Jane Eyre, the book

I don't know what to think about this book. I know it's a classics and I see its merits but I cannot fully love it the way I love Jane Austen or Elizabeth Gaskell or Anne Bronte! I think the story itself is good (even if it has some coincidinces there must be some inner logics in this) but each time I am picking the book up to read further I feel there's something about it that won't let me loving it. Sometimes I think I should have read it when younger, then I would have been more impressed by the heroine's spirit (and probably more troubled by the age difference, Rochester would have seemed ancient for me then, like Colonel Brandon did, when I was 17 and read Sense and Sensibility for the first time!). What I like most of all about the story now is the idea of people being equal. True, Jane was not humble and I love when she says to Rochester that night in the garden she addresses him as if her soul were addressing his soul as if they were standing together after passing the grave. I sympathise with Rochester for his past mistake and wish them happy (I'm now reading the chapter about their courtship time) though I know they will have to go through a lot before there may be some glimpse of earthly happiness for them but I still cannot say I am totally in love with the book, there's something that slightly irritates me. Maybe, it's a bit too melodramatic or a bit too serious. My sister read it several years ago (she must be about 13 then and when I asked her these days how she liked it she said it was "a tedious and moralistic novel with lots of improbable events in it". So maybe the idea of getting to know Jane Eyre when teenage won't always work, lol! At last, today's morning I approximately got what I did not like about it. Charlotte has a good story and good ideas put into the novel but she spoils it with being too wordy, too serious or too melodramatic so that the drawing which would have otherwise been exellent in shapes and contrast gets somewhat smudged, loses prominence and sharpness and becomes less expressive. Sometimes the narration seems too monotonous! (Now it's me who's becoming too wordy!).

Nevertheless, I am glad I am reading the original now (I meant it for ages!) and learning the minute particulars of it and I am sympathising with the characters. I just expected to be a little more involved with it maybe. I heard so many people admire and recommend the story I expected I would admire it wholly too. I am quite enjoying reading it and I respect it as a classic novel but I am not someone left breathless after I close the book. Even if I keep thinking about it.

Sometimes I even think that I maybe find the "modernized" interpretation in the 2006 miniseries a bit more compelling than the original story (though I don't approve of making the Lowood scenes so sinister and cutting out Jane's relationship with Bessie, Miss Temple and Helen).

It's curious that my copy has a Russian painting used on the cover (because it comes from a Russian publishing house who print some English texts), I belive it's Kramskoy's portrait of his wife reading! Or maybe she was his daughter. The lady's name is Sophia Kramskaya and the only copy of the portrait I found online is sadly not in full colour.