My Experience Reading Jane Eyre - Hard to put into words the emotions I felt.

This weekend I finished reading all five hundred and two pages of Jane Eyre. 

Bronte is contrarily spiritual, even supernatural, and often insensitive in her approach to human inclinations and proclivities to love and affection, connection and association of man to woman and man to nature. 

"She is brilliant to say the least."

She shines through the thickest and darkest tempest of clouds to deliver her message so much regarded as one of love and unfettered emotions of a demonstratively passionate woman for a man, who in return loves her deeply and with remorse, pain, anguish and self-decay and depravation of life merely because he is enslaved to his past. 

There is no way to put this, and of course this is no new discovery. The book is an emotional barrage directly hitting all the senses in complete unison, while the reader is dragged through the moors, falling, crying, disoriented, face on the ground feeling the chill of the wind and warmth of the earth against every cell of the body, wrapped in the thick “heather” of the moors. 

The book is beautifully crafted to be a strong and unwavering connection between the reader and its narrator. The reader is the constant third wheel that many times doesn’t want to get involved, but Jane(Bronte) is brilliant in bringing the reader into the mix and even in helping her make decisions. The reader oftentimes feels guilty for being part of such intimate conversations, as I often felt as she addressed me. 

She often came back to call me out on my understanding of her meanings, dialogues and discourse of the transpired, only to make me feel as if I were in the room, the silent, quiet and disoriented listener in the room observing and taking in the conversations and narrative only to be questioned later as a testament of the veracity of the tale being told. I felt compelled to revolt to speak back to Jane and let her know I was uncomfortable being in the room and wanted to make my exit and let her deal with her emotions and her demons, her discharges and barrage of emblematic conversations with others and those so emotionally charged with Mr. Rochester. 

This photo of North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is courtesy of TripAdvisor

I wanted to run, leave, flee and lose myself in the moors while they found tranquility and finality in their “tête-à-têtes”. I wanted to run unfettered and feel the gust of wind that oftentimes beat the window sills of her chamber and even feel the moon bathe me under the open, dark, and somber sky. I felt compelled to reach out to the lunatic and defend “my Jane” from the monster that had so much caused her grief and pain, agony and insensible discharges of tears and unfettered and unquantifiable remorse for having been so close to marrying Mr. Rochester.  

The guilt in my heart, the pain, the suffering, the intense dialogues and intense castigation descending from the heavens almost pushed me to the edge and made me quit my post, charged to me as the “reader”. 

"So be it, I must endure my post, my job, my task at hand to listen and be patient and lurk in the shadows as the third person in the room. And so I did!"

The intensity with which the book is written is astonishing, bar none! 

Be forewarned “reader”, that if you take on the charge to be Jane’s companion throughout the book, you will be questioned and you will be allowed to feel and share in the pain. So “en garde” yourself and be ready. I’ll leave you to warily take on the challenge.

~Frasier