many interesting contemporary authors who don’t sound like a teenage Victorian soap opera.

I have a problem with that. The problem doesn't stem from the apparent casual racism toward anything non-English. For example, everything that is wrong with Adele is that she is French, and she is not English. Mr. Rochester’s wife is not a genuine Englishwoman; she is a mentally unstable Creole.

I won’t even touch imperialism and the need to educate the savage Indian people to the superiority of English Christianity. I am not supposed to be bothered about these things because they are “era appropriate”, and the excuse of context demands I overlook them.

This brings me to the serious problem I was talking about: happenstance.

As a reader of hundreds of books, I take serious issue with the laziness of the plot in Jane Eyre. Nothing that happens to Jane comes from her moving a finger. Yes, she is distraught and filled with love and grief and emotional depth that paint the pages with evocative imagery, but everything is far too conveniently resolved.

She runs away blindly to some unknown place where she comes across some long-forgotten relatives, Deus ex machina style, beating astronomical odds. That is lazy.

She cannot marry Mr. Rochester because his insane wife is still alive. No problem, the plot will sort itself out. It would have been far more honest and engaging if Mr. Rochester had killed his wife (or, even better, Jane had killed Bertha) because that would actually create some fascinating moral and ethical stakes that would elevate this young adult romance. Another obstacle was removed by Jane not moving a finger.

Jane is penniless and miserable, but don’t worry, some rich uncle we never even heard of dies, and she gets the inheritance because of course…

As a reader, I find the narrative's happenstance lazy and disrespectful, as if the author assumed I was too unintelligent to pick up on those conveniences, which resulted in my complete disengagement.

As a writer, I consider these choices more as cheap tricks that I would like to avoid at all costs. I want to create honest and realistic narratives, even if the subjects I approach are solely fantastical.

I believe there needs to be a certain level of respect for our readers when we tell a story, and it seems that this is not the case in Jane Eyre. Simply because it is placed in the canon of the classics doesn’t mean we must become blind to its many problems.