*Stani*'s Reviews > Jane Eyre

This is the one, guys. The one book of books that I cannot even count how many times I've read in my lifetime. The one I go back to, when nothing "reads" right for me. The one that feels like a good old friend that I love to meet time and time again.

It is definitely at the top of my top 10.

I love the vivid writing, seeing it through the eyes of Jane and her mis-adventures. She is just an incredible character. Smart and a bit wild. Independent, with live imagination, but rooted deeply in the present. She doesn't live in the clouds, she knows the harsh realities of life.

And then she falls in love with the grouchiest, most unpleasant man (Rochester) that has ever lived and loves him with her pure, sweet heart. He loves her back and everything seems lovely and dandy and wedding bells are ringing and Jane is staring at an eternal bliss with her love... and then he smashes it all into smithereens by not only being able to marry her, because his sick secret (which is a lunatic wife hidden in a tower - in the same house they both live in!!). The nerve. He also suggests that it's OK that the two of them live together in sin, with his wife still locked up in that awful tower! Dude, just NO.

Thankfully Jane has enough sense to flee from him, only to leave all her money and possessions behind and wander through the wild and rugged English countryside alone, hungry and penniless. And then she stumbles upon a cottage, where two lovely sisters live (they take Jane in), but they are actually her real cousins. YAY!

I don't enjoy Jane's time with her cousins as much, because of St. John, who is even worse man than Rochester is. He is just soooooo freaking dull. No passion, just work, work, work and more freaking work and sermons and work and sermons - you get the idea. And the idea that Jane would marry this bore is just simply too much. I'd rather be locked up in the tower with the crazy wife, than travel anywhere with St. John.

Anyways....Jane leaves the cottage to look for Rochester, only to find him blind and half mad with grief over Jane leaving him (serves him right, if you ask me). He reminds me of Beauty and the Beast here (him being the brute ol' Beast). She is his Belle and of course, she cannot do anything else but love him, bless her heart.

And so she gets her epic happy ending, even though it's with a guy, who needed a tons of work on his social skills, manners and the way he treats people (especially the ones he loves).

I am totally biased here, of course, but the writing is fab. Charlotte's beautiful storytelling just tugs on the heart strings and makes me fall in love with this book even more than I already was.