Jane Eyre: Book Review
Dear Reader…
Jane Eyre is one of those novels that never strays too far down into a rabbit hole that a reader must endure. It reads as a single cohesive unit, which is a breath of fresh air, and literally makes the read that much less stressful.
This is because… sometimes… when a book is too “all over the place,” which can happen when an author takes a long time to write a book, or goes off into random tangents in an effort to be creative… it can cause stress. I never felt this way or realized this until after I read Jane Eyre.
The book is a coming of age story, though some might consider it a romance. If you are a fan of coming of age stories, but don’t read them often, you may sometimes forget how powerful the genre can actually be when executed correctly (such as in David Copperfield - to name another classic with some similarities to this novel). Jane Eyre brings the genre front and center as a powerhouse a showcases how it can be used as a vehicle to inspire and move readers.
The story doesn’t waste time, and there is a clear plot and narrative full of surprising features of the story that keep the reader engaged throughout its entirety. Since it can also be an emotional rollercoaster of ride, one might even venture to say that the book is “never boring.”
Jane always makes the right decisions, which as some other reviewers have pointed out, is a gigantic breath of fresh air. She is strong willed, determined, and very independent in her thinking. The MC isn’t afraid to get some bruises along the way, which is one thing I think that differs from a story like David Copperfield (I am comparing the two because they were written in the same time period, are both coming of age stories, written in England… etc..). Sometimes as the reader, you don’t even know what you think would be the right decision until Jane Eyre makes it; which you then realize is exactly what you wished for the MC. One could even say that the reader learns a lot about themself in this way.
Jane Eyre was never a classic I intended to read. Many of the classic’s titles live in our heads as distant characters whose names we heard, but we know nothing about. In 2024, I told myself I was going to read more classics, and I am having fun as each of these characters get revealed to me. Jane Eyre is an inspirational novel which is very moving, and will have you thinking about your own relationships; especially the important ones.
