Jane Eyre grows up

Rejoice, for this post means another picture of Michael Fassbender. I have heard some stupid mutterings that Fassbender is too handsome to play Mr Rochester. To this I say: shut up, don't you know not to look a gift horse in the mouth? Do you really want an ugly man playing him? The ugliest man ever?  Chris Moyles? Are his brows heavy enough for you? Is that what you want, Chris Moyles playing Mr Rochester? Do you want to look at Chris Moyles, poncing around in a smoking jacket and putting on a shit Yorkshire accent? No? Then fuck off.

Anyway, I promised that I would talk about Jane Eyre growing up and so I will. Reading on the tube today I came across a passage which is basically a perfect bridge between what I said in my last post and what I want to say here. Jane was still very much a young girl when I last spoke about her, she was terrified about sitting in the room of an inn on her own, doubtful that she has done the right thing in leaving what she knows behind, awkward and scared. Only a few months later, she's coming out with this:

My very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling, and that clamoured wildly. 'Oh comply!' it said. 'Think of his misery; his headlong nature.... soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? Or who will be injured by what you do?'

     Still indomitable was the reply: 'I care for myself.'

What makes her grow up is that she has learned that she is worthy of preservation and, more importantly, she does not need others to help her in this. She can look after herself because she cares for herself - and what she thinks of herself is far more important to Jane than what others think. Who could blame her, when all who are supposed to have supported her - her Aunt, her teachers and her fiance have turned out to be cruel, controlling and deceitful? Jane realises that true contentedness comes from what others have so far denied her: respect. She wishes to stay with Rochester more than anything in the world, but at the same time knows that doing so would make her incredibly unhappy: as a mistress, already deceived by Rochester and deceiving of the rest of the world, she could not respect herself.

So she runs away. She's so upset that she leaves her carpet bag on a coach, and then, instead of sticking to the road, flails all over the moors in the pissing rain. She's completely alone, friendless, possesionless, terrified, but she still presses on, as far away from Rochester as she can get. Her self-control at this point is frighteningly rigid - even begging a woman for a crust of bread and taking pig scraps from a young girl isn't enough to force her back.

She then meets the epitome of self-control and denial of pleasure: the stupidly named and even more stupidly behaving St John Rivers. St John is a rigid-faced, stiff-backed church minister who we come to realise is madly in love with the daughter of a local nobleman. She's madly in love with him, and there are no hurdles in their way apart from St John's solid refusal to allow himself to feel anything for her. She is an unsuitable wife for a minister and hence his principles would be compromised: he is the extreme result of what Jane is trying to achieve.

He realises that the apparantly laced up and passionless Jane would make the perfect wife for him and proposes. Luckily, Jane realises that he is probably the most boring man to have walked the earth, and, despite being tempted by the strength of his religious conviction, she turns him down, screaming that to marry him would kill her. She thinks back to an earlier event in her life:

I was almost as hard beset by him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another. I was a fool both times. To have yielded then would have been an error of principle; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment

 In a typically Bronte touch of the sublime, she hears Rochester's voice calling to her over the moors, and resolves to return to Thornfield and find what has become of him. Deciding to do this is when she really grows up: she realises her own feelings are worthy of her own respect: 'It was my time to assume ascendancy. My powers were in play, and in force.' She no longer cares that Rochester is the less worthy of her two suitors, or that he has gone against society's rules in attempting to marry her. She wants and needs him: this is all that matters.

A lot of commentator's I've been reading have made much of the fact that Jane and Rochester meet again in altered states: she is now independently wealthy, he is deformed and (relatively) poor. People think that this equalizes them, but I think that this is missing the point that, in their eyes, they were already equals. They scream this at each other before they first kiss, for heaven's sake. That they change and still have the same relationship afterwards only proves this further: true love.

Aaaaaaww...