I lent my copy of Jane Eyre to my next door neighbour, and he came over last night sat down on the sofa and explained that he couldn't give me my book back yet. Because as soon as he had finished it he started all over again.

I confessed I had done the same thing when I read the book and he asked me. "Are you obsessed with Jane Eyre too???"

I said yes, and that my new moral system involved approaching each complex life situation by asking "What Would Jane Eyre Do?" and then conducting myself accordingly.

Why is Jane Eyre so cool? and dudes she is, totally awesome. So awesome in fact that the spirit of Jane Eyre just prompted me to edit out an exclamatory cussword, I know she wouldn't like her good name associated with my filthy language.

Jane Eyre is stubborn, strong, fair, gentle