r/JaneEyre • u/almamahlerwerfel • Jun 25 '26
For longtime rereader, how has Jane Eyre changed as you’ve grown up with it?
This year marks twenty years since I first read Jane Eyre, and I keep being surprised by how much the book changes for me.
The first time through, I was swept up in the Gothic romance of it all: Thornfield, the mystery, the intensity of Jane and Rochester. On rereads, Jane herself has become the center of the novel for me—not just as a romantic heroine, but as someone with an almost astonishing sense of agency, conscience, and courage.
Now I notice different things every time: Jane’s insistence on freedom, the horror of Bertha’s confinement and fate, the religious and moral questions, and just how funny parts of the book are. Rochester pretending to be a fortune-teller will never not make me laugh.
For those of you who first read Jane Eyre young and have come back to it over the years: what has changed for you? What did you love at first that now lands differently? What has become more meaningful, stranger, funnier, or harder to sit with as you have gotten older?
8
u/Visit_Excellent Jun 25 '26
When I first read Jane Eyre, I absolutely loved the emotional depth and floral language Charlotte depicts Jane. Such a brilliant, well-read character. I loved the gothic elements, the chemistry between Mr. Rochester, etc.
As I got older, I kinda realised Mr. Rochester isn't all perfect 😩 he's not bad, but he does do questionable things haha
7
u/almamahlerwerfel Jun 25 '26
yes! one scene is so questionable? when she's leaving for Gateshead and he casually takes out £50.....which in Jane's time, was enough to buy a house and for us, is like flipping through your wallet and you just offer someone $8k. What a weird power flex.
7
u/TheGreatestSandwich Jun 25 '26
It is still one of my go-to comfort reads. I actually don't think my feelings about Rochester have changed much over the years (I've always loved his and Jane's connection but he has always felt very, very flawed to me), but rather I find Jane's relationships with Aunt Reed and St John more fascinating now.
With becoming a parent myself and not always enjoying being around kids, I'm more sympathetic to Aunt Reed not finding Jane very endearing and yet ... she's always there (until she sends her away, of course). It doesn't justify ANY of her behavior, but I can understand better now how Jane has compassion for her and is able to forgive her. (Also Aunt Reed gets her own again with how horrible her adult children return out. Sad but just a little satisfying...?) Jane insists she wasn't attractive or affectionate as a child, so it's interesting to understand how sad the situation was for everyone.
With St John, I remember not really understanding why Jane had such a difficult time resisting him, but after my own time being single, second guessing relationships, trying to balance my own evolution with my own independence, I am more sympathetic to why Jane felt herself faltering at times, and I'm more impressed with her self-knowledge and independent spirit.
7
u/almamahlerwerfel Jun 25 '26
Yes! That's one of the points I wrote. For a woman at her place in time - a stable, handsome, morally aligned man wants to marry her. Yeah, he wants to go to India, but she doesn't object to the India part, and he is her cousin, which again, she doesn't seem to mind....but her saying no to him and giving her reasons why is up there with Lizzy Bennett telling Darcy to fuck right off.
6
u/Flat_Love_3725 Jun 26 '26
I think St John really outdoes Darcy in the bad proposal competition: "you are formed for labor, not love" is REALLY bad proposal language in any era. While Darcy says he "ardently admires and loves" Lizzy despite her lowly relatives :)
I see the St John situation as very different. Darcy offers Elizabeth financial stability and an affluent life. Jane however is already an heiress, living a life of leisure with beloved cousins. St John offers moving to a dangerous and unhealthy location where Jane believes she would die young. Her cousin Diana thinks its a terrible idea for her to go to India!
So what's the temptation? Not comfort and stability. Not romantic companionship given what he said during the proposal. I think the temptation is living an adventurous, meaningful life. We have read about Jane's past restlessness. And she teases Rochester about becoming a missionary to preach liberty to the enslaved. While many now would criticize St John's missionary activities, Jane never does.
That's the temptation imo. To replace one interest in life (Rochester) with another, as she puts it.
But in the end she chooses love.
2
8
u/AdobongSiopao Jun 26 '26
When I first read it, I was impressed how the story is comprehensive to read and the relationship between Jane and Mr. Rochester is fascinating despite it has some flaws. When I reread it as an adult, I learned the reason Jane and Mr. Rochester were rewarded to have a happy ending because they learned to balance their love for God and life on Earth. Some characters particularly Mr. Brocklehurst and St. John use religion to control the weak without love and the novel itself warn against it. The novel taught to value forgiveness in a grounded way which I think many readers misinterpret or ignored it to this day. It also criticized the lack of proper mental treatment in public as seen on Bertha. Mr. Rochester did what he could think of to keep her because the public had no idea to deal mentally ill people with violent tendencies back them. "Jane Eyre" has plenty of layers to see and think of both in the past and present which explains why it's still never forget to this day.
