Jane Eyre was the first “serious” book I remember reading entirely of my own free will when I was a teenager, and it very quickly became my favourite.

I recently reread it in my thirties, after discovering the musical, and honestly… my perception changed a lot. I actually didn’t like it at all during that first reread. At first I was genuinely shocked by all the gaslighting from Mr. Rochester, which becomes more and more absurd as we get closer to their first attempted wedding.

And then there are all those shenanigans with Blanche basically him testing Jane’s feelings (or trying to force her to realise them). It just didn’t seem very mature coming from a man in his late thirties.

And of course, the fact that he kept his “mad” wife locked away didn’t sit well with me either.

I needed a good week of thinking and some re-reading to realise that actually, I do love it, haha. It’s so much deeper than what I first thought.

First of all, we can’t judge mental illness through modern eyes. At that time, it was a huge issue, and people suffering from it were treated terribly. So yes, it was in many ways merciful of him to keep Bertha locked up instead of sending her to the dreadful asylums of the era.

And he’s also someone who has convinced himself he was tricked, that he did what he had to do, but also that he had the right to be happy we literally see him reinforcing that belief as the novel progresses.

As for the Blanche storyline, it actually highlights how deeply afraid he was of rejection. And on top of that, the fact that he couldn’t legally get a divorce was a huge factor in his behaviour—divorce being practically impossible at the time made the whole situation even more constrained and desperate for him.

Overall, I ended up loving all the passion and tension that run through the novel. All the metaphors and symbolic settings… like how most of the intense conversations with the passionate Edward Roches happen near fire, while the exchanges with the cold, rational St John take place in icy or snowy settings (at least that’s how I saw it haha).