Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Read: March 2025
Format: Audio (BorrowBox)

As always, when I review a Classic, this review and rating are based on my own enjoyment of this book. I definitely understand why this has stood the test of time. I do think it’s a masterpiece—especially for its time—but… I didn’t love it.

I first read Jane Eyre when I was a teenager. I remember reading it in Spain on a family holiday and being absolutely hooked by it! I can’t remember if this was between A Levels or the summer before I started Uni but in either case, I was somewhere around 16-18 years old and I think that was an important factor in how much I loved it and that I remember finding it romantic!!

36-year-old Alice did not find any romance in this book, and had a very different reading experience!

It did start pretty well. I had forgotten how much time is spent as the start on Jane’s early life as an unloved orphan and then pupil in a Christian charity school. I enjoyed her strong will and sense of justice as a child, and her friendship with Helen. In my reread this was definitely my favourite section of the book.

Then everything starts to fall apart when she finally goes to Thornfield Hall and meets Mr Rochester. I might have found Rochester romantic when I was a teenager but now my adult eyes can read him as nothing but an old lech! He’s such a creep!

Not only is he her employer but he is twice her age (Jane is 18, he’s at least late thirties) and infantilises Jane from the star, constantly calling her nicknames (fairy, elf, “my Janet”) and talking to her like she’s a child in a way that made my skin crawl. This is before we even get to the cruel twist on their original wedding day! I just never felt like he respected her or even saw her as a complete person.

I can look back and remember finding his patronising flirting and nicknames romantic, which honestly makes me cringe to remember. The first time I read this I was flying through it to get to the next “romantic” scene between them! I wonder how much of an influence Mr Rochester had on my young mind, especially when I found myself at 18 in a relationship with a man more than twice my age! I didn’t grow up an abused orphan, but like Jane – as a wallflower – I was starved for attention and had low self-esteem for being “plain.” Unfortunately, I only absorbed the so-called romance and missed the bigger picture of Jane’s story!

The only thing that stops my eyes from rolling out my head on a re-read is that Jane is such a strong-willed character, she is not submissive, she can see Rochester’s flaws and eventually does leave because she recognises that his “love” will trap and destroy her.

I was happy that she ran away … But also frustrated that she did it in such a stupid overly dramatic way – in the night with no money and immediately losing what she did take. FFS Jane!

After she dramatically wanders around the countryside starving and nearly freezing to death she very conveniently ends up, at random, on the doorstep of strangers who turn out to be her long-lost relatives; cousins she never knew existed! At this point, the novel completely lost me (I do recall really struggling with this section as a teenager too) … It’s just too hard to believe that this would happen!

Plus this whole section with the idyllic friendship with Diana and Mary especially makes sickly reading. It’s a lot! And it felt very heavily signposted for the Reader that they’re related even if it takes Jane a long time to find this out in the story! And then, even more unlikely and convenient, she gets a huge inheritance out of the blue that makes her independently wealthy!

Not to mention cousin St. John! What a fucking freak! The cousin issue aside, he’s no better than Rochester.. actually I found him worse because he’s a humourless Fundamentalist religious nutter who wants to trap her in a loveless marriage, on Mission in India as his “helpmeet” … Gross. Jane (who has become tiresomely pious by this time) considers this offer for far too long for my comfort!

And then the ending… Jane eventually goes back to Rochester. And yeah maybe since he’s now blind and poor and she’s rich they’re more “equal” but he still talks to her like she’s a child and it still gave me the ick. Though Jane seems to take a perverse pleasure in teasing him, which made me think actually she’s just a bit kinky and likes the power she has over him now.

I listened to this as an audiobook which I think also affected my enjoyment. The narrator (Nadia May) gave a great performance but she has a mature voice and while that makes sense, since the whole story is framed as an older Jane telling her story to us, I found the old lady voice jarring when it came to connecting with young Jane. This quality coupled with the very formal and very wordy writing style was at times a trudge, especially in the latter half when my interest had waned.

Perhaps I will reread this again in another 10 years, if I do I’ll read it in print! I do think it’s one of those books that I’ll find changes, and I will take away something different every time I read it.

I didn’t expect this to be the case, but maybe I actually enjoyed Wuthering Heights more than Jane Eyre, if only because it keeps the melodrama at an 11 the whole time and everyone is bat shit from the start so I know where I stand! Plus that was read by the amazing Joanne Froggatt. Jane Eyre starts out with much more reasonable characters then pulls the rug out with the unlikely fairytale elements (especially magically finding the cousins and £20K!).