Fan-them Diaries: I have a deep disdain for ‘Jane Eyre’

I hate “Jane Eyre.” Point blank period. It is one of the most chaotically unfeminist endings to a novel, and the beginning of the book gave me so much hope, only making matters worse.

Eyre is a young girl who is subjected to the mistreatment of her aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her wealthy cousins. She eventually gets sent to a boarding school and receives an education she later uses when she becomes a teacher at her school.  After being a teacher for a few years, she goes off to become a governess for  a young girl, Adele, who lives with a rich man, Mr. Rochester, at a place called Thornfield. 

Long story short, she falls in love with Rochester and is set to marry him when it is revealed that his wife, Bertha, is still alive and being held captive in the attic under the pretense that she is insane. Eyre, in order to marry Rochester, appeals to this in order to get Bertha sent to a psychiatric ward and live happily ever after. Ugh, and I thought Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” was bad. 

Let’s talk about it. 

First, everyone boasts about this Bronte classic as the pinnacle of good literature. I’m not one to judge people on their favorite book — with the exception of people who say “Moby Dick” is their favorite — but this seems like a hate crime to all women, specifically women who have historically been labeled as “insane” due to their “progressive ideals.”

Any fan of “American Horror Story” remembers the “Asylum” season, when the protagonist, Pepper, is in a mental hospital analyzing the experiences of patients. Well, did you know that was based on a real story? The real asylum, Pennhurst, had cottages specifically for women who were deemed “mentally ill,” when in reality, most were just ahead of their time in the 1930s. The mistreatment and violations of the Asylum could be a whole other story, but for the purposes of “Jane Eyre,” it poses a real life parallel to the inhumane treatment of Bertha. Even if Bertha did suffer from mental illness, it did not warrant being neglected as a human being and having her locked up. On Eyre’s part, someone who suffered abuse as a young girl, I was expecting her to stand up for Bertha and get her the help she needed, not follow obediently behind Rochester. 

That brings me to my second point: the regression of Eyre. 

At the beginning of the novel, young Eyre had conviction, wit and independence. She rebelled against her aunt, which made her a colorful character — even growing up at a boarding school did not dim Eyre’s creativity and intelligence. It was upon meeting Rochester that we see a character regression take place. Instead of thinking for herself, Eyre becomes a ghost of who she was, clouded by the idea of love and attempting to get the approval of a man. The thing that angers me the most is how people label the Eyre and Rochester love affair as a fairytale rather than what it was: a relationship between a young girl being coerced by an older man to go against her independent ideals and seek a conventional idea of happiness at the expense of another woman. 

Not even Taylor Swift can remedy this novel of a 19-year-old falling in love with a significantly older man and bending to his needs — a problem in itself where intellectual young women in literature end up with gross older men — and trust me, Dr. Swift tried. 

In “folklore,” Swift has two songs dedicated to Jane Eyre: “invisible string” and “mad woman.” 

In the book, Eyre professes her love of Rochester as a “thread” tying them together, saying “I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you.” 

Swift uses the idea of this “string” in her song “invisible string’’ which is about two lovers who find each other and feel like they were meant to be together, and explicitly states it in the lyric, “All along there was some invisible string tying you to me.” The song romanticizes the Rochester and Eyre love affair to be a serene match set by fate, when the reality of the circumstances is that this was a morphed love rooted in deception.

Swift, however, redeems herself with the underground hit, “mad woman.”Rooted in the “mad woman in the attic” stereotype, Swift comments on how women are historically reduced to being “crazy” to delegitimize them, writing, “Everytime you call me crazy, / I get more crazy, / What about that? / And when you say I seem angry, / I get more angry.” 

It’s impossible to not recognize how culturally significant “Jane Eyre” is today — just take Swift’s inspiration from the novel as an example of this. However, my quarrel is not with this simple truth, but rather with how the novel ended with a regressed, submissive — formerly independent — woman falling at the feet of a man willing to lock up his former wife because he thought she was “crazy.” 

Not only do I long for justice for Bertha, but also for Eyre, who deserved more than the paper-thin depth she was given by Bronte. But, I guess we can’t just blame Bronte for the societally rooted issue.  Historically female novelists were forced to marry off independent female protagonists and subject them to society in the 18th century. A sad reality. 

All this is to say that “Jane Eyre,” despite its chokehold on the canon, should not be above criticism. 

From me and my discontent,

Myriam

Myriam Alcala is a sophomore writing about literature and popular culture in their column, “Fan-them Diaries.” They are also an associate managing editor at the Daily Trojan.