Romance and Restlessness

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

"Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you -- especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion that I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, -- you'd forget me."

Do I love the romance in Jane Eyre and want it for my own? Yes!? But is that my favourite part of the book? No! (sometimes)! Listen, there are so many absolute garbage romances about a broody, grumpy old man who meets "his" young free-spirited woman. SO many. I'm not sure what draws women to such a man. Well, okay, to be fair, Rochester is not totally a broody man, but he sure likes to act like one until Jane comes around. And I can admire the silliness and banter between the two before it all goes pear-shaped. But yes, what is the love for broody men? Is it the desire to "fix" them??? To that I'd say don't waste your time!!! But Rochester is different, okay. And so is Jane. I can't even put her into words. Bronte just does it for you. The ways in which Jane questions him, challenges him, her beautiful maturity and, despite being just 18, her ability to protect herself by refusing his "love-bombing," insisting that he will revert back to his natural state after the "honeymoon period." It's all so admirable. She changed my life, really. I wish I had her foresight. And this is victorian!!! 

So yeah, the trope is vomit-inducing. BUT I turn a blind-eye, because one: it’s the 19th century, it's victorian, two: THE PASSION, and three: I don't know okay, maybe it's the fact that Bronte wrote Jane as a self-insert character and desired this love for her own, so I am inclined to respect that desire. But really, she could write 500 pages of legal jargon and it would be beautiful and I would read every word and wholeheartedly agree with all of it. 

What really makes Jane Eyre so close to my heart is just how much I connect with her character. I relate so well to her restlessness. Early in the novel when she looks out at Thornfield's skyline, she longs “for a power of vision which might overpass that limit.” “I could not help it” she writes, “this restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.” I’ve never really been able to articulate just how I feel, but this is it, I think. I’ve always been incredibly restless and I don't like that I can’t feel content in one place and time. If I am doing one thing that means I am not doing another, I wish I could do everything all at once, it's an incredible indecisiveness. Jane’s desire for “a new servitude” and action in her life (akin to men, as she says, you gotta love her), is also something that brings me closer to her. In my wanting to do everything at once, I’ve ended up doing absolutely nothing at all. I just want to pack up and move away somewhere far, or like, live in a van and drive everywhere and see everything. I guess it’s okay if i’m thirty when I end up doing it, I’ve probably got all the time in the world. I don't know. I just love her with all of my heart, and if I had nothing to read by Jane Eyre, I'd be perfectly content. There's a really, really pretty purple edition with a bird-cage design across the pages (and a little built in book mark thing!!!) that I want to get my hands on. At some point. Right now, my beat up pocket edition with all of its marked and doggy-eared and ripped up pages will have to do. Also, I dropped it in the bath, twice.