What Jane Eyre Teaches Us About Writing
When great writers read other authors, they pay attention to the choices that author made. When they notice something powerful or effective, they pause to analyze why it was so impactful. They ask questions and engage in dialogue with the author.
While you can learn something from nearly everything you read, great writers specifically seek out mentor texts: books and other writings that exemplify the best of their genre and topic. When you’re learning to do anything, you ideally want to be learning from a master.
So in the past several months, as I’ve been working on my own writing, I’ve turned again to my favorite book and ultimate mentor, Jane Eyre. Re-reading Jane Eyre for the who-knows-how-many-time with the lens of looking at Charlotte Bronte’s choices as an author has opened my eyes to several new insights about writing. If you’ve never read it before, I always recommend the Writer’s Digest edition of Jane Eyre, annotated by K.M. Weiland. Weiland’s insights about the craft of Jane Eyre are absolutely invaluable! Her notes are an education in themselves.
Here are some of my favorite things that I’ve learned from Bronte and Weiland:
Start with a question.
On the first page of Chapter 2, just after we’ve witnessed our heroine defend herself from her abusive cousin, Jane is berated by the maids, who scold her for hitting her “master.” She maintains her defiance, asking, “Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?”
In this outburst, Bronte reveals the driving question of the entire book—practically throwing it in our faces. Jane spends the rest of the book attempting to find the answer to this question. Throughout her journey, other characters (including Mr. Rochester) give her their preferred answers to this question—usually, yes, you are (or should act like) a servant. We know from the very first scene of the book that that answer is not going to work for Jane—but she hasn’t yet discovered exactly what her place is and what autonomy she has. This relatable search for identity and independence is all fueled by this one powerful question.
In your own writing, think about the question fueling your story. You might be writing a memoir, where one question in particular has haunted you all your life, and you realize that attempting to answer that question has guided many of your decisions. If you’re working on fiction, you’ve probably considered the central quest that your hero or heroine is undertaking—how would you phrase that quest as a question? Is there some way you can subtly work that question into the story, as a teaser for the reader?
Break the rules like a master.
Conventional writing “rules” tell you to do a lot of things. Never start a sentence with a preposition. Write in active versus passive voice. A sentence has a subject and a verb. Be consistent!!
One of my authors tells a story of learning to play guitar. When he was first learning, he strummed two or three easy chords, learning campfire songs that were quick to pick up. Then he moved onto more difficult pieces, learning the correct techniques and playing rather proficiently. Finally, he moved onto what he calls “the Chuck Berry stage”—the stage where you begin to innovate on the “rules” that you’ve been learning for years.
When learning to write, you go through the same phases. The rules are there to help us learn to craft narratives and communicate with clarity. Many of us stop when we reach the proficient stage—we’re able to get the job done, we have fun, and we’re ok landing there. But after you’ve been doing it for many years, you may get to the Charlotte Bronte stage—where you begin to innovate on all of those writing rules you learned so well.
Charlotte Bronte breaks the rules like a master writer. My favorite example of this is her choice to switch from the past tense (which she uses for most of the story) suddenly to present tense in just a few places in the book:
“But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience? These affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of again looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not; and they added - ‘Hasten! Hasten! Be with him while you may: but a few more days or weeks, at most, and you are parted from him forever!’ And then I strangled a new-born agony - a deformed thing which I could not persuade myself to own and rear - and ran on.
They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the labourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with their rakes on their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive. I have but a field or two to traverse, and then I shall cross the road and reach the gates. How full the hedges are of roses! But I have no time to gather any; I want to be at the house. I passed a tall briar, shooting leafy and flowery branches across the path; I see the narrow stile with stone steps; and I see - Mr. Rochester is sitting there, a book and pencil in his hand; he is writing.”
It is usually the sign of an inexperienced writer to lack consistency in tense, but Bronte does it here quite intentionally. She wants to bring us into the heart-pounding anticipation that Jane feels. Do you know the feeling of waiting, barely able to breathe until you are reunited with a loved one? I remember waiting for my husband to debark from the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt after an eight-month deployment, three years ago. That’s how I felt. I was so ready to see him again, so anxious to look at his face and know that he was finally home safe. We feel Jane’s bittersweet love, even as she knows it may not be returned by Mr. Rochester.
The anticipation builds further because, in the present tense, Bronte can slow the pace down - delay what the reader is practically begging for as much as Charlotte: a sight of Mr. Rochester. She throws just about everything she can think of in front of us: the labourers making hay - no, no not making hay, but going home - the hedges so full of roses and maybe we should pick them, but there’s no time; the briar with leaves and flowers. If at this point, you’re not hurling the book across the room shouting, “WHO GIVES A FLIPPING FIG ABOUT THE ROSE BUSHES?!” you are reading it wrong. Bronte brilliantly delays gratification so that we identify with her character.
Use memorable metaphors.
“O my love is like a red red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June.” - Robert Burns
We all know how tired and used-up some metaphors are. It can be hard to find new ways to express complex emotions, especially when there’s a well-known metaphor that everyone already knows. But Bronte stretches beyond those low-hanging fruit, reaching up to juicier, choicer fruits (you see what I did there?).
After we see Jane defend herself to her aunt—another brilliant dialogue, which happens to be filled with foreshadowing for her later proposal/confrontation with Rochester—she feels the adrenaline and sense of victory that comes with having succeeded in her mission. And yet, that feeling only goes so far. Quickly, she regrets her actions. But Bronte doesn’t describe it in such plain terms; instead, she gives us two metaphors that drive home the point in a much more memorable way:
“A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition. …
Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.”
You know that feeling when you’ve done something that felt so good at the time and later comes back to haunt you... using these metaphors gets at that emotion in a whole new way.
Weave compelling mysteries with worthy answers.
Before Agatha Christie, there was Charlotte Bronte. From the moment Jane arrives at Thornfield, we know that Something Is Up. There’s a mysterious third floor, where Jane hears a strange laugh, and a servant who seems to have no occupation just wandering around up there. Then Mr. Rochester’s bed is set aflame in the middle of the night, and Jane saves him. She hears rustling outside her bedroom door in the middle of the night. Mr. Mason comes to visit and is viciously attacked by something or someone on the third floor. Mr. Rochester continually asks her to keep secrets, and he hints at even more things he has not told her. And finally, before her wedding, she wakes up to find a creature in her room - a creature who tries on her veil and then tears it in two.
It’s really a miracle that Jane stays in the house as long as she does! Most of us would’ve gotten out of there as fast as possible.
With all of these events, Bronte is building up the mystery. It’s compelling enough that, even after having read it so many times and knowing what the mystery is, I’m still caught up in it - as caught up as poor Jane. Imagine reading this for the first time in the cold winter months of 1847/1848. This would have been the Harry Potter of its time.
And Bronte rewards her readers with a mystery that was worth the wait: Mr. Rochester is already married! This also presents the ultimate roadblock to Jane getting what she wants, and propels the action of Part 3 of the book.
The writing lessons we can learn from Jane Eyre go on and on, but these four lessons show Bronte’s skill in putting together a story that has lasted for generations. These are also lessons that can be applied no matter what genre you’re writing.
What other books do you learn from?
