Tolog Review: Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte
reviewed by Jia Yu Xin

Why is freedom and equality so important to people? How can love without equality or freedom influence people’s lives? I believe many people do not have the answers in their mind. The classical novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte can help the reader understand these complicated questions in a unique way.

The gothic fiction novel Jane Eyre is a first person narrative, structured in a mythology tale to describe the life of Jane Eyre. She was a poor British orphan girl who grew up in a wicked environment. Jane experienced hardship from her aunt and cousins at Gateshead Hall and was later sent to the Lowood School for education but experienced more oppressions. Her childhood would be expressed as the scorch from hell.

Although Jane had such an unpleasant early life, she was never depressed or decided to give up aspiring for freedom and equality; instead, she relied on her unflinching personality. She overcame the evolution of purgatory after she left Lowood. Jane became a tutor at Thornfield Hall and she accidently met Edward Rochester. He was always teasing Jane, which made Jane fell so annoyed. However, it brought them closer and soon the two fell in love. Contrasting to other marriages during 19th century, Jane found her true love Rochester who offered her freedom and dignity in the relationship. Ultimately, she received a better life and reached a superior realm of spirituality.

Charlotte Bronte wrote the novel with a very outstanding writing technique. The author describes the struggling love and the sceneries in a perspective of artist. She creates the scene of death, mystery, and nightmare to set off the mood of the main characters. Jane Eyre constantly uses the psychological description in the novel to portray the characters. It comprises numerous quotes from epic poetry, historical illusions, and other literatures transforming an ordinary romantic novel to have special mythology connotation and more classical significance. Furthermore, the main characters were using form of poetry to communicate and express their love and feelings to each other.

Readers can notice that Jane Eyre was not simply a fiction novel, but more spiritually inspired after finishing the book. The author used two extremely different loving experiences of Rochester to clarify the importance of keeping freedom and dignity during a relationship. Jane expresses her views, as true love should offer equality and freedom but not restricting each other based on gender or wealth. The novel successfully created a character that is courageous, and persistent on her thoughts. She conquered her struggles along the way seeking for equality that reflects the truth in actual life during the 19th century. This story of triumph is still applicable to people in present day.