Last week, I watched a local production of Jane Eyre the Musical. It was a powerful show, beautifully performed, and it touched the cynic in me in a way that brought me to tears at the moment, and left me thinking ever since. Thank you for joining me as I sort through the mighty and the almost there of this masterpiece.
A Love Story That's About More Than Romance
First some background about me and why this musical was important to me, personally. I am a recovering codependent, twice-divorced, whose journey has taken me through domestic abuse. I used to believe in the trope of Beauty and the Beast: that a good woman could transform a deeply troubled man by the generous application of unconditional love. That belief got me into bondage and kept me there for a long time. I cringe from stories that perpetuate that expectation for women and on the surface, Jane Eyre looks like such a story. But it’s not. In vital ways, Jane’s journey is fundamentally different from Belle’s and those differences are what makes this musical healing as well as entertaining.
The opening number takes us back to Jane’s childhood, under the resentful care of her aunt and the relentless persecution of the sadistic cousin who has learned that Jane is fair game. Eventually, she’s put away in a boarding school that is supposed to turn wayward children into good, serviceable Christians. When Jane disputes her aunt’s stories about her, she’s told that she’s wicked and going to burn in hell, and the other children are warned not to associate with the lying newcomer. Jane smolders inwardly with fury while she is publicly punished, deprived of food and forced to stand for hours on a stool.
Enter Helen Burns, an independent-minded orphan who sneaks Jane a morsel of bread from her own dinner, then gets whipped for talking to the liar. The two girls are assigned chores as additional punishment, during which Jane longs for revenge on those who have treated them both so unjustly. Helen hears her pain but sings “FORGIVENESS,” an anthem to turning the other cheek, cultivating goodness in oneself, and trusting in God’s ultimate judgment. It begins with “You mustn't be revengeful/ You have to be strong/ To offer good for evil/ Return right for wrong.” From any other character, this beginning would be intolerably preachy and probably manipulative. But Helen embodies what she’s singing about. She validates Jane’s feelings with, “You can continue to grieve/ But know the gospel is true” and she concludes with, “You must never lose faith/ You must never lose heart/ God will restore your trust/ And I know you're afraid/ I'm as scared as you are/ But willing to be brave/ Brave enough for love.”
Helen is neither cowed nor compliant. She is bold and subversive, like when she defies the headmaster in order to be kind to Jane. We can’t resist being deeply touched by her courage, vulnerability and resilient faith in God’s goodness. For Jane, it’s life-changing. Although she loses Helen to an outbreak of typhus, she continues to hold her influence close and by the time Jane leaves the school, she has acquired her own deep faith in God.
She then becomes governess to Adèle, a little French girl at a great house belonging to one Edward Rochester. It’s some months before Jane meets her new master. Although he’s world-wise and twenty years her senior, and she is rather plain of appearance, he’s immediately taken with Jane’s extraordinary blend of boldness and goodness. He tends to forget the difference between their stations when he’s talking with her. She never does, but how can she avoid being won over by his attentions when all her life, she’s had it drilled into her that she’s worth less than others?
When we first meet him, Rochester is a brooding man with deep secrets. Over time, he becomes increasingly enamoured with Jane while he continues to do battle with his own jadedness. To some degree, he seems to resent her innocence. In AS GOOD AS YOU, he confides being twice betrayed in love, most recently by an opera dancer who left him for another then brought him Adèle, who she claimed was his. “Women are inhuman, worthless/ Hard and savage/ On the average/ Never to be trusted/ Completely maladjusted, it's true/ And if I'd not loved a few/ I might have been as good as you.” It’s hardly a ballad to win a woman’s heart or confidence, but Jane, who knows what it is to burn under injustice, is moved to compassion. She prays for him and, as he continues to seek her out, confide in and rely on her, she gradually falls in love.
Meanwhile, Rochester fights his attraction to her. He is sometimes appreciative, sometimes abrupt and tyrannical. Eventually, she saves his life after a mysterious figure sets fire to his bed and he realizes he loves and needs her. But he wants her as madly in love with him as he is with her, so he pretends to be planning marriage to a beautiful socialite whose favourite pastime is mocking Jane. At last, when Jane resigns her post, he pretends to want her to stay in spite of his pending marriage until she cries out, ““Do you think because I'm poor, plain, obscure, and little that I have no heart? That I'm without soul? I have as much heart as you and as much soul and if God had given me as much beauty and wealth, I would make it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you.” That’s when he proposes marriage.
