On the one hand, Jane Eyre is a super role-model, and I couldn't properly appreciate that until just now. I didn't have the appropriate Romantic, post-Enlightenment, modern, feminist, ontological, or social tools to appreciate (and perhaps even question) Jane's insistence upon sexless, genderless justice, egalitarianism and equity, and authenticity to self.
(I also didn't see how completely unsubtle Charlotte Bronte was in her pictures of the adult Eliza and Georgiana Reed. Wow.)
On the other hand, Mr. Rochester, for all his romantic meltingness, is so obviously a projection of female desire, that the relationship between Jane and Edward is not one of equality, of two spirits meeting above and beyond the mediators of flesh and of morality. Instead, we get an enviably individual, authentic Jane and an Mr. Rochester who is the imagined but not real ideal lover for her.
I need a better Jane Eyre--the book, not the character. Keep Jane as is and make Jane more believable.
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