Rachel: I can’t believe you let me go on and on like that!
Phoebe: I’m sorry.  It was just so funny when you started comparing Jane Eyre to Robocop.

Heh.  I had to allow myself one last giggle.  Okay, straight to it, and as always, a warning: for those who have not read Jane Eyre and don’t want to know what happens, beware!  Major plot spoilers ahead – like, I’m going to spill the beans on the ending.

Synopsis

When we left Jane, she had been taken in, sick and starving, by the residents of Moor House, an isolated but welcoming place.  As she recovers her health, she gets to know the inhabitants – St. John Rivers, a clergyman, and his two sisters Diana and Mary – and the better she knows them, the more she likes them.  Diana and Mary soon regard her as a close friend and St. John is impressed enough with Jane’s various accomplishments that he offers her the position of mistress of the village school.  Jane accepts the job and begins her new post immediately.  At first, she doesn’t care for the work of teaching “rustics,” but she and her students soon develop a connection, and Jane is happy.

Jane’s mental quiet doesn’t last long, however.  A moment of thoughtless doodling on her part leads St. John to discover her real identity – which she has previously concealed – and he then drops a bombshell: Jane’s uncle in Madeira has died and left her his entire fortune, some twenty thousand pounds.  Oh, and more – St. John, Diana and Mary are her cousins, the other nieces and the nephew of the deceased uncle, who have been cut out of the will.  Jane’s sense of justice won’t allow her to inherit a fortune while her cousins receive nothing, so she persuades them to allow her to split the fortune into four equal parts – five thousand pounds for each of them.  (Still a lot of money, but not a crushing burden of wealth the way twenty thousand would have been.)  Jane then moves out of the school house and back to Moor House, where she is determined to have a nice vacation with Diana and Mary.  St. John, however, has other ideas.  (Evidently, vacations are sinful!)  Although he is in love with the local heiress Rosamond Oliver, he proposes to Jane, who in his view was built for labor, not love, and would therefore make an ideal missionary’s wife.

Jane’s passionate nature abhors the idea of marrying without love.  She offers to accompany St. John on his planned mission to India, but as his sister or curate – not his wife.  St. John refuses the offer and says she can only come with him as his wife.  Jane insists that she’d be happy to become a missionary, but that she cannot marry him.  St. John presses the issue and makes a bit of a pest of himself (in my opinion), but Jane is on the verge of yielding when she hears a voice calling out to her: “Jane!  Jane!  Jane!”  The voice… is Mr. Rochester’s.

Jane has tried to bury her feelings, but even so, she continues to feel anxiety over Mr. Rochester.  Has he succumbed to temptation and gone back to the Continent to drown his sorrows in mistresses, as she was afraid he would do?  Jane decides to go herself to Thornfield and make inquiries, since her letters have all gone unanswered.  Only when her mind is at ease concerning Mr. Rochester’s fate can she decide whether to marry St. John or not.  Jane rushes back to Thornfield, but… she finds it a ruin of ashes and stone.  The great hall has been destroyed in a fire, and the inhabitants are nowhere to be seen.  Jane hurries to the Rochester Arms inn and asks what happened.  The publican gives her the whole story, in which she herself plays a villain’s role, not realizing that it is “the midge of a governess” to whom he speaks.  The answer, then: crazy Bertha escaped her guardian, Grace Poole (who, it turns out, likes a sip of gin now and then) and set fire to the place, then threw herself off the roof.  No one else was killed, but Mr. Rochester – now a widower, incidentally, and eligible to remarry – lost a hand and one eye, and was blinded in the other eye.  He’s living at his damp and desolate hunting estate, Ferndean, with only two long-time family servants.

Jane rushes to Mr. Rochester’s side.  At first, she seems to have a hard time convincing him of her corporeality.  But he soon accepts that she’s real, she’s present, she’s not marrying St. John Rivers, and she wants nothing more than to become Mrs. Rochester after all.  And so, Reader, she marries him.  And, if you have any doubt in the happy ending: he gets his eyesight back, and a baby son into the bargain.  And they all live happily ever after.

Thoughts

If the last two sections of the book have been action-packed, this final section, until the very end, seems to slow back down to the pace of the childhood and school section in the very beginning.  Jane’s tenure at Moor House is probably my least favorite aspect of the book; it drags for me, just a little bit, and while I adore Diana and Mary, St. John is cruising for a bruising.  But it all comes out right in the end!  St. John goes off on his mission, without Jane, Diana and Mary get married and are loved and remain close to Jane all their lives, and Jane gets to be happy, finally, with Mr. Rochester.

It’s really only the end of the book where I think that Jane and Edward (I can use his first name now, because Jane can) have really found love with each other.  Before, as I’ve said, there’s a great deal of infatuation on Jane’s part, and Edward all but admits that he mostly wanted to marry Jane as a change from the crazy witch he’s been locked up with for fifteen years.  But when Jane returns to Edward, a rich and independent woman, and is in the position of choosing her role as his helper, and when Edward has had a taste of what it’s like to be the dependent one, they can actually love each other as equals for the first time – and they do.  Jane needs to taste independence before she can really love another person (more subversiveness!) and Mr. Rochester needs to come down a peg or two before he’s capable of knowing what he has.  In their case, absence certainly does make the heart grow stronger, and it puts them in a position of enjoying a marriage of equals, which is what they both need.

I’ve always said that Jane Eyre is my favorite book, but that it had been too long since I’d read it through.  Well, after reading it again with fresh eyes for Septemb-Eyre… it’s still my favorite book.  In fact, I love it more than ever.  I love Jane’s independence, her resolute determination to do the right thing not because society expects it of her, but because her own self-respect demands it.  I love Mr. Rochester’s flaws and his faults and the deep love he comes to feel for Jane.  I love kindly Mrs. Fairfax and effervescent Adele and the wonderful Diana and Mary Rivers.  I love all of these characters, and I love the setting – the brooding Thornfield Hall, with its split lightning-struck tree and its serene, otherworldly orchard where so much romance happens.  Yes, Jane Eyre is still my favorite book… and I won’t let so many years pass between this and the next re-read.

If you’ve been reading along with Septemb-Eyre, I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself as much as I have!  Kerry, thanks for hosting; this was a great way to spend my reading time this month.  I’m submitting this post as my “review” of Jane Eyre for the Classics Club.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte; buy the book here (not an affiliate link) or support your local libraries and indie bookstores.