Jane Eyre: A Guide to Reading and Reflecting

Have you ever read a story that, on the surface, you wouldn’t guess you would connect with, but you find yourself absorbing it at such a deep level that it becomes part of you?Well, I finished reading Jane Eyre about 30 minutes ago and I’m fairly confident that’s what’s happening. But once again (just as in Heart of Darkness and Sense & Sensibility), I’m sure that I wouldn’t have enjoyed Jane Eyre or been affected by it to such an extent without the help of Karen Swallow Prior’s reader’s guide.For the uninitiated, Karen Swallow Prior is a Research Professor of English and Christianity and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She began writing a series of reader’s guides to accompany classic works of literature and has now published four of those books with B&H Publishing. These guides include an introduction to the work of literature, footnotes throughout the original text, and reflection questions after each volume in addition to the reflection questions at the end of the book. It all adds up to a format that works wonderfully in guiding the reader just as a literature professor would in a college course.For this particular work, I will have to review Jane Eyre and the reader’s guide in the same space because my enjoyment of them is so intertwined. Let’s get cookin’.I had never really considered Jane Eyre before I heard that it would be one of Dr. Prior’s releases in this series. It had never been recommended to me in the slightest (probably because I’m a man and, for some reason, men don’t do a great job of reading books by women or about women). Also, to be honest, I was more excited about Frankenstein (review to come very soon) than Jane Eyre.Reader, I was wrong. Jane Eyre is my favorite of the four books in this series so far and one of my favorite classics ever.Why?First, Dr. Prior notes in her introduction that “(the) story of Jane is the story of a Christian seeking to be faithful within a nominally Christian society (similar to our own), which fails to affirm the basic human dignity of one who is poor and unconnected”. I took this note with me throughout, and Jane interacts with so many different types of Christians both nominal and devout that it is impossible to miss the connections to today’s society.The themes of the work also intertwine so beautifully within the scope of Jane’s Christian walk that it speaks not just to the issues of her times (which of course have close reflections in ours) but specifically to Christians navigating those same issues. This is where Dr. Prior’s focus on writing to Christians reading Jane Eyre is particularly valuable. It might even make Dr. Prior’s reader’s guide the most faithful one in eliciting the themes of the work. Those themes, as she lays out in the introduction, are the creation of the self, equality, and justice. Are there any more relevant issues that faithful Christians wrestle with in 2021 than those?Furthermore, the characters in the novel are simply top-notch, and it took me a long time to notice it. Dr. Prior explains the concept of the Byronic hero in the introduction (Tony Stark and Mr. Darcy are my go-to comparisons here), which applies to Edward Rochester as well, but at the same time his character is so much more than that. I hated him for much of the book, but Dr. Prior’s reflection questions, especially those at the end, helped me see things that I couldn’t see before. Her analysis of St. John Rivers was also beyond what I noticed myself. Helen Burns is one of the purest and most beautiful characters I have seen. But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Jane as one of the greatest characters with which I am familiar in the history of the novel. Her complexity, strength, and dynamism are on full display throughout, and she acquires a tremendous amount of agency for a woman who is given none by her society.One more: Charlotte Brontë’s writing is just fantastic. I was taking sentences out of context and posting them on social media, which was a fun pastime, but beyond the thrill I received from marveling at her words, she is simply a wonderful storyteller. The moment that stuck with me the most is how she gender-flipped the classic Romantic trope where two lovers meet because (usually) the man saves the woman from a bad fall. (Reading Prior’s Sense & Sensibility recently made this all the more obvious.) In Jane Eyre, Jane helps Mr. Rochester after he falls off a horse, and Mr. Rochester accuses her of bewitching the beast (classic man move there). It is moments, themes, and characters such as these that elevate Brontë’s novel to much more than a woman’s story, but a story that entertains and delights inquisitive minds no matter their age or gender.It is Dr. Prior’s footnotes and reflection questions, however, that invaluably guide the reader into the depths of such themes and unpack the characters.Spoiler Warning: Beyond this point there lie spoilers. So if you have not read Jane Eyre before, please stop here and buy Dr. Prior’s edition.There is one rather large plot development that I would like to analyze in detail, which will unravel many spoilers throughout the book. Through this, I hope the reader will see (I can’t stop writing like Jane) the complexity of this one large issue and the extent to which Dr. Prior’s reflection questions are essential to the reading.The biggest reveal of Jane Eyre has to be that Mr. Rochester is married and has been hiding his wife, Bertha, within the walls of Thornfield Hall because she is “insane”. This answers several key mysteries up to that point in the novel, but the necessity of locking a woman up in secret is simply not commented upon in the novel. Besides the issue of Bertha’s Creole heritage (which Dr. Prior mentions), I had serious issues with the portrayal here and what it meant for Mr. Rochester’s character. So much about Jane is progressive both for the time and even for today that it is difficult to square the horrific treatment of someone with a mental illness. Psychological research (from David Rosenhan’s problematic 1973 study “On Being Sane in Insane Places” through today) strongly suggests that psychiatric facilities may increase the severity of mental illness. How much more so if that human being is kept in near-total isolation in a place that is not a psychiatric facility at all?It is important to remember that such treatment was common at the time, but it is baffling to wrestle with such an issue in the space of a novel. Dr. Prior is immensely helpful in this. She writes:“Brontë’s Romanticism and the values of her time make these behaviors (she’s writing about more than just this one issue) more acceptable in the world of the novel than they should be. Good analysis of these characters will take into account for the standards of the time and its blind spots as well as measure their behavior against universal, unchanging truths of right and wrong. What insights does such analysis yield?”The answer: It’s something that requires more thought on my part. But isn’t that the point of reading at all? You meld someone else’s world, someone else’s ideas, with that of yours. You take into account the biases of each of your perspectives, and you compare those to unchanging truths. That is what Jane Eyre did for me, and that is what I hope it does to everyone who reads it.Oh, and in case you’ve missed it, I highly recommend you read Dr. Prior’s edition.I received a review copy of Jane Eyre courtesy of Karen Swallow Prior and B&H Publishing, but my opinions are my own.

