Jane Eyre

Amazingly, up until now I had not read Jane Eyre.

I had the...pleasure...of reading Wuthering Heights at least four times in high school and college, but not Jane Eyre. (yeah you're right, Wuthering Heights isn't a pleasure. In fact, I don't really like it.)

This post is about Jane though, not how much I dislike Catherine.

My book club picked Jane Eyre for this month, and I went into thinking that it would be similar to Wuthering Heights, and that I wouldn't really enjoy it. Not so.

I ended up really liking it! It is slow at times, and skimming the long and overly drawn out bits of repetitive dialogue is necessary, but for the most part it was not as difficult a read as I expected it to be, and the story was very engaging.

The book is a bit long, and if I were Charlotte Bronte's editor I'd have demanded that she cut 200 pages...300 if possible, but it was still very enjoyable.

I like Jane, she's a good strong, educated female character. She doesn't need to RELY on Mr. Rochester, in fact she loves him best when he needs her more than she needs him. I like strong women, which is why the part of the book that I liked the least was Jane's whole encounter with St. John Rivers.

Who names their kid St. John, anyway? That seems a bit odd and pretentious even for Victorian England.
My point though, is that Jane falls into this submissive trance around him for quite awhile, and that was the only part of the book that really annoyed me.
She doesn't take shit from Mrs. Reed or Mr. Rochester, but she does from this obnoxious, self righteous and rather whiny parson?

Seriously? Seems very out of character, in my opinion.

That aside, I won't tell you how it turns out, because if you don't already know you should read it and find out for yourself, but I think my favorite part was the last couple of chapters. The dialogue between Jane and Mr. Rochester is great!

Go forth and read.