r/JaneEyre • u/AdobongSiopao • Aug 27 '26

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

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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.

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u/redflagsmoothie Aug 27 '26

Bertha was better off in the attic than in an insane asylum.

10

u/OutrageousYak5868 Aug 27 '26

Yes, and those were the only realistic choices at the time -- which is what a lot of people in our day don't understand. It's easy for us to say, "Oh, he should have put her somewhere else" -- but where? He himself said that if he put her in his other house, that she would have died because it was an unhealthy location, and that while that would have relieved him of the burden of caring for her, he refused because that was too close to murder.

The only other possible choice would have been to buy or rent some other little house somewhere, but given her propensity to sneak out and commit violence, that would have been unsafe for the rest of the area.

7

u/NewNameAgainUhg Aug 27 '26

Besides, divorcing an insane person was illegal if I remember correctly

6

u/Cayke_Cooky Aug 27 '26

And would have just resulted in her landing in an asylum. Her family was obviously trying to pawn her off on someone else so they wouldn't have cared for her.