Modern Sensibilities in Jane Eyre

By Destini Baylis Adams

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me” is one of the most iconic lines from Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” reflecting her novel’s capability to transcend time and find salience even in the 21st century. It is a novel that remains popular even though society today differs greatly from how Brontë’s society lived in the Victorian era. Published in 1847, the novel was the first to make the protagonist’s moral and spiritual development a focal point by using first-person narration. While widely read by scholars and the general public, it is often argued that many plot elements should be interpreted through a Victorian lens. Society has progressed far beyond the Victorian England mindset on matters such as race, class, religion, and feminism, which the novel explores. Still, audiences willingly read “Jane Eyre” and help maintain its timeless status when other popular Victorian novels are not as widely read. “Jane Eyre”’s popularity to audiences in the twenty-first century is because though things have changed, there are still elements of the past present in the book that speak to modern sensibilities. 

“Jane Eyre” follows the titular character’s journey. The novel opens with Jane’s unhappy childhood at Gates Hall. Her aunt, Mrs. Sarah Reed, reluctantly adopted Jane because of her late husband’s wishes. Jane is physically and emotionally abused by her aunt and her cousins: Eliza, Georgiana, and, most intensely, by John Reed. Jane is vocal about her troubles to Mr. Brocklehurst, a clergyman, director, and treasurer of Lowood Institution, a school for poor orphaned girls. She is offered the opportunity to be educated at Lowood Institution. Eventually, the education she gets helps her become employed at Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with, and eventually marries, Edward Fairfax Rochester. 

Trauma and its effects are a modern thread readers can link to this novel.  In the novel’s first chapter, Jane is sitting in a window seat reading Bewick’s “History of English Birds” when John, her cousin, tortures her and aggressively reminds her of her low position at Gateshead Hall. “Take her to the red-room and lock her in there,” Mrs. Reed says when she sees the two fighting. Yet, Mrs. Reed doesn’t understand the situation’s full context. She was punishing Jane for acting in self-defense when John instigated the fight. This is the first instance of the family dynamics in Gateshead Hall and a look into Jane’s trauma. By sending Jane to the red-room, Mrs. Reed shows that she doesn’t care about Jane’s emotional well-being. For one night, Jane is locked in the chamber where her uncle, Mr. Reed, died nine years before the novel’s events. She faints after thinking that she sees his ghost. When Jane narrates her punishment, she says, “no severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room.” The aforementioned quote reflects her denial because she suffered a “prolonged bodily illness” mentally, but not physically. Jane’s denial reflects how the Victorian period viewed illness because physical health was a priority, yet mental health wasn’t. In some ways, denial regarding mental health is also seen today, but there is more of a push for people to start prioritizing their mental and physical health. The novel’s narrative is told after the events have occurred, so when Charlotte Brontë wrote, “…it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation to this day,” she described the psychological effects this incident had on Jane. Jane can logically understand that nothing physically was done to wound her when she was sent to the red-room. Yet, the psychological ramifications are present because she ruminates about it after Mrs. Reed and John Reed die and after she marries Mr. Rochester.

Trauma is just one modern element that mirrors today’s world in “Jane Eyre;” there is also a link between age gaps and power dynamics in relationships. When Mr. Rochester and Jane first become engaged in the novel, Mrs. Fairfax says, “Equality of position and fortune is often advisable in such cases; and there are twenty years of difference in your ages. He might almost be your father.”  This quote is interesting because significant age gaps were not as controversial back then as they are now. By having the elderly housekeeper mention the age difference between the two lovers, “Jane Eyre” is mindful of how those two are not on equal footing. Mr. Rochester is nearly 40 years old, while Jane is 19 years old throughout the plot and near 30 when she writes the autobiography. There are plot points that showcase the differences in their power dynamic. One instance is when Mr. Rochester disguises himself as a gypsy woman and acts as a fortune teller. As he tells Jane her fortune, he slowly reverts to his deep voice. “Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming? Did I dream still? The old woman’s voice had changed…,” Jane ponders as she figures out why there was a change in a fortune-teller’s voice. Eventually, “Mr. Rochester stepped out of his disguise.” Jane reproaches him for tricking her when she says, “…you have been talking nonsense to make me talk nonsense. It is scarcely fair, sir.” Jane is Mr. Rochester’s intellectual equal, but the tension in their dynamic lies in the fact that he is superior in both the social and economic context. Thus, he can play tricks on Jane and the rest of the staff because of his privileged status, but they can not do the same to him. Jane, however, is shown to be the moral superior of the two lovers when it is revealed that Mr. Rochester is already married to Bertha Mason. She leaves Thornfield Hall and faces homelessness for a short while because of the revelation of his pre-existing marriage at her wedding ceremony.

While the dynamics of Mr. Rochester and Jane, as well as the exploration of trauma, are well explored, there is one element of the novel that is somewhat hypocritical and involves the treatment of Bertha Mason. Bertha is a Creole woman from the West Indies that is locked in a secret room on the third floor at Thornfield Hall and taken care of by Grace Pool. “I would remind you of your lady’s existence, sir which the law recognises, if you do not,” says Mr. Briggs as he helps Bertha’s brother, Richard Mason, prevent Jane and Mr. Rochester’s wedding. There are hints of Bertha’s existence in the second volume, but when Jane inquires about strange instances, she is not told about Bertha. When Jane does learn of Bertha’s existence, she doesn’t seem sympathetic to Bertha’s trauma and pain, even though Bertha’s experience resembles her experiences in the red-room at Gateshead Hall. Instead, Jane listens when Mr. Rochester tells her, “Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste,” and leaves Thornfield Hall. While the pains and voices of women of color were overlooked during the novel’s writing, evidence of “Jane Eyre”’s legacy lies in the fact that later audiences attempted to give a voice to Bertha Mason. The most notable example is the novel “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Dominican-British author Jean Rhys. The novel serves as a prequel to “Jane Eyre.” It thus provides a voice to the ‘madwoman in the attic’ in a way that is authentic because the author of “Wide Sargasso Sea” was a woman of color, providing a voice for Bertha in a way that Charlotte Brontë couldn’t. In the grand scheme of Brontë’s novel, Bertha is a plot device to cause suspense, separate the lovers, and burn down Thornfield Hall. Audiences have invested in Jane as a character and her courtship with Mr. Rochester, so Bertha’s existence is viewed as an inconvenience rather than holistically because she appears very briefly in the novel. The brevity of Bertha’s presence is a part of the reason “Jane Eyre” is still beloved, whether someone has read “Wide Sargasso Sea” or not. Despite the poor depiction of a woman of color in the original source, the already sympathetic Jane is viewed as more likable because she chose to leave Mr. Rochester even though she loves him. His marriage to a creole woman is irrelevant, as Jane reacts to the situation the same way she would if Bertha was white. 

“Jane Eyre” proves that a novel can be timeless even if it doesn’t directly move with the current era. The human condition is explored within the novel, and where the novel falls short, the modern audiences that come after it can fill in the gaps. The relationship between “Jane Eyre” and modern sensibilities can be described as “[c]ircumstances knit themselves, fitted themselves, shot into order: the chain that had been lying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out straight,—every ring was perfect, the connection complete.” There are links in the story that connect with a modern audience, even those that criticize the novel. The criticism adds to the longevity of its existence, resulting in a novel all the better for it.