This well-known classic is not just an entertaining romantic novel but also a brilliant description of society. I can recommend it to you if you like reading about the life in the 19th century and if drama and feelings are the thing of yours.
Hardly had I made it to the page 100 when I realised how insanely intensive touch the novelist has on psychological themes. Let’s think about the relationship between Jane and Mr. Rochester, for instance. That absurd relationship surely isn’t the easiest one created! Firstly, the man is so much older than Jane that he could be her father. Secondly, he already has a wife – who happens to be secretly hidden in the house. Just so ordinary, isn’t it?
Jane is an orphan girl having experienced cruelty and violence and cold attitude towards herself so it is not a wonder why she falls in love with her master (yes, like there wasn’t enough drama before: he is also her employer!). In my opinion she sees her master like a father, someone who gives her the parental safety she sadly has not been given in her childhood. At least that would make some sense from the psychological point of view, I think.
Mr. Rochester was a hard personality to analyze. I mean, what is he like – I don’t know, I really don’t! There is something dark and mysterious in him but also sensibility and pride. There is this one scene where Mr. Rochester invites Jane to come and talk with him. So, when they are small talking, he starts asking her opinion of himself. It was not like a proper thing to do because they were supposed to small talk. You cannot just ask a new employee to give you an opinion of yourself, can you?
So, is it self-love? Some personal disorder, maybe even the one everyone knows – narcissism? What is wrong with Mr. Rochester? He is a weird person, there is no denying it. Maybe it is an inevitable thing that your personality changes when you meet really difficult, hard things in your life. On the other hand, the past of Mr. Rochester is somehow unclear because the story is told by Jane’s point of view. The mental illness of his wife must have been serious issue in his life, though. I don’t know if he loved her but at least he doesn’t send her to a mental hospital. According to historians, mental hospitals were horrible places in the 1800s.
Jane is easier to understand and not only because the story is from her perspective but because her acting is simple and sensible. She loves Mr. Rochester, so she simply loves him – meanwhile the man is playing mind games and stuff. Jane might be shy and overly friendly but her soul is determined and she definitely lives with passion.
Maybe the most remarkable difference between Jane and Mr. Rochester is that they are from different social classes. As said before, Jane is a poor orphan girl meanwhile the latter represents the upper class. It was not socially accepted to marry someone who’s status differed much from yours. The upper class persons socialized with each other. So you might wonder why Jane feels so comfortable about socializing with Mr. Rochester? Well, although Jane is poor and unconnected, she has lived in an upper class family her first ten years. She was sent to school and she became educated young woman. That is the main reason why she feels like she belongs to the upper.
There is this snobbing though which can make the reader either irritated or amused. I did not know how to feel about the parts where the writer has been trying to sound elegant by writing in French and German instead of just English. Supposedly she has wanted to show her knowledge of languages and stuff but hey, still… What was the logic?
I could understand only the German parts so skipping the French parts was kinda boring. There were translations in the end of the book but it was not the same thing. Especially French was the language of education and civilization in the 1800s and all so it is understandable why she wrote the parts, though.