Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
It’s highly unlikely a person makes it through life with their heart in one piece. Indeed literature is replete with heartbreak, all due to failed romance, death, or betrayal. But it also reminds us that broken hearts mend.
My book of the month is Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and its theme: lost yet redeemable love, which refuses to give up.
When the marriage ceremony of Jane and Mr. Rochester is interrupted by the untimely announcement that the latter already has a wife, Jane is so stunned she can’t even cry. She says: “I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river.” Still she forgives Rochester when he shows his remorse and inextinguishable love for her.
But at the same time her better judgement knows that regardless of the stirring of her feelings, she has to let him go. And here’s the reversal; it’s his turn to experience heartbreak. He laments: “Jane!...Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another?”
Take a breath. All is not lost. I promise. Jane secures her Byronic hero in the end, on her own terms, and with her self-respect intact.
By the novel’s end, Mr. Rochester is in ruins, while Jane has inherited a fortune. They meet again, but on equal ground.
So here’s what the 21st century woman can take-away from this beloved 19th century literary heroine: Never compromise your integrity while attempting to mend a broken heart. When love is lost, it’s okay to be sad. It’s also natural to want the pain to end. Nevertheless, it’s unwise to sacrifice yourself foolishly, even impulsively, while trying to do so.
Don’t worry. Love will come again. Perhaps a new love–or–the same love, but under different circumstances.
Or maybe, you may find you’re better off on your own, like Etta, the main character in January’s story.
Click on the links below for my other book recommendations, which springboard off Jane Eyre. Each takes a secondary character from the novel and fashions a story, in their point of view.
Mr. Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker is told from, well, Mr. Rochester’s point of view. Shoemaker unpacks the mystery of what makes this harsh yet passionate man tick.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is narrated from the perspective of Mr. Rochester’s wife, Antoinette Cosway Mason, and we learn the tragic story hidden behind this sensual and guarded woman.
