Aria Maher's Reviews > Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is one of those classics that everybody knows something about. I had an extremely vague idea of the story, and had probably read spoilers online at some point (although is is possible to spoil a classic? I'm not sure...) but this book was definitely much different than I expected.

Jane Eyre is actually a very well developed character, to the point where she seems like a completely real person, and the other characters in the book, while being well written, read more like, well... characters from a book. Reading this book feels much more like reading somebody's actual diary than reading a novel. Our main character, narrating these events in the form of a memoir of her life, can do little more than provide sketches of the other people in her life. Mr. Rochester, Mrs. Reed, St. John Rivers, they seem less like real people and more like characters translated through the eyes of Jane Eyre onto a page in her diary.

I think the reason that this book is a classic is clear; Charlotte Bronte is able to so deftly craft her main character's voice and mannerisms that we feel as if we must actually be reading the diary or memoir of a real person. I definitely enjoyed this book.