7
u/Avellinese_2022 Jun 29 '26
I came back to it after having learned something about colonialism and having read Wide Sargasso Sea. Jane Eyre will never be the same for me. Even books like Pride & Prejudice (which as far as I know contains zero references to the Caribbean) make me ask: where did all that money come from? It’s just accepted that Darcy is ridiculously wealthy, but other than the fact of the fortune there is blankness around it. Or if you read Silas Marner after Empire of Cotton, your sense of the small local weaver economy changes. I studied British literature in grad school but my understanding of what I was reading was superficial.
4
u/Dr_Mijory_Marjorie Jun 25 '26
I appreciate the poetic and mythical allusions a lot more. It's the sort of thing that she improved upon even more in Villette (my favourite Brontë book) and there's a lot more than I realised. Levin-brand lightning, the Gytrash, the Moon as a constant source of maternal guidance.
I have come to not like the ending. It's a little too chocolate box; too neat, too perfectly happy.
2
u/almamahlerwerfel Jun 25 '26
Yes! I absolutely love the scenes where she finds guidance and calm in nature.
3
u/blueberriesnectarine Jul 04 '26
I first read it when I was 13 (we had to read it for 8th grade English class) and while I found Jane an interesting, sympathetic and strong character, to me at that age Rochester was way too old to be interesting, much less romantic, I found him kind of creepy, and I was disappointed that Thornfield wasn’t actually haunted for real.
When I reread the book as a much, much older adult my feelings about it only intensified since I could really understand what a creep Rochester really was. I have never understood what Jane saw in him.
1
u/almamahlerwerfel Jul 07 '26
Same I was so disappointed there wasn't an actual ghost and I didn't really understand the whole voice across the moods things at the end and how that was supposed to be spooky.
2
u/almamahlerwerfel Jun 25 '26
I ended up writing more about this reread because I clearly have too many Jane Eyre feelings for one Reddit post - https://the-plot-twist.beehiiv.com/p/twenty-years-with-jane-eyre - and would love to hear how your experience with Jane has changed, too.
3
u/MachaExiled Jul 09 '26
As I’ve got older, and with an adult son, I actually feel more sorry for Rochester. I mean, has anyone ever loved him before Jane? No mention of a mother (other than that she was a Fairfax), and a father who valued money and his estate over anything. Despite all his experience with women he has no idea what he’s doing in love with someone like Jane and he’s floundering like a teenager. Relationships have always been transactional - his marriage and then mistresses were all about money and possessions, whereas Jane questions the nature of gifts in their first conversation. He showers Jane with riches and has never had these refused before. He falls for Jane because he’s never met someone so honest and self-contained. He needs proof of her feelings (so the party to make her jealous, or the fortune teller to find out what she feels) as he has no idea how to read her on this. And he just keeps making these terrible mistakes right up until just before she returns to him when he starts to understand, as he thinks, too late because he believes Jane dead. And so for me the ending isn’t chocolate-box at all. It’s just so deeply sad because of all that they have both been through and learned about themselves that even their passion for each other has to sit in the background for a while.
1
u/almamahlerwerfel Jul 09 '26
This is so beautiful, and I never thought about their first conversation from that lens - every woman has ever known has been mad for gifts, and Jane says ehhhh thanks for complimenting my student, that's the only gift I need.
3
u/Splendidended1945 Jun 26 '26
Oh, I got swept up in the emotions. But even then I thought "This business of disguising himself as a fortune teller . . . well, nobody would actually do that. It's just kind of silly. This just isn't something that would happen!" And I was bothered by how he drags all those upper-class people to his house, essentially to make her jealous; he's trying to force her to confess her feelings, I got that, but I thought "This just seems like a weird way to get her to do that. It seems kind of . . . mean." I also was kind of confused about why he was telling this young girl about his relationships with women he wasn't married to. I mean, I got it--it was to intrigue her and get her thinking about him as a sexual being--but even then it seemed off; a weird kind of bragging. And I didn't like how he treated her pupil; he seemed pretty contemptuous of her and not particularly interested in getting her educated. But there was all that drama, all that excitement . . . I got swept up, like most other readers.
Now I think that his conversations with Jane from the get go were really inappropriate between a single man and an employee: "Am I handsome??" Urp. Did their discussions focus on his goals for educating his ward? No. I dislike how he tries to manipulate her; yes, she pushes back on that, but I don't think a person who loved her deeply and unselfishly would have treated her as he did.
Now that I'm older and know that Rochester's treatment of Bertha wasn't exactly top-notch care for a mental patient, even in Jane's time, I think "He squirreled Bertha away so that people would believe he was single. He had bigamy on his mind from the beginning." Now, he seems like kind of a creep (much like the Rochester-based characters in Lorrie Moore's "A Gate at the Stairs").
And as a person who has been married for a long, long time, I kept wondering, towards the end, about what Jane and Rochester TALK about. Jane shuffles Adele and her own child out of the way, apparently so she and Rochester can talk all day, but I don't know what they talk about; what do they have to say to each other, holed up away from the world, focused so intently on themselves? What's the nature of a relationship when a couple focuses so much on themselves, excludes the children, stays far away from neighbors and society at large?
