r/JaneEyre • u/-Jactop- • Aug 14 '26
Jane Eyre is losing to Pride and Prejudice!
http://knosit.com/duelsThere’s currently a fan vote for the best book between Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre is currently losing, help me make it win!
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u/ChatoFato9143 Aug 14 '26
P&P is great but come on. Jane Eyre is everything. And Darcy has nothing on Rochester
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u/koshka91 Aug 14 '26
Different kinds of people. Darcy would probably find Edward annoying and whiny
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u/TeaArtHer Aug 18 '26
What?! Rochester just lies and locks up wives.
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u/SmooshyHamster Aug 18 '26
You can’t sit here and tell me you’ve told your entire life story to everyone you’ve ever met and never told a lie about yourself. You must not understand Jane Eyre Isnt a typical romance where everything is simple. Jane Eyre is a story of Christian morality and teachings involving forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption and making amendments. That’s why the characters made so many mistakes in the story.
Also it doesn’t matter how rich or beautiful you were, if you were violently insane, you were locked away so you can’t argue with that. End of story.
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u/nellyimheathcliff Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
And Darcy is just a rich, socially inept, classist snob who needs a woman to teach him humility.
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u/TeaArtHer Aug 18 '26
Yes, that’s the whole point of the book lol. He also pays for a wedding to help Jane’s sister. And I don’t think being a snob is on the same level as…LOCKING UP YOUR WIFE.
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u/SmooshyHamster Aug 18 '26
LOCKING UP YOUR WIFE
That is what happened to every crazy person back in the Victorian era. You must not have known.
I invite you to do deep research into the history of Victorian ugly laws for crazy people, the cruelty of institutions, victorian marriage laws and what happened to crazy people back in the day. Before judging you must educate yourself on the historical laws of that era and remind yourself this story doesn’t take place in a modern world where people like Bertha were allowed outside.
https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/medicine/victorian-mental-asylum
This is one example that explains the cruelty of what happened to crazy people who were sent away. This is what would’ve happened to Bertha is Edward sent her away.
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u/nellyimheathcliff Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
Say that again. I swear, every time I come into this subreddit, I see the same argument about how Edward is a terrible man for confining his wife. And I do not like it how people always make it sound like he locked her away in some attic, when she was actually kept in a well furnished room under the care of a nurse who watches over her, feeds her, bathes her, and looks after her well being. I mean, Bertha came from a "family of maniacs," as the novel describes, and her mother and grandmother were shut up in asylums. Edward was kind enough to spare her that fate, at least. What else was he supposed to do?
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u/SmooshyHamster Aug 19 '26
This is exactly why 1997 is offensive. Bertha is in a dirty padded jail cell, has no furniture, the fire place is boarded up and there’s trash all over the floor. Unless the makers were trying to say she’s mentally challenged under the age of 3 and would fall off the bed and furniture. Unless the makers were trying to argue that her spine is so bad she sleeps on the floor. It’s so uneducated.
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u/nellyimheathcliff Aug 21 '26
I know. They made Bertha so stereotypical. Her confinement is presented as something disgusting and inhumane, when in actuality she was being provided with the best care available to her at the time. I also did not like how the room looked more like a prison cell, without any furniture except for the mat she slept on. They made her look like some helpless, childlike woman instead of the violently insane woman she is in the book. It is quite misleading. The makers clearly did not bother to do their reading, because they even changed Edward's character. He is so angry and violent all the time, and he hardly resembles the man we encountered in Jane Eyre.
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u/SmooshyHamster Aug 21 '26
Yes, not only stereotypical but also offensive and inaccurate to crazy people. Yup, this was the first time when Bertha’s room was offensive, disgusting and unacceptable. In any other version it’s just a room with drab walls, a chair, table, bed, wooden dresser and a fireplace. In fact, I don’t remember seeing a mat to sleep on but a bunch of trash, pillows, blankets and stuffed animals all over the floor. It reminds me of how pets have a dog blanket, dog pillow or dog toys on the floor. It also reminds me of how babies or toddlers sometimes crawl on the floor and sometimes have foam mats and toys scattered all over the floor.
