Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Bronte

[Berls]

This review appeared first at Fantasy is More Fun.

I think there's always a little trepidation when you embark for the first time on a book that you loved as a child. Will it live up to the memory? Were your childhood sensibilities fine tuned enough to know if you were reading absolute crap?

When I started rereading Jane Eyre, I only had a smidgen of those fears though. I mean it is a classic for a reason, right? And I had just finished reading Becoming Jane Eyre and it had excited in me an urge to revisit Jane and Mr. Rochester. So I went to Librivox to see if I could find a good, free audio version for my reread.

I struck gold! They had many recordings and one just so happened to be a dramatic performance with a different voice for every single character! The reading of the cast took a good two or three minutes (which I fast forwarded of course lol). The narrator's voice (Eden Rea-Hedrick) and the voice of Jane Eyre (Elizabeth Barr) were fantastic! Since that's the voice I heard most, its the one most worth mentioning - but everyone was really good. There were brief moments where the audio itself wasn't great - you could tell they had patched it and not everyone had equally good microphones. But this was the minority of the time - and really, how can I complain when this was a free dramatic performance?

The audio was not the only treat, though. Last time I read Jane Eyre, I was 14. I remember that I devoured it, reading it in one night. I grew a bit tired toward the end, and I remember that bit not being my favorite. But oh, how I loved Jane and Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester!

As an adult, I marvel at Jane Eyre, or Charlotte Brontë really. I see much more clearly now why this was so well received and why it remains a classic. The sophistication with which Charlotte Brontë weaves scriptural allusions, references to other great pieces of literature, social commentary, political commentary, and even religious commentary blows my mind. Now that I understand the England she wrote in, I realize Charlotte was a very educated, socially aware and opinionated woman - and tenacious enough to write her views into a novel, even if she did hide behind a pen name for a while.

Adding to that, the insights into her life that I gleamed from reading Becoming Jane Eyre, made reading Jane Eyre so exciting. I was reminded at every turn of things in her life and saw how they influenced and inspired the story she wrote.

If you haven't read it yet, I seriously recommend Jane Eyre. It's the story of a plane Jane orphan with a very difficult life, searching for her place in the world and love - familial love, friendly love and even romantic love eventually. What's not to love?