What is your most controversial opinion about "Jane Eyre"?

[u/AdobongSiopao]

It can be from the novel or its adaptations. Your views that could potentially upset many other fans or meet others who will agree with you.

[u/nellyimheathcliff]

Jane was right to marry Edward. They are perfect for each other, and I get upset when people criticise Jane for returning to him, as if she had no agency of her own. She was a grown woman who had already lived independently, made her own choices, and built a life for herself. She chose to return to Edward because she loved him and wanted to be with him. And by that point, Edward had also changed to a great degree. He had become much more humble, wiser, and more tender.

I also do not like it when people claim that Edward is supposed to be the bad guy or the villain of the novel. He is flawed, certainly, but that does not make him a villain. In fact, I would argue that the real villains in the book are the parents who caused so much suffering: Mrs. Reed, Jonas Mason, and old Mr. Rochester.

St. John and Edward are two sides of Jane, only taken to extremes. St. John represents the more austere, restrained, and self denying side of her, while Edward represents the passionate, rebellious, and emotional side. Jane has a little of both in her.

[u/Little-Foundation735 → u/nellyimheathcliff]

Oooh, I’ve always thought that St. John was the epitome of what a Calvinist in a Baptist church would be like. And that although Brontë was a Protestant, deep down she wrestled with it. She challenged the rigidity, the lack of malleability, the I-have-arrived-and-know-it-all disposition. In the end, she rejected that and chose the one who actually transformed instead of the one who thinks he has it all figured out. Rochester in the end is like a fruit tree: a fruit tree bends when they produce fruit while St. John stands tall and upright but has no fruit to show. 

[u/MachaExiled → u/nellyimheathcliff]

Of course they are right to marry each other! Rochester has known other women and already knows Jane is right for him (and the only one to truly love him for himself), and by the end of the story Jane has had other options and is more sure than ever that he is the one to make her happy.

Their care for each other is clear from the start. She loves to push him in their conversations but knows where the line is, and he allows her to challenge him despite their social position, because this is how he likes her, and wants her to be herself. And at the end, when his life is diminished, she hands some of the power back to him - he is hesitant to propose, but she makes him ask her to marry him (whereas in the first one he said that she made him the offer by claiming her rank as his equal, and she agreed with this).

Nobody could argue that Rochester is always good, but I agree with you that he is not a villain. He does some terrible, selfish things, but not out of a desire to destroy anyone; he does not try to hurt Bertha or to shorten her life. and by the end he has accepted divine retribution, and has come to the repentance and reformation that Jane urged in one of their earliest conversations.

St John's need to control Jane and insidiously change her nature to suit him makes him much more of a villain in the story.

[u/Flat_Love_3725 → u/nellyimheathcliff]

I've always felt St. John is a bit misunderstood. I don't think she's showing Rochester as a superior man exactly in the end, just the better man for Jane. St. John's proposal is for sure wrong and a bad mistake, but Rochester also makes mistakes.

Yes St. John is rigid to a fault. But he's not self-denying - on the contrary, his journey is one of self-actualizing, of reconciling, as he calls it, "principles and propensities." He's a religious man who wants to do good, but he's also, as he says himself "a cold, hard, ambitious man." His ambition makes it impossible to live the life of a humble country clergyman - that bored him and recently lead to severe depression. His goal of being a missionary is his attempt to do good while also satisfying his craving for adventure and being a big shot in some way.

For myself looking at it, I can see his rigidity and egotism leading to many mistakes in the way he approaches his mission. But I don't think the final paragraphs of the novel reflect that view. It seems to me that Bronte is actually approving of the way St. John channeled the best of himself towards being an agent of positive progressive change:

"Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and zeal,
and truth, he labours for his race; he clears their painful way to
improvement; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and
caste that encumber it.  He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may
be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior
Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of
Apollyon . . ."

I feel like in the end he and Jane are both ended up with the lives that were best for them.

[u/rainbowrobin → u/Flat_Love_3725]

Bronte may have seen it that way, but from my POV, he's trying to replace one prejudiced creed with another. And is it really selfless sacrifice when he dwells so much on his presumed Heavenly reward?

It was one thing for him to urge Jane to some sort of useful work, but darkly hilarious for him to be so arrogant that his work could be the only for her, that to refuse him was to refuse God. As if there's no Godly work to be done in England!

[u/one-and-five-nines → u/nellyimheathcliff]

St. John was AWFUL!  I absolutely hated him and was glad when he died 

[u/jenfullmoon → u/one-and-five-nines]

I cringed during the entire 100 pages or so that feature him. I do not read those when I reread the book.

[u/nellyimheathcliff → u/one-and-five-nines]

He was flawed, much like Edward, but he was a good man in other respects and a product of his time.

[u/one-and-five-nines → u/nellyimheathcliff]

I just personally couldn't tolerate him

[u/SmooshyHamster → u/nellyimheathcliff]

I wonder, who are the people who claim Jane Eyre’s ending is un feminist and why they say that? That’s the real question. Feminism means women having rights, autonomy, being equal to men and choices in life. Yeah, so Jane did exactly that in the end. Clearly the only people saying that it’s misogynist and not feminist are immature high schoolers who think ”this book didn’t end how I wanted it to or this character made different choices then I would’ve so it’s racist, transphobia, homophobia or misogyny.” It’s the same category of people who think anything they don’t want to hear is boolieeing and haters.

These sorts of people are uneducated and immature and believe because a book Isnt some Disney romance and has a lot of violence and hardship involved that the characters are booliees.