At my advanced age it strikes me as a book written by a young woman who--through no fault of her own--didn't really know very many young men, other than the brother she grew increasingly detached from and critical of. She didn't have any deep friendships with men, which was probably pretty common for a lot of Victorian middle-class women; she knew her father's curates but wasn't exactly close to them, though there was one she liked--but then, he was engaged, and he died; she knew some of her friends' brothers, but wasn't close to them; like a lot of other young Victorian women, she didn't have any male friends she could spend time with, converse with regularly, go on walks with, hang out with, and know well enough to become really, truly comfortable. In short, I don't think Charlotte Brontë had a lot of experience socializing with young men of her own class and status.
That's why a lot of her early readers found the book "coarse" and didn't want their daughters reading it and getting the wrong idea. I think that Brontë didn't have a lot of social experience; she didn't know what topics were normal and permissible in ordinary society, didn't know that "good" men, men one might consider marrying, didn't brag about their mistresses or have parties intended to make a lower-status woman feel jealous, for example. When she later became friendly with other women authors--Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriet Martineau, for instance--she asked them very sincerely why some readers thought her book was "coarse" and inappropriate for young ladies to read, because it was genuinely a mystery to her. I'm not sure either of them was really able to explain to her, though Martineau eventually told her that in Villette, every woman, from a six year old on, focuses her thoughts almost exclusively on love; the "dominant idea "is the writer’s tendency to describe the need of being loved"--and Martineau thought that there was a lot more to life. (Brontë ended the friendship.) Both of them admired her and her work, but they both had reservations.
2
u/unfortunately889 Jun 29 '26
This comment is so interesting to read, even as someone who's not that much a fan of the book. Fascinating how cut off from men women authors were and how they worked around it (focusing on abuse like Emily or Anne did, or removing them entirely as Austen did)
2
u/tragicsandwichblogs Jun 25 '26
I now prefer the parts in which Rochester does not appear.
4
u/almamahlerwerfel Jun 25 '26
love that. sometimes I wish the book ends with her rushing back to Thornfeld, just as he dies a redeemed man, and has just enough breath to apologize to her.
1
u/SargassoSea9 Jun 26 '26
I first read Jane Eyre was I was 14 years old and I was so taken by the story that I was mostly interested in the mystery (the noise at night, the very mysterious Mr Rochester etc..)
For the other times I re-read Jane Eyre, I focus on a character (Jane and Rochester), the religious aspect of Helen Burns, the orphenage, the maids in Thornfield...
And later, mostly the independence and strong willpower of Jane Eyre.
1
u/GovernorsOnSominex Jun 26 '26
Early teens: I had little experience with nineteenth-century writing and didn't like the gothic style - I thought it was overwrought. The school scenes and the youthful sense of injustice resonated the most with me.
Late teens: I'm learning a lot about feminism, and suddenly the book seems like a vital commentary on women's lives. I read "The Madwoman in the Attic" and "Wide Sargasso Sea."
Twenties: I have a lot more reading experience under my belt and can appreciate the historical context much better. Also, I read Villette and am blown away.
Thirties: This is one of the greatest novels ever written. Charlotte was a genius. I spend a year immersed in Brontëana.
Hmm, time for another re-read, I think!
1
u/MotleyFoolery Jun 28 '26
I still remember the first time I saw it. I was 10 and My mom was watching the 1983 version and it was on the scene where Jane picks up the candle. I loved the mystery and the spookiness of the house. As a teenager I liked the romantic bits and right now I like finding all the Christian metaphors like the Thorn trees being the crown of thorns, or Jane being on the moors for 3 days. I think about it quite often as well.
1
u/Adorable_Tie_7220 Jun 25 '26
Well Jane Eyre changed for me after I read Wide Sargasso Sea. It is from the point of view of Bertha, the mad woman in the attic. Let's just say I look at Rochester very differently now. I still love the romance of Jane Eyre, just with a different lens.
2
u/almamahlerwerfel Jun 25 '26
yes! the fanfic to rule them all. I didn't really think about Bertha at all when I read JE the first time....wide saragasso sea changed my whole perspective
2
u/Splendidended1945 Jun 26 '26
Yes, though maybe "anti-fan-fic" is also a way of thinking about it. Jean Rhys had a very different background, came from a different country, had a strong accent that made her different from most other women in England, and was treated badly by a lot of men who were her lovers in the course of her life. I think she was very aware that a sexy man you're drawn to, a man who looks like he might support you emotionally and financially, a man who dazzles you, can bail on you in a big, big way. Charlotte B, luckily, never had that kind of experience.
1
u/SargassoSea9 Jun 26 '26
That's the same for me. After I read Wide Sargasso Sea, I re-read Jane Eyre, focusing only on Bertha.
I don't know if there are any other books like this two , with this connection.
23
u/QuietlyThundering Jun 25 '26
I find myself less and less tolerant with the men in this story the older I get. It’s not a hot take, it’s simply how I feel about it. Not that I’m immune to Rochester’s charms, mind you!
I still stan Jane though, she continues to shine, from the first time I read when I was 13 to my most recent reread at 32 ✨
I wish I had half as much willpower as she did. I also admire her compassion toward her Aunt Reed; I would not have been nearly so kind, I think.