Love in Jane Eyre is deceptively romantic; in actuality, the depiction of it is multilayered, arcane, and at times even psychoanalytical, which is how the love between Jane and Mr. Rochester must be observed in order to recognize the depth of her character. My reading of the novel unfolded a not as emotionally as psychologically driven recollection of Eyre’s life, it may be too Freudian of a lens to view such a novel, but her life seemed to me as a journey of an on-again, off-again restoration of parental love and acceptance. Many characters appear as matriarchal figures, and her search for them isn’t unclear as well. I must be excused for an another Freudian reading of her character, since this dissection feels like sacrilege of a major love in the literary tradition, but it’s hard to observe Rochester's character without taking into consideration the crucial aspect of himself, which is his age, as he is 20 years older than Jane, and not only so, but he is a figure of authority in many ways, at least to the extent which Jane’s integrity and strength of character would allow.
Charlotte Brontë writes with a feminist ambition, as much as she writes about a woman’s longing for love, she does so while appreciating her heroine’s strong-mindedness and independence. Writing about female desire is no ordinary literary endeavor as well, as the major part of the novel has a palpable sexual undertone, felt in the intensity and tension of Jane’s relationship with Rochester, but moreover metaphorically, in the occurrences and characters outside of herself. Bertha, who could easily be dismissed as a trivial gothic literary convention, is written with little depth and, as I see it, should be thought of only as a symbol of feminine sexuality, a fragment of not only protagonists repressed psyche but of women at large, one more aspect of the novel constituting Jane Eyre as a manifesto of feminine passion, both romantic and for life itself. ...more
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