On Jane Eyre

I'm finally reading Jane Eyre, as you may have guessed. I've avoided these Victorian ladies' novels all my life: I found them tedious. But now I'm quite enjoying them--first Pride and Prejudice and now this. I guess I need to tackle Little Women next. It's amazing what love will do to a man.

One of the things I've always wondered at in Victorian novels, as well as in other, even older, literature such as Shakespeare, is the speed with which the characters fall in love. The expressions are always beautiful and the passion moving, but I've always read it with a modicum of skepticism, allowing that it's just fiction but thinking that, in reality, their love was lacking a very important element, in that they really barely knew each other. Take Pride and Prejudice for instance: how much time do they really spend together? A few minutes at a ball, several brief encounters subsequently. Or Romeo and Juliet: even less time. One dance, and they're in love so deep they'll both die for it. I don't doubt the depth of feeling, having experienced it myself; I fell for Amanda that quickly. It's just that I know, and knew at the time with her, that it really was just feeling--there was no real future there. But as I said, one allows for the conventions of fiction and of the culture and period in which it is written.

Jane Eyre, however, does not suffer from this weakness. In fact, I find chapter 23, the one where Jane and Mr. Rochester finally openly declare their love for each other, to be the most romantic scene I've ever read in any story. Because it's based, not on superficial charm or attraction, but on a true knowledge of each other formed over a long period of close contact. Love born of knowledge is true love that can last a lifetime. Not that that knowledge has to be perfect or complete before love can be considered genuine; but there has to be a substantial degree of it before a love can really be taken seriously. One of the best evidences of it is when, as in Jane's case, one comes to find another attractive, even irresistible, where no attraction initially existed, based on a knowledge of the inner person.

My favorite lines from this scene:

(Jane speaking) "Do you think I can stay and become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?--a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!--I have as much soul as you,--and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;--it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,--as we are!"

This is why I had to leave. To "stay and become nothing to you"...it was unbearable. Not that where I am now is much better. But it is, a very little bit. I at least don't feel like my chest is being physically turned inside out two or three times every week.

(Rochester speaking, a bit later) "'My bride is here,' he said, again drawing me to him, 'because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?'"

This is exactly it: "My equal and my likeness." How often does one actually find his equal and his likeness in this life?

Of course, as you probably know (spoiler alert if you haven't read it), their love is tragically doomed by Rochester's secret. You might, knowing my life, expect me to sympathize with him. And I do sympathize--with his pain and his feelings. But I approve entirely of Jane's course of action, based on her perception of her situation, and the fact that, at that place and time, there is no way for him to be free to marry her honorably. She acts rightly, and most courageously, and her speech to him about standing on her principles even though every sense and feeling within her is fighting against her, is no less than inspiring. She is right: it's what she has to do. We may think, perhaps even rightly, that the Church of England is overly harsh in its absolute prohibition of divorce, especially in such a case as Rochester's. Attempted murder, for instance, is probably reasonable grounds, and Jesus himself said that adultery is. But none of that is within Jane's control: she believes that to be with him is sin, therefore to her it is sin (Rom 14:23), and she must flee, no matter how hard or how painful. Of course, if I were in Rochester's place, her strength of will and stainless character would make me love her all the more, and thus suffer all the more. But on the other hand, if I were in Rochester's place, I would not have attempted to deceive her.

I do find a lot of myself in Rochester though: the tragic mistake early in life, the dissipation which follows from the despair attendant to that mistake, the hardness of character which results from it. But especially that longing to be a better man, to rise above his circumstances and find his way back to the light. And when he thinks he's found, in Jane, the angel to lead him back to that light, I think, "even so".

But I also see something of myself in Jane, early on in the story. The childhood is quite similar. And that scene where she more or less snaps, and stands up to her aunt...I had a scene very much like that with my stepmother. And then it led to the same sort of willfulness as I grew up: a determination never to let myself be bullied and trampled on again. Or to stand by and watch anyone else be treated so.

And then Jane, alone on the moor, cast off from all she knows and loves, is the best metaphorical picture I have ever encountered of where I have been, emotionally, since...well, you know. Exactly it. Especially because it is, for her, just the latest in a series of hard knocks that always seem to end with her alone, destitute, and friendless. But most especially this part:

(Jane has been worrying, despite her own pain, of her beloved's sufferings, and what they might drive him to) "Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love."

I have. I have felt what she then felt; and feel it still. I've said those prayers and shed those tears. "The instrument of evil to what you wholly love." The only other author I've come across who touched on this was Richard Llewellyn, who said, "A horrible feeling, it is, to know you are a burden in body and spirit to somebody dear to you." There is no pain like the pain of knowing, or fearing, that you've hurt someone you love.