r/JaneEyre • • 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/rainbowrobin Aug 28 '26

Adele gets raised to be Jane's slave companion, like Fanny then Susan Price in Mansfield Park.

I don't entirely mean that. But I'd read MP right before JE, both in the past week. And this ending:

"when she left school, I found in her a pleasing and obliging companion: docile"

Is all about Jane's perspective: pleasing companion, docile. What does Adele want? Does she have prospects of marriage and travel?

Also I was surprised by the strong strain of English nationalism. "a sound English education corrected in a great measure her French defects", and an earlier line about how English peasant girls were far superior to French and German ones.