** spoiler alert ** If you haven't read it and think you might, don't read this review, as it truly is a great book and filled with suspense and lots of surprises.

The book jacket claims that "Charlotte Bronte poured her contempt for the stifling conventions society imposed upon a woman's right to emotional and sexual fulfillment." On one hand, I can see how this "frank revelation of female character" may have been shocking or particularly well-developed for the time. The entire time I read it, I fantasized about the Bronte sisters and what their lives were like, living as they were together in England and writing under pseudonyms. Their romantic male characters are far from ideal, far from the knights in shining armor that one may assume for young women not ardently entrenched in outside society.

In this novel, Edward Rochester is the desire of Jane Eyre. He is an ugly, older man with a bombastic character and a whole lot of baggage. In fact, he has an insane wife locked up in his house, a secret he has kept from almost everyone, even Jane. Yet, they fall deeply in love, a love which is well-developed in the story and definitely the kind that made me go, "Awwwwww!" Quite delightful to read!

Finally, he asks her to marry him and, with their vows imminent, someone speaks up during the ceremony to oppose the match. The truth comes out about the wife and Jane makes the decision to leave Edward once and for all, in spite of her deep love for him and her compassion for the situation in which they are entrapped. He is exceedingly repentent, and by the time you hear his story, you don't feel nearly as bad for him as you want to.

All seems lost, and Bronte builds up a very Jane-Austin-type ending where I assumed Jane was going to end up with an austere, brilliant, and handsome missionary and minister who proposes to her and invites her to go to India with him. (This reminded me of "Sense and Sensibility" when Willoughby's girlfriend ends up with the Colonel.)

She can't leave, however, until she resolves once and for all to learn what has happened to her true love. It turns out his house has been burned down by the crazy wife who also died in the fire. He has been blinded and left even uglier than before, and now that she is free to marry him, they marry and live happily ever after.

How this book can be touted as a feminist masterpiece is beyond my own understanding. I found it to be an incredible spiritual treatise, and Jane and Edward's spiritual journeys are deep and applicable (oh, how I want to use the words "palpable and applicable" in the same sentence!). When Jane leaves Edward, refusing to give in to the temptation of living with a married Edward, she trusts God implicitly to care for her. Where she ends up is ultimately prosperous, both materially and emotionally. She gets reconnected with family she didn't know she had, and part of the very communication that led to her initial tragedy of the called-off wedding turns into the very thing that prospers her. When she does meet Edward again, she gives herself wholly to his service. She feels free to love him completely and serve him in his infirmities, which ultimately lessen as he regains some of his eyesight.

He, on the other hand, literally went through the fire, getting terribly humbled. Only when he completely gives himself to God does he have a second chance to find happiness, and this time, on the terms of the Christian faith which is the foundation of the story. (This is far from my own bias, incidentally. Charlotte Bronte is quite straightforward that salvation in Christ is the basis for the story and the characters in the story.) These characters were actually rather exemplary, if, in fact, that word means an example of someone who faces trials while staying true to ideals.

There's this whole idea that God's rules for behavior are stifling, limiting, terrible to deal with, especially from a feminist perspective...I think the underlying message of this book is that they are liberating and lead to a very unexpected joy. Not very feminist in the modern-day sense of the word!

In conclusion, the radical ideas in Jane Eyre are as follows:

1) A woman may, in fact, prefer the ugly manly-man over the sultry stud.

2) A woman may follow her ideals without having an emotional breakdown. She may even stay functional!

3) The Bible has an interesting and fulfilling role for women. (That's REALLY out there.)

4) Submitting to someone else may, in fact, be deeply gratifying and not the end of one's womanhood and self-empowerment as one knows it.