Why AP? Chapters 23-29

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Plot Recap

Warning: I got to Jane Eyre’s famous “twist” in this section and will be revealing it below, so, if you don’t want to know what it is yet, you probably shouldn’t read this blog post.

! SPOILERS AHEAD !

This section had a LOT of plot. It begins with Mr. Rochester and Jane discussing his supposed impending marriage to Blanche Ingram, which leads Jane to desperately confess her love for him. Mr. Rochester reveals he feels the same way, and convinces Jane to accept his proposal of marriage. They go about their lives in preparation for the wedding; a few nights before it, Jane is woken by a terrifying figure entering her room and ripping her veil in half. Mr. Rochester convinces her she was dreaming, and the two go to a church for a small wedding ceremony soon after. When the priest asks if there are any objections to the union, however, a lawyer and George Mason (the man who was mysteriously wounded at Thornfield a few months prior) enter the church to object, claiming that Mr. Rochester is already married to Mason’s sister. Mr. Rochester admits it is true, and takes Jane, Mason, and the lawyer back to Thornfield, where he reveals his wife, Bertha — insane and constantly raving and violent — in a hidden third-story room, where she is tended by the servant Grace Poole. 

Jane is distraught and betrayed, and rejects Mr. Rochester’s explanation that his marriage to Bertha is illegitimate because he was deceived about her condition. Jane, finding the entire situation too painful, leaves Thornfield in the early morning and travels to a remote village, where she eventually collapses of hunger, not having any money to buy food. After being turned away by resident after resident, she is taken in by the Rivers family — siblings St. John, Mary, and Diana, and their servant Hannah — who nurse her back to health. Jane was staying with the Rivers and had regained most of her strength by the end of this reading.

Literary Merit?

Though Jane Eyre is quickly becoming one of my favorite books, that doesn’t automatically mean it is of good enough quality for an AP Literature class. I am not, sadly, a renowned arbiter of literary taste and quality, so I will need to convince you that Jane Eyre qualifies as “of literary merit.” Sure, it has been listed as an option for many Question 3 prompts on the AP exam in the past, and it appears on lists of books to read for AP Literature. But what really is “literary merit?”

Definitions abound in the AP Literature spheres of the internet. After reading a selection of definitions elicited by the Google search “what is literary merit?” and reading old Question 3 prompts, I have decided on a list of qualities that I think give a book this elusive seal of College Board approval:

1. It must endure through time
2. It must contain complexities, tensions, ambiguities, and/or emotional depth
3. It must speak to important, challenging, or relevant real-world issues
4. It should have a certain high quality in its writing style — imagery, motifs, allusions, tone, foreshadowing, theme, etc; the author must be saying something underneath the actual words

I certainly think Jane Eyre meets these criteria. The first is evidenced by it still being a famous and respected book around 170 years after being published; I think the last was spoken to in my previous blog post analyzing the novel’s style, which I find effective and compelling. I want to focus on the second and third bullet points in this post: it is the complex depiction of relevant issues that I think gives Jane Eyre its literary merit.

One of the most important complexities or tensions at this point is in Jane’s relationship with Mr. Rochester. There is admittedly a lot for her to feel conflicted about: she is 18 and he is 40, and their relationship is a little fatherly at times, but he usually speaks to her as an equal; he hid an entire marriage from her, but claims to feel genuine remorse and love. The way that the book foreshadows the revelation of Mr. Rochester’s secret marriage, and the way that Jane processes her resulting complex feelings toward him, is what gives the book literary merit in my eyes.

Foreshadowing

In my mind, I’m comparing Jane Eyre to the typical young adult novel to differentiate between books with and without literary merit. In a book with less merit, foreshadowing might look like Jane saying to herself, “it sure seems like Mr. Rochester has a secret!” (I know this isn’t a very generous description of YA authors, who are, in fact, real authors, but the point of those books is more entertainment than the development of profound themes). In contrast, Charlotte Brontë uses imagery, symbolism, and subtle selection of detail to hint at Mr. Rochester’s secret.

