Reading Reflection: Jane Eyre

I gave my list of 100 books to read to the students participating in our school book club, and they have elected to read and discuss books from that list that the majority of them have not yet read.

After working through Timothy Findley’s The Piano Man’s Daughter and Shakespeare’s Othello, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë was their next selection. This novel is an option for our school’s Grade 11 (University) course, and it’s a good fit for that, providing lots of opportunity for analysis.

For teachers interested in finding writing or essay topics for students, Jane Eyre offers numerous comparative possibilities. Mr. Rochester and St. John Eyre Rivers are perhaps the most obvious choice here:

• Mr. Rochester talks only of fairies, spirits, and a hedonistic past, while St. John Eyre Rivers speaks of God, heaven, the Bible, and the church.
• St. John is handsome; Mr. Rochester is ugly, older, and ultimately disfigured.
• with St. John, the weather is fair and the landscape offers beautiful pastoral scenery; with Mr. Rochester the weather and landscapes are grim and foreboding.
• of course, it is only with Mr. Rochester that Jane can be loved and be loving.

A rather lengthy novel, there is easily enough material here for students to explore any one of these points, or many more. If it’s perspective that you’re looking for, students could easily choose from psychoanalytical, social class, or gender. In these areas, Jane remains entirely relevant for today’s reader.

The students in the book club were very happy to read Jane Eyre, and it was fun to track their comprehension, predictions, and reactions:

• “Mr. Rochester is weird! He has such bizarre outbursts!”
• “Grace Poole is pretty freaky.”
• “I knew it couldn’t have been Grace! I knew there was more!”
• “Every time Mr. Rochester starts one of his three-page speeches, I fall asleep.”
• “I like Jane.”

One of the difficulties that we face today in trying to bring Victorian literature into the classroom, is the sheer size of the books. Not only are today’s readers less patient and more distracted than before, the curriculum itself has so much included that it can be difficult to squeeze in a 500-page Victorian novel. Furthermore, recent emphasis also seems to be on finding texts that will appeal directly to the male students. It can make Jane Eyre a tough sell for a novel unit. However, for the students who continue to choose Jane Eyre for their independent reading, this book rewards them richly.