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Males, can you please explain yourselves?

When the class discussed this semester's book selection, I clearly remembered negative reactions and cries of resistance towards the novel Jane Eyre. Having never read the book, I could hardly voice an opinion, but I was predisposed to a negative response upon reading the first few pages. Since the outcries voiced were mostly expressed by the males in our class, I was expecting some sappy romance novel of vintage Fabio proportions. Surprisingly enough, though easier to read, I found it annoyingly similar to Jude the Obscure and vaguely paralleled with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. After the first hundred pages, I wondered whether the only reason this book was resisted was because of the female protagonist. Could somebody be a little more specific? I understand that there will be some romance in the novel, but there was love in both Jude and Portrait. Is it the whispy, easy to digest, sing-song like writing style that almost reads like a trial and tribulations romance script destined to be the next dinner-date movie? Is it the obvious feminist realization? Or is it simply because everybody else has already read this book in high school and has seen it overdone in countless television and cinematic recreations?

Whatever the case, I found a lot of the book all too familiar. Literature has often gone "[o]ver the path of the poor orphan child," and for the beginning of the book I was quite annoyed by the bit (17). Child protagonists are all too used to oppression by ruthless, greedy relations who are charged with the care of the child against their will. Usually an aunt or an uncle, (Aunt in the case of the Jude and Jane), the actual children of the relations are grossly pampered, and the orphan is unjustly abused. Jane is "excluded by class and money," as well as by blood, and she keenly follows the exile motif we have seen in nearly everything we have read this semester (Bump, 389). Like The French Lieutenant's Woman, Jane's exile leads her to be taken in by charity, where "benevolent-minded ladies and gentleman" not unlike Mrs. Poulteney donate money in the interest of God and soul-saving (42). Just as Sarah saw the blatant hypocrisy in the religious elite, the reader feels the injustices of Mr. Brocklhurst's demands for the orphans' "shamefacedness and sobriety" while his relations are "splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs. (54)" Even the eerily intelligent and exacting remarks Jane hurls towards Mrs. Reeds isn't anything new, as we have seen Sarah keenly make such remarks to Mrs. Poultney upon Sarah's dismissal. If I were to glean something groundbreaking in this book, it would be the simple fact that Jane's sexuality hasn't been utilized perversely in the least. She is not manipulative, sneaky, or anything but straightforward and honest. The biggest insult to her character is the charge that "this girl is--- a liar," one that completely destroys Jane and makes her feel as if she can never go on (56). Though Sarah, too, was falsely accused, she never spoke up for herself, and this a marked difference between Jane who is sure to explain herself (thank you!) I appreciate Jane's frank reflections and honest attitude, and I find a godly like persona in Helen Burns, who is nearly the antithesis of the calculating, vengeful female. Helen admirably notes that "[li]fe appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs," painting her as the picture of rationality and emotional stability, certainly headway for females in literature (49). The feministic tones ringing clear and loud are far from shocking or annoying, and I don't quite understand a male's aversion to this book based on these grounds. I think Jane Eyre has quite a ways to go as far as a modern feminist viewpoint. It is simply stated that "Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do. (93)" That's as fair a request that I think could be made for either sex, and I appreciate the gradual realizations of inequality in gender and class roles that are represented by this book thus far.