Book Review: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

[inverarity]

Precursor to every modern romantic trope and an entire genre of infinitely inferior imitations. And Mr. Rochester is almost as big an asshole as Heathcliff.

Comments

[hermione_vader]

First thing's first: Charlotte Bronte is a much better author than Emily in terms of creating likeable characters. Sorry, Em: you may be able to create a complicated narrative, but you're terrible at making characters sympathetic.

About Bronte's narrative treatment of Bertha Mason: this book is very much a product of its time, and that includes how it treats mental illness. Shutting Bertha up in the attic with an attendant actually would have been more humane than putting her in an asylum, which would have been filthy and torturous. And divorce was nearly impossible to secure until the Divorce Act of 1857. Still, you're not going to find a lot of modern sympathy for the mentally ill in books of this time period, and Jane Eyre is one of the more progressive novels of its day (especially in how it maintains that classism is not a divine right sort of thing, which was the normal thinking of the day

[jhestia85]

I saw your review of Mansfield Park and wondered if you'd read Jane Eyre. You had! I must say that I agree with every single point. The book lost whatever appeal it had for me when the truth about Bertha came out and Jane started moaning for Rochester, who is definitely an asshole. St. Johns is a prick too. >.< It annoys me to no end when they pick pretty boys to play Rochester, but I suppose they need to draw the female audience in.

Have you read The Wide Sargasso Sea? I forgot the name of the writer, but it's a novella written from Bertha's point of view.

[inverarity]

I haven't read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, but it's on my (long-term) TBR list.

[tommy50702]

I have to read this book again.