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So if you hadn’t yet figured out why Charlotte Brontë’s male characters in Jane Eyre are so incredibly unappealing, here’s a clue: It has to do with Brontë’s theme. What theme would that be? Why, relationships between men and women, of course!

Video Transcription:

If you watched Recap 4, you know that Charlotte Bronte’s male characters are pretty unappealing. Here’s the reason: It has to do with Bronte’s theme.

Relationships between men and women.

I’d call this the number one theme in Jane Eyre.

And if you’ve read any of the book—or watched any of my Recaps—you can’t really be surprised.

Think about it: Every male character that Jane encounters in the story—from her horrible bullying cousin, John Reed, to the love of her life, Mr. Rochester—threatens her equality and her dignity. Men try to keep Jane from expressing her thoughts and feelings

So what does Jane have to do? Well, in the case of Mr. Rochester, she can marry him only when she’s proven herself capable of living and working as an independent woman. When Jane comes to Rochester at the end of the story, she no longer depends on him—and him alone—for love, and she is also financially independent.

As if that weren’t enough of a statement about male-female relationships, remember that Mr. Rochester is also blind at the end of the novel. The balance of power in their relationship is flipped because he depends more on Jane than Jane depends on him.

Hmmm. Rather than “relationships between men and women,” maybe I should call the number one theme in Jane Eyre, EQUALITY instead.