If you’ve ever read a classic and thought to yourself, “I wish I had read this in college and been able to discuss it with others,” or “I know this is important but I’m not sure why,” the Guide to Reading and Reflecting series from B&H Publishing and Karen Swallow Prior might be for you.•Each volume, which has a beautiful cloth cover, contains the full text of a classic, an introduction from Karen Swallow Prior, and questions designed for reflection and understanding major themes in the novel.•I first read Jane Eyre many years ago and remember it being on example of required reading that I actually enjoyed. So while I wasn’t surprised by how much I loved the story, I was impressed by how enriched this reread was because of the things Prior brings to the reader’s attention.•Other books in this series include Sense and Sensibility, Heart of Darkness, and more. Knowing these guides are available definitely make reading the classics less intimidating.

Jane Eyre is, of course, a classic and one that many have read or plan to read. This edition includes the full text of the novel along with some added sections. These include a biographical essay on the author. One thing that became clear from reading this was the number of losses that Bronte faced.This title also includes sections on reading the novel. A number of topics are covered including to what extent the book was autobiographical and other influences on the author as she wrote. The evolution of the novel and Bronte’s originality are also covered as are themes in the work. In addition, there is background on the Gothic novel and Romanticism.This title is published by a Christian firm. So, there is also a part of the book on reading the novel “as a Christian today,”Overall, I feel that this edition will be welcomed by readers looking for some insight into Jane Eyre before they read or reread it. There are even some questions for discussion included after each of the novel’s volumes.Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title. All opinions are my own.

I received a free advance digital review copy from B&H Books via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.The timing of this release was perfect for me, as I had just re-read Jane Eyre and read the modern retelling The Wife Upstairs. When I requested the review copy of Jane Eyre: A Guide to Reading and Reflecting, I did not realize that one of the author's aims is to spur reflection on Jane Eyre through the lens of Christianity. Though I was not especially interested in that particular perspective, I did not find it to overpower the book, and I still learned a lot and found the book to be a useful guide to better understanding the various literary elements in Jane Eyre.Karen Swallow Prior provides fascinating background information about Charlotte Bronte's life as well as Jane Eyre's development, publication, and initial reception. Prior also situates Jane Eyre in the Gothic/Romantic literary movement and explores the major themes in the book as a coming of age novel. The text of Jane Eyre itself is then divided into three sections (interestingly, how the original book was published), after each of which Prior offers questions to spur further reflection. All of these elements enhanced my reading and enjoyment of Charlotte Bronte's classic.