Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I love this novel, and I love it even better on this reread. One of my favorite novels is Wuthering Heights, and both times I've read Jane Eyre I've been struck by the similarities I see between the sisters' writing (which isn't surprising since they spent so much time writing collaboratively about their imaginary world). Jane Eyre is so modern to me--the first person narrator, the focus on the psychology and motivation of characters, the lack of superfluous description. Dickens writes about orphans and poor people and the disadvantaged, and although I love Dickens, I never once forget that I'm reading a novel written more than a hundred years ago when I read, say, Oliver Twist. When Bronte writes about the same topics in Jane Eyre, they are biting and harrowing and feel contemporary to me in a way that many Victorian novels do not. Wuthering Heights has this modern quality about it as well. The way Jane and Rochester speak to each other--prickly and teasing and sarcastic, one zinger after another--also strikes me as a particularly modern way of writing dialogue. Love this book, love that Jane gets a happy ending, love that she finds a home and a family.



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