In one scene before this section of the reading, Jane is speaking to Mr. Rochester in the orchard and he poses what appears to be a hypothetical question, consistent with their habit of intellectual conversation:

“Imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you there commit a capital error… you are miserable… you make a new acquaintance… you desire to… spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom — a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your judgment approves?” (242-243)

In retrospect, it is very clear that Mr. Rochester was talking about himself. The “capital error” was his marriage to Bertha Mason without knowing her true nature; the “obstacle of custom” is the fact that he cannot legally or respectably marry Jane while already married. However, the clever part of Brontë’s use of this scene is that she lets it slip under the reader’s radar. Jane does not think to herself, “Wow, it seems like he’s talking about himself! Is he already married?!” Rather, this scene subtly builds the idea that Mr. Rochester has some sort of inner torment or conflict, but keeps it in vague terms. 

I think a lot of brilliant novels contain a similar breadcrumb trail that can only be identified when you reread it. For instance, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, which we read previously in AP Literature, is like this. There are all sorts of clues along the way that, for example, Pilate’s burlap bag of “inheritance” contains her father’s bones instead of gold (sorry, spoiling books left and right in this post!), but most of them are unremarkable until you know what the twist is.

Here are some other clever examples of hints at Mr. Rochester’s dark secret:

“‘God pardon me!… It will atone — it will atone… It will expiate at God’s tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world’s judgment — I wash my hands thereof.” (285) These are the words Mr. Rochester says immediately after Jane accepts his marriage proposal. Begging for God’s forgiveness isn’t exactly the ideal response to an engagement, and signals that something is probably wrong. However, this could be construed by the reader as a slightly-old-fashioned expression of passion, which makes it effective foreshadowing.

“The great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away.” (286) Similarly, a thunderstorm breaks out immediately after the engagement, and Jane finds out the next morning that a giant tree had been struck by lightning during the storm. In retrospect, it is clear this symbolizes the misfortune of the impending marriage, but at the time it almost seems like an extraneous detail. Small, unremarkable details like this help to create the vague impression that something is a little off, but without revealing what.

Jane’s Emotions

After the wedding is disrupted and Mr. Rochester reveals Bertha’s existence, there is a particularly painful scene where he begs Jane to run away with him and be together, and she tells him she must leave both Thornfield and their relationship. This goes on for several pages, and Brontë’s description of Jane’s inner conflict is particularly compelling:

“I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning! Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved; and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and idol. One drear word comprised my intolerable duty — ‘Depart!’” (353)

This is a complexity if ever there was one, and very relatable to the reader (apart from the secret wife part, hopefully). Love does not disappear upon a betrayal; it is still there, which makes the betrayal all the more painful. This is an example of a “relevant issue” discussed by the text, one of my criteria for literary merit. Brontë is effectively portraying a very real, painful situation that real people go through, and explaining why it is so painful. This is also an example of the endurance of this book, because such issues are just as relevant today as they were in the 1800s.

Similarly, this passage was very insightful to me:

“While he spoke my very Conscience and Reason turned traitors against me and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loudly as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly… ‘Who in the world cares for you?’… Still indomitable was the reply — ‘I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” (354-355).

Here we see Jane’s fiercely strong morals and convictions. Despite every part of her still desperately loving Mr. Rochester, she makes the decision to leave anyway to preserve her self-respect. This is such a profound message about the importance of independence and a strong moral compass in life. It’s also very notable that a young, female protagonist is making this decision, defying the gender expectations of the time. I think this passage shows us a couple of ways in which Jane Eyre has literary merit: first, that it has strong messages about hard topics; second, that it acknowledges the complexities and emotional difficulty of those topics; third, that it made a significant statement for the time period in which it was published. I also take my extreme respect for Jane as a narrator as an indication that this book has some sort of merit, though that is more subjective.

For all these reasons, I think that Jane Eyre is of significant literary merit. It would be very helpful on the AP Literature exam because a student could write about either Jane’s or Mr. Rochester’s conflicting motivations, the theme about integrity being all-important, the adept use of foreshadowing and symbolic imagery, or another of the many significant aspects of the book. I think it would be very interesting to read this book together as a class, but, given its length, I think it remains a better choice for the independent book project. I would strongly recommend it for this project, though!

So, there you have it. Congratulations if you made it to the end of this marathon of a blog post (and, to Ms. LaClair, who is obliged to read my verbose compositions… I apologize). Come back next time to find out how the book ends!

Works Cited

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. Woodstock, Beekman Publishers, 1980.Butler, Sian. 

Red cottage door. Unsplash, unsplash.com/photos/Ysmu6i5bfIc. Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.