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Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre - by Kitty Israel
“I can
live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to
do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an
inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous
delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to
give.”
I should probably begin by explaining that I spent most of my
early twenties believing that I wasn’t a feminist. I couldn’t possibly be. I was far more conservative than Dorothy
Parker. I didn’t smoke cigars or eschew
dresses like Katharine Hepburn. And I
would definitely never put my own nudity on artistic display like Frida Kahlo. Nope.
Not a feminist. Couldn’t be.
I should probably also mention that Jane Eyre is my favorite novel.
Since reading it for the first time at fifteen, I felt a strong kinship
with its titular heroine. Her
intelligence and strong sense of personal conviction immediately resonated with
me. I identified with her feelings of
isolation amongst her peers and her desire for purpose beyond just what was
expected of her. I loved the complexity
of her character. But complex as she
was, Jane wasn’t a feminist, either.
After all, she was a governess—not exactly a groundbreaking female
profession. And she refused the man she
loved when she found out he was married to someone else—decidedly not Katharine
Hepburnesque. So not a feminist. Nope.
Couldn’t be.
It wasn’t until shortly after I graduated from college that my
perspective changed. I read a piece by
Adrienne Rich in which she described Jane
Eyre as being Charlotte Brontë’s “feminist manifesto.” That grabbed my attention. Rich hailed Brontë’s heroine as an
independent woman who forged her own path in life despite the demands placed
upon her. I suddenly realized that I
hadn’t fully understood Jane, and I hadn’t understood feminism, either.
Until that moment, I had always viewed Jane Eyre purely as a bildungsroman,
a “coming-of-age story,” but it was more than that. It was, in fact, a feminist story. It was the story of a woman who remained true
to herself and her ideals, despite all else; a woman who believed all humans
had equal worth.
Suddenly, it clicked with me.
I saw Jane as a young girl confronting her domineering aunt for her
unjust treatment. I saw Jane as a
student at Lowood, determined to learn and excel in spite of her poor
circumstances. I saw her as a young
woman, yearning for new experiences beyond the school where she grew up, and I
felt her excitement mingled with trepidation when she said, “I remembered that
the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations
and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to
seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.”
I saw Jane set out on her own to experience the world on her terms. And as her notorious romance with Mr.
Rochester unfolded, I was filled anew with admiration when she exerted her
independence, refusing to be treated as his inferior: “I am no bird, and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an
independent will, which I now exert to leave you.”
Perhaps most importantly, I saw her relationships with both Rochester
and St. John with fresh eyes. In a time
when women were measured based upon the success of their marriages, Jane
realized that no relationship was worth compromising her integrity. She would not settle for being someone’s mistress,
nor would she bind herself to a loveless marriage and a life of subservience as
a missionary in India. Throughout her
journey, Jane is guided by one constant: Her own conscience. Despite what others demand of her, she
remains faithful to her own values. In
Brontë’s words: “Strong wind,
earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that
still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.”
Jane Eyre taught me my
greatest lesson in feminism: I may not be a Dorothy, Katharine, or a Frida, but
I can be a me. And that’s enough.
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