A love story that broke all the rules
Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte Published by Penguin ISBN 9780140620115
Neither the heroine nor the hero in Jane Eyre is considered beautiful. In fact, Charlotte Bronte is at pains to point out how much of a 'plain Jane' her female lead really is. She has no fortune and she is not pretty.
Mr Rochester, her love interest and employer at Thornfield Hall, is dark and sarcastic, not handsome and charming as you might expect. It was because of this the novel was revolutionary when it came out, more so because it was written by a woman.
Bronte was deliberately moving away from the stereotype of previous romantic novels. The hero falls for the character and intellect of the heroine, not her money or beauty.
Each setting that Jane is placed in, from her awful orphaned childhood with Aunt Reed to her school days, perfectly reflects her state of mind at each point in the novel. She is a strong, rebellious, independent woman who thinks for herself, again something of an unknown in a time when women's rights were far from a popular concept.
It is Jane's voice which states 'I resisted', words only Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet would be worthy of repeating.
In parts, the plot panders to the Victorian melodrama of the period. Bronte was emulating the gothic genre. It should not put you off from reading this classic novel, which explores the variety of emotions intertwined with love.
