Red Room, an online community for writers, has asked writers to blog this week about our favorite love stories, why we loved them and what we learned from them. This was tough for me because I had too many to choose from. My first instinct was to go with Lady Chatterley's Lover because I fell completely in love with Oliver Mellors when I first read it. However, I realized that, while I loved him, I really didn't like Constance very much and I did get a little annoyed with him for getting involved with such a ninny. So, after much consideration, I decided that the first novel I ever fell totally in love with was also the most enduring of love stories in my mind, Jane Eyre.
I think was about 12 or 13 the first time I read it and I read it half a dozen times during high school. It was my go-to book when I needed to escape the world. A large part of this was because I loved Rochester and a large part of the reason I loved Rochester was because he was so thoroughly imperfect. Plus I admired Jane. She was plucky and strong despite what she had endured as a child-- or perhaps because of it. But mostly I loved Rochester for loving her – because she was plain and little and had nothing.
Rochester himself is not a handsome man but he is very rich. He is gruff and cranky and irritable – and sometimes not very nice. He is hard to understand at times. He is rude and dismissive toward Adele, his little ward that Jane is hired to care for, and yet he brings her pretty dresses and the sweets and sparkly things she adores. He, of course, has a very crazy wife who lives in the tower and, though it seems he is cruel to keep her locked up, when we realize how very crazy she is the fact that he keeps her at home and not in some godawful asylum redeems him. And he toys with Jane's feelings but we finally realize that is because he is so unsure of his own feelings and, though he is ardently desired by local beauties, it is Jane he really loves.
Jane, of course, is, in her own words “little, plain and poor” but is filled with passion and a personal dignity that sweeps Rochester away.
Naturally, because this is a romantic novel, the two lovers have to go through a lot before they finally come together. And by the time that happens, Jane is, if not rich, at least well to do. Rochester is a broken man – blind and has lost one hand. But Jane doesn't care. She could have had the young, handsome St. John but it is Rochester she loves and she cannot settle for less.
Now, as a writer, I can see how much Rochester has influenced many of the male characters I write about – strong men who have been wounded by life, either physically or emotionally or both.
I think Jane and Rochester are an admirable couple. Though their circumstances could not be more different, life has handed both of them some significant challenges. They deal with them in their own ways and, though both of them have the option to marry someone more suitable to their station in life, having once felt real love for someone – each other – they cannot settle for less. Mostly I learned that real love is blind to physical imperfections. Rochester looks at Jane and does not see that she is “little, plain and poor”, he sees her character and her dignity. Jane looks at Rochester and doesn't see him as gruff and brutish, she sees the wounded man inside. They are, by any standards, a beautiful couple.
It seems every few years a new film is made based on the novel Jane Eyre and I've seen a lot of them. Of course the performers in these films are rarely true to the descriptions in the book. Zelah Clarke in the BBC serialized version is probably closest to my idea of what Jane looked like though Timothy Dalton was far too handsome for Rochester. Carian Hinds was probably the most ideal Rochester. Of course, I love William Hurt so that version was wonderful just because I love William Hurt.
But no screen can match the movie in my head when I read and the Rochester there – as well as the Jane there – is perfect and has formed much of what I think of as the ideal lover.
So, Red Room, I pick Jane Eyre. I think it is a good choice.
Thanks for reading.
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