Review: Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1846; this edition Penguin 2003)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10210.Jane_Eyre?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=oaBrnY74RN&rank=1

Were anyone to submit this in 2024, we would undoubtedly critique it. The wordiness verging on the pompous. The miserable orphanhood and the sojourn with the Rivers family are far too long. The mad first wife in the attic would be criticised as a clichéed trope if it weren’t that Brontë invented this trope.
It is of its time, and as such, is fantastic. The powerful emotions still speak to us, and the intricate exposition of what is and is not true love are as relevant as they have ever been. We cannot help but rejoice at the famous line: ‘Reader, I married him.’
The erudition is such that we just don’t see in modern works. Where have we ever seen the metaphor (ok, simile) ‘like Nebuchadnezzar in the fields’? I don’t even care that I don’t know what it means—I’m too poorly educated to catch the reference—it’s just so sumptuous.
We stand on the shoulders of giants; so, for all they have to teach us, we must read ‘the classics’.