Posts tagged February

There’s this part of me who wants to exult all the Gothic imagery in this book and turn this review into a copy of an essay I had written years ago for a high school literature class. So I’ll have to restrain myself.

It’s amazing how age can colour how you feel about a book. A simple tragic love story between a woman and a man that I enjoyed as a teenager turns into an uncomfortable morally complex story now through my adult lens. I think Jane Eyre was never quite as simple as I had thought. A young 18-year-old plain Jane takes up a position as a governess, a teacher to a child who is the product of an exotic European dalliance. Mr Rochester, her well-traveled boss, would fit right into any Jane Austen novel, a misunderstood rogue who is not thought of as handsome by all but still a diamond in the rough in Jane’s eyes. It doesn’t matter that the man is old enough to be her father and that he might be taking advantage of her youth and his position, the two fall in love almost immediately. On the day of their marriage, things fall apart as the truth comes out about Rochester’s sordid past and the morally uptight Jane has to make some difficult choices.

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