They are at the altar when a relative reveals that Rochester is already married. His wife is insane and violent, hidden away in a cage in a distant wing of the manor. After the wedding’s been broken up and the guests have all gone home, Rochester relates to Jane how people he trusted arranged the marriage, knowing his wife would go mad, how she was also unfaithful, and he’s been living in hell until Jane entered his life. He begs her to flee with him across the sea and be his salvation.
This is where Jane’s story breaks with the Beauty and the Beast trope. Although Rochester gives her compelling arguments for why his pre-existing marriage should not be valid, how it would be cruel to leave him, and how he has no hope without her, Jane urges him to “Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in Heaven. Hope to meet again there.” Then she flees. (Disclaimer: I'm not 100% sure those words are in the musical. They are certainly in the book and I think I heard them in the dialogue at the theatre, but I don't have access to the script).
As she goes, he sings FAREWELL GOOD ANGEL with lyrics including these lines, “Now that you've shattered my soul/ I die accursed!.../ I'd rather burn in Hell/ Damning my soul to dwell/ Lost in my pain/ Than to live here on earth/ Without my Jane!” Rochester has pulled out all the stops. He knows that Jane delights in being useful to him. He’s made it amply clear that he needs her, and surely that justifies her staying in order to save him. He’s sure he can bring Jane around. And he threatens to destroy himself as she’s leaving. But she flees anyway.
I want to pause a moment and consider what might happen if Jane were to submit to Rochester’s pleading. She believes he offers her a temporary heaven, at the cost of her eternal heaven, but does he? So far, he has shown himself to be a great deal more interested in his own happiness than in hers. He’s been casually cruel to her in his efforts to secure her heart. He now expects her to be his salvation, and she would try, but no human is big enough for that. Eventually, he would become disappointed in her and return to mistreating, maybe even discarding her. And she would have no recourse. Having lived with him without marriage, she wouldn’t even have the ability to get respectable employment. Her life could easily be ruined.
Fortunately, that is not the story Jane chooses. Instead, after fleeing with nothing and nearly dying of hunger, Jane winds up on friendly soil, forgives her dying aunt and inherits a fortune. Over the next few months, she wins the friendship and respect of a pastor who wants to marry her and take her on a mission to India. Not because he loves her, though. He tells her, “You are formed for labor, not love.” He urges her to pray to know her duty. In the middle of her prayer, she hears Rochester’s voice as if from a great distance, calling her name. “Where are you?” she calls back. “Wait for me!”
She returns to Rochester’s holdings to learn that his wife set fire to the mansion then jumped to her death from the roof while it burned. Rochester ran into the fire repeatedly in order to get the servants out, losing his sight and one eye in the process. All of this happened shortly after she left and he has been suffering ever since. She rushes to his side and learns that he had been praying for her for three days when he suddenly found himself calling her name, and he heard her voice call back, “Where are you? Wait for me!”
The beast has been tamed, but by God, not by the unflinching love of a mistreated woman. She never stopped loving him, but she did more than flinch, she fled when he offered her a position that was incompatible with her conscience and her self respect. Now, she returns as his equal in social status, to find him physically broken down, but spiritually better prepared to return her love. The musical ends with the two of them singing, “And I know you're afraid/ I'm as scared as you are/ But willing to be brave/ Brave enough for love.”
I’ll admit that Rochester’s transformation seems too quickly glossed over to feel secure to me. I’d have liked to have seen that explored a little more. But, as it is, his blindness, which makes him dependent on Jane, and her financial independence, both help me feel more optimistic about their prospects for long-term happiness.
In all, the ultimate message of Jane Eyre is this: Be brave enough to love God, despite the misrepresentations of Him and the injustices done in His name, and you will then be brave enough (and safe enough) to freely love others. It’s a powerful message and one that has proven true in my own life. I believe we need more musicals with messages like that.
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