Picture this. I’m 14, arrogant beyond my years, convinced I’m far cleverer than I am. I’m in a book club run by my friend’s mum, who, I’ll admit, I was a little afraid of. She wanted us all to read Jane Eyre.
If you’ve never read it, it’s about a woman, plain Jane, her deeply unhappy childhood, and her eventual love for a man, all filtered through a gothic, distinctly Victorian lens. I think there’s also a woman in an attic. You can probably tell, from my tenuous grasp on the plot, that I didn’t finish it. In all honesty, I don’t think I even made it halfway.
It was long. It was dry. It was, to me, completely uninteresting.
From what I’ve gathered since, it’s often seen as a deeply feminist text for its time: a novel about independence, moral conviction, and a kind of love that isn’t merely superficial. Under normal circumstances, that would intrigue me. But for whatever reason, Jane Eyre has just never worked for me.
In that book club, I remember relying on chapter summaries. Fourteen-year-old me couldn’t admit she hadn’t managed it. Maybe it was pride, maybe embarrassment. Either way, I pretended. I made claims I couldn’t support. I lied, quite simply. I doubt I was the only one.
Teenagers lie. Adults lie. But it’s also a mindset I’ve been trying to unlearn; the idea that reading is something to prove. That finishing a book is the goal, rather than engaging with it. Reading, I’ve realised, should be for yourself. Trying is the important part.
What I’ve also realised is that Gothic Victorian literature just might not be my cup of tea. And that’s fine. We’re not required to love the classics. We’re not even required to finish them. I tried again at 18, still convinced I was far cleverer than I was. I still didn’t like it. I still couldn’t get through it.
The same goes for a pattern of books: Wuthering Heights, Jekyll and Hyde, Frankenstein. Always the same story. Always the same genre. Always the same result.
It isn’t the length that’s defeated me. It’s the feeling. But I’m still glad I tried.
Because reading isn’t about reaching the final page and adding another title to a list you can hold over other people. It’s about exploration. About encountering ideas that might not sit comfortably with you. About discovering, sometimes, what simply isn’t for you.
And Jane Eyre was exactly that for me.
So read it. Will you like it? I honestly don’t know.
But you might find something in it that I never could. And that, really, is the point