'Jane Eyre'

I finished this book today. I finished it in my local Starbucks.

As I was ordering my drink, the cashier noticed my book and said that he'd started it months ago, but could never get into it. That Jane Eyre was on his reading list.

I told him it was unbelievably good, and I stand by this judgement. I have many preconceived and unfair notions of 19th century literature from female writers. I think Jane Austen is insanely overrated. Yet, Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte are different.

Jane's a different character. She's not some relatively well-off, misguided and quirky Victorian damsel, who always finds the right man that wholly understands her and will always take care of her. No, Jane is not like that all.

She's an orphan, who is verbally and emotionally abused and deprived by a loveless aunt. She's eventually cast off to a boarding school, where she is depressed and downtrodden. She survives a consumption outbreak and eventually learns the place of a student to become quite the scholar.

No, she's not saved from poverty. She becomes a governess for Mr. Rochester's ward, Adele. She does wind up falling with love with Mr. Rochester, but the wedding is stopped when it is learned that Rochester is already married. In fact, it's the crazy loon living in the attic (as if he really thought he'd get away this this?).

Eyre, however, is independent and doesn't take shit off anyone. She leaves, sans cash, belongings, and finds herself destitute and on her final leg before she happens upon her long-lost cousins.

Eyre is an independent woman only because she values education and scholarly pursuits and she's unafraid of hard work and finds no position too low for her, probably stemming from her position as an orphan.

All of this pays off in a way when she learns that her uncle died and left her some 20,000 pounds, which she graciously shares with her three cousins.

With the foundation of scholarly pursuit, goodness and hard work, she is able to support her cousins and, eventually, Rochester, who lost his eye sight and hand after a freak fire.

Eyre's a different breed because there's literally none like her in all of popular culture. The self-defining, independent woman. If she were born in 1966, Jane Eyre would have become an engineer or something.