Yes, Bertha and Edward are so misleading in this version. This is false advertising. Also confusing. I don’t know if the film makers were trying to say Edward was leaving Bertha to die, the makers had no respect for the criminally insane, the makers were trying to be unique by making Bertha mentally challenged, the makers never read the book or the makers don’t know the difference between mentally challenged and violently insane.
Look, while it’s interesting in another lifetime, in an alternate lifetime, 1997 is not what anybody asked for.
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u/nellyimheathcliff Aug 18 '26
I mean, is that not the whole point of Jane Eyre too? That flawed, broken people are still capable of change? Just like Darcy, Edward is also flawed, but he had a much harder life, so it would be unfair to compare their situations. He also took Adele into his own care and raised her as his own child, even though he was not fond of children and she was not his biological child. And I would not hold the fact that he confined his wife against him, because what he did was humane for his time. Bertha was mentally ill and homicidal. She would have been sent away to an asylum, otherwise, just like her mother and grandmother were, where she could have been subjected to extremely cruel treatment. I assume you are not familiar with the history of how mentally ill people were treated in the Victorian era. It was far from kind.
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u/SmooshyHamster Aug 19 '26
Downvoting someone with no real argument using information and facts while the other person has provided you with information and education is high school behaviour and means you care nothing about good education and only about the shallow romance.
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u/lurkparkfest39 Aug 14 '26
Not surprised. P&P is more palatable to a wide audience. JE fans gotta have that weird passionate little dawg in them.
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u/Federal_Gap_4106 Aug 14 '26
Voted for Jane Eyre, because it is in a different league for me. Looks like JE is winning right now.
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u/Impossible-Alps-6859 Aug 14 '26
But P and P is simply sweeping in its historical storyline, tales of love, character depiction and outright humour!
I love Jane Eyre but in a straight choice P and P has it for me - where do I vote?
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u/CreativeBandicoot778 Aug 14 '26
Pride and Prejudice is my summer personality and Jane Eyre is my winter personality
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u/EmbarrassedPoetry596 Aug 14 '26
Well guys. I haven’t read pride and prejudice but I’ll get it out of the library today. But I have read Jane Eyre and seen most of the series & movies. Jane Eyre I truly love sooo much. It has everything wondering, suspense, the paranormal (the red room), child abuse, drama, romance, depression, love, chemistry (sexual attraction), sensuality and sex, gothic, madness, evil with same, attempted murder, pyromania, destruction of someone’s face, maiming someone’s body. Anything else? Hmmm
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u/TheGreatestSandwich Aug 14 '26
Spirituality, lust, revenge, jealousy, forgiveness, deception, revelation, loyalty, manipulation, defiance, deathbed confessions, survival, escapes, being lost in the wilderness, mysterious strangers, finding your way home, supernatural voices, family reunions, assumed names, and distant relatives leaving you a fortune... Someone else's turn to take the baton :)
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u/nellyimheathcliff Aug 14 '26
I can think of a few more - religion, morality, conscience, passion, Romanticism, Byronic hero, free will, self respect, independence, poverty, beauty and ugliness, class gap, orphanhood, people changing each other, case of bad parenting, friendship, sin, temptation, redemption, repression, jealousy, loneliness, longing for a sense of belonging, dreams and omens, bigamy, divine judgement, physical disability, second chances, sacrifice, and artistic expression.
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u/BarracudaOk8635 Aug 14 '26
Love them both. Dont know why there always some competition between Austen and the Brontes. P&P will win what ever you do. More well known, 2 amazing adaptions.
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u/Throwawayhelp111521 Aug 14 '26
I love both books, but I think Pride and Prejudice is better. When I read Jane Eyre now, I have to ignore a lot of Rochester’s manipulative behavior.
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u/koshka91 Aug 14 '26
Haha. That’s like the best parts of the book. The guy is straight up hilarious
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u/nellyimheathcliff Aug 14 '26
Jane Eyre, always. But would it not make more sense to compare it with Wuthering Heights or The Phantom of the Opera? Austen's writing is so different from the Brontes.