Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A Letter to Charlotte Brontë

Dear Charlotte,

I picked up your much celebrated book a couple of years ago, coincidentally, on your 191st birthday! I did spend a lot of sleepless nights, chewing grape flavoured gum, getting acquainted to your Jane, someone, you've been very proud of. The story of her life is quite amusing, rather sad, too and it did keep me hooked until the very end. How should I rate such a story?

Honestly, I had a higher rating before but blame it on Jean Rhys for writing Wide Sargasso Sea! That made me dock off more stars. I did plan a 4/5 at first.

Jane Eyre, for me, was your attempt to show your arch-rival, Jane Austen how strong female characters should be and how marriage, which forms the keynote of every Austen novel, shouldn't be all that a girl should look forward to.

Nice attempt, Charlotte, but I do have to be honest as your reader! Your Jane was anything but strong! Preachy, yes! Too good to be true and holier-than-thou, yes, but strong? I don't think so! You got carried away with your love for a fantastic fairy-tale romance in the end, dear friend!

Jane was just "virtuous" not strong. The very fact that she runs away once faced with Bertha and the true story behind her, disqualifies her as a strong ideal role model for young girls! Elizabeth Bennett had more spine than her any day and so did Agnes Grey though you did discourage Anne to write more.

I have to burst your bubble Charlotte. You are very famous, that's true, but Emily and Anne were better writers than you any given day! Emily's stories had spice and romance in the right mixture, Anne's characters were more realistic. Jane,however, was simply trying too hard! One can't blame her entirely because the fault was yours. You infused your own prejudices, your own bias into her. I wanted to love Jane better but I just couldn't. She was neither original nor true, not even to herself. None of your characters were. You stuck to the stereotypes, showing Bertha to be mad because she came out of the exotic land of dangerous perfumes, you made Rochester something similar to an unfeeling effigy combined with the Phantom of the Opera. The French were vain and arrogant, the Indians miserable and needy. Did no one tell you that only the British Imperialists alone though that way?
Did no one tell you to write with an open mind?

At least Jane Austen wrote about things she knew too well to ever go wrong with it and at least her heroines always grew as the novel progressed. Even Catherine Morland didn't remain as stupid as she was in the beginning!


There was so much scope in this story, so many possibilities. What's more, there were such beautiful moments, which, in a well-executed plot would have made history.

I write this letter with a lot of regret, Charlotte! I do wish you had not mixed who you were with what you wrote!

With a heavy heart, thus, I end my review.

Yours truly,

A Reader of the Classics

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