Jane Eyre on being young

I'm planning on seeing the new Jane Eyre adaptation soon, so I picked up the actual thing again last week. I last read it for a university course, and distinctly remember, on one hot summer's afternoon, schleping up to my room, picking it off my desk and rolling my eyes at being assigned yet another black covered, unoriginally oil-painting-adorned classic.

I finished Jane Eyre the next day. My poor old rolling eyes were open at three in the morning. I think my ridiculous prejudices helped gobsmack me really. I expected it to be old-fashioned, perhaps a little Gothic round the edges, but ultimately something I would never be able to identify with. 

Of course, Jane Eyre is fucking fantastic because it's the complete opposite. Jane is one of the most familiar characters I've ever encountered in literature. It's not just that I think I have things in common with her (a habit of speaking without thinking, an ability to let proper grudges go, a reluctant and uncomprehending respect for nice, pure people) which makes me say so: it's that Bronte crafted one of the most accurate portraits of a young woman - or indeed, a young person - that I've ever read. Jane makes Holden Caulfield look like a real phoney. If you can't identify with her you are either pre-pubescent or a plastic, possibly evil, automaton.

It's not the angst, or the brave spirit, or the wish to please, or the romantic sensibility, or the ambition to better herself, or the quite frankly odd paintings, or the fancying completely unsuitable people which make Jane such a good teenage portrait - although all of these are, of course, very teen. It's the fear. This passage could have been written by a million eighteen year olds on their first day away from home:

'It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quited. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it: but then the throb of fear disturbs it: and fear with me became predominant.'

Not just the fear itself though: it's the overcoming it. Childhood is about being so innocent you're scared of either nothing or everything. Youth is being scared of the things you know are very real, and facing them. Jane finds Rochester, moors her boat and is promptly cut adrift once more by the terrifying and most definitely adult spectacle in the attic. She's put up with a lot in her life, has our Jane, and it's not immediately obvious, loving Rochester as she does that her decision will be to not put up with something else. Running away from Rochester - her 'intolerable duty' is her first foray into the adult word as well as her rejection of it.

I want to write more, but I think it might be best, and might actually make me write something else, if I talk about how Jane Eyre grows up, tomorrow.

Also, tomorrow I will post another picture of Michael Fassbender.