When I first read Jane Eyre some years ago, as a teenager, I of course noticed the very obvious, outspoken feminism in it. What I did not notice back then however is that the two men who want to marry Jane in this novel - Mr. Rochester and St. John Rivers - are not just characters but a further twist on that scheme. I only saw that Jane married Mr. Rochester because she loved him and turned St. John down because she didn’t - more or less a coincidence, it could just as well have been the other way around. Now I see that St. John is nothing but your averade dude viewing Jane through his male gaze - he does not see her as she is, only how he wants her to be. He wants to control her, to shape her, to transform her into his liking - she is supposed to be hard-working, stern, quiet, dutiful, humble, obedient, feminine. Mr. Rochester on the other hand puts actual effort into really knowing Jane, and it’s the character traits that are most unfeminine (considering the time Jane Eyre was written), and most her - the ones that St. John wants to abolish completely - that he loves most about her: her passion, her resistance, her anger, her strangeness, her complete refusal to be caged in or to be owned by anyone but herself. He actually wants to be with her, not the woman he plans to make her be. It’s amazing and I can’t believe how completely I missed this when I first read Jane Eyre.
