Lawrence, Patrice, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre; abridged for young readers, Walker Books, February 2024, 224 pp., RRP $17.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781529506624
I must confess it is many years since I read Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I am very much torn between thinking it’s wonderful to make the classics more accessible to young readers, and wondering if this will mean that the original texts will only be read by diehard English Lit nerds and academics.
And then there is the question of the relevance of this book for young readers in the twenty-first century. Because there are some very questionable attitudes and actions in this book.
The early chapters find Jane being treated like Cinderella by her Aunt and cousins after the death of her kind Uncle, who vowed to look after her when her parents died when she was a baby. Soon enough she is bundled off to the ghastly Lowood Institution, where she is treated even more cruelly. There are many scenes of deprivation, starvation, and corporal punishment.
But of course, it is her time as governess to Mr Rochester’s ward that most readers will remember. This is considered one of the great love stories of the English Canon. As a modern reader, it’s hard to see what Jane sees in Rochester. He is rude, abrasive, not much to look at and often ghosts her. And yet she falls in love with him. I don’t think I’m spoiling the plot to mention that he hides from Jane the fact that he has a poor, deranged wife locked in the attic, even as he tries to marry Jane. It is at this point that I would suggest that Mr Rochester is not a great catch!
Jane notes to herself that women are expected to be content to limit themselves to making puddings, knitting stockings, playing piano and embroidering bags. We are laughed at or condemned for wanting more. That is wrong. I know that I want more. I feel that there is much of the world I have yet to see. But at the end of the book she throws all these high ideals away because ‘reader, I married him’ and she spends the rest of her life looking after Rochester who is now blind and disabled!
Perhaps the book can be used as a prompt to discuss how attitudes have changed dramatically since its publication in 1847. Certainly, I hate to think that young girls would look at how Rochester treats Jane, and how she meekly accepts his behaviour, and see that as a romantic ideal!
Don’t get me wrong: the Bronte sisters were amazing women, who fought the societal expectations of the day to write and publish their books, and they should be celebrated. But their books need to be seen within the context of the times in which they lived, and that times have, indeed, changed!
Am I reviewing the original story or the adaptation? From what I can remember of the original text, Lawrence has done a splendid job of retaining the gothic tone, the importance of the landscape and weather, and the brooding architectural structures that are almost characters themselves. I think this is a fabulous abridgement, and it will certainly make the book accessible for readers from the age of 9 years and onwards.
Reviewed by Gaby Meares
