Jane Eyre

I wrote the introduction after not having read Jane Eyre for possibly fifty years. I was about twelve when I read it and the above shows the passionate feeling it left on my young mind. I would probably have harsher things to say about Mr Rochester now, with his asking Jane to marry him with her having no knowledge that this would be bigamous. In my mind she is the heroine whereas he is an also ran, although I'm sure Jane would not have him spoken of thus.
It is very interesting to be re-visiting Thornfield Hall and its occupants. Interesting to see the reactions of someone in their sixties who has not read the book for years. Indeed Rochester seems a strange choice for Jane. He is a very strange man, even given to playing the part of a transvestite. He is a most strange person and one wonders whom Charlotte Bronte was really portraying from her own life as a parson's daughter.

The book gives us a glimpse of life all those years ago, of the position of women then as secondary to men and of the way in which a poor girl had to make her way in the world.Indeed Jane's treatment as a governess was far superior to that of many another.

In our day Rochester and Jane would have lived happily together without marriage, but at that time it would have been scandalous, although those in Bohemian literary circles would even have got away with it then. Jane and Rochester have to wait for fate to lend a hand and bring them back together.

You will have to read the book to find out and I do not want to spoil it for you. Edward Rochester is a very difficult man and such men do not take easily to being handicapped. Much as he loved Jane I feel he would have resented having to depend on her so much. However Jane has a character of steel forged in the crucible of suffering. Her treatment by her cousins as the book opens and at Lowood school taught her to endure through difficulties. Yes, her love for Edward Rochester would have stood the test of time. Where a feebler wife would have stayed, in those days,but grown a shadow of herself, Jane would have continued to blossom beside the irascible love of her life.