Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

In retrospect, the solitary midnight-fire scene we studied in school does little justice to this story. Sure, it is a sneak-peek into Charlotte Brontë's beautiful protagonists, always the eye of the storm. They silently save the doomed hero from the fires raging around him, and maybe that was incentive enough for a first-time reader. But it took me a long time to finally getting around to reading Jane Eyre. 

I set out convinced that I would be peeling back the pages of this novel to find a love story at its center, to discover that love is really what it comes down to at the end of the day. And while I reveled in the propitious first encounters, wishful thinking, two people so tortured by their budding romance, and finally the paroxysms and promises of undying love, the bigger part of me was pleasantly surprised to recognise that this was only a small part of what makes Jane Eyre a classic. Jane's intense and growing devotion to Mr Rochester shares ground with the unwavering respect she has for herself and her principles. In her demeanour and decisions is the force of her faith in her beliefs, so much so that even on the precipice of inevitable adversity, it is indomitable and inductile. I think that in the face of problems and dilemmas, it is the acute quintessence of bravery to stand up for ourselves.

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myselt. [...] I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad - as I am now. Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be."

Charlotte Brontë was unquestionably ahead of her time, in building her protagonist so defiant of convention. Jane suffered a troubled, lovelorn, abused childhood. She was the exiled orphan girl, without role models or guardian angels, swimming against the current. And yet, she grew into a kind young individual, guided and anchored by her truth. But I wonder, couldn't her story have easily gone the other way? Don't traumatic pasts snake their way into adult lives and relationships and live like hidden monsters under the bed? It begs the question then, how much of who we are is really ingrained and inherent, and how much is molded by our experiences?  

We are acquainted with the other characters slowly but surely, with Brontë adding dimension and worldly attributes to each of them with progressing chapters. Edward Rochester starts off as the charming yet unlikely object of Jane's affections, with his intriguing conversations and playful merriment; but in what could only be called his trickery, deceit, nervous guilt, and reluctant admission of ruin did I find the final pieces of the puzzle. We have Jane's cousin John, on the one hand the perfect companion and everything she could've hoped to find in long-lost family, and on the other hand, a contemptuous, blind fanatic. They are as much part of what makes Jane Eyre as Jane herself.

I believe that a somewhat unexpected but nonetheless irrefutable consequence of the writing of Jane Eyre is the kindling of a discussion about the spectrum of mental illness and the lives ruined by faulty or ignorant diagnoses. The crazy woman in the attic inspired Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, regarded by many as a brilliant expression of feminism amid patriarchal dominance. Brontë tackles it as only a sub-story, a faceless villain. But she opens a world of interpretations and narratives with it. Her writing is fluid and immersive. Her allusions to possible impending misery, and hints at the presence of an unknown and mysterious supernatural element are mirrored in Villette. But they are at heart, both novels, massive shrines to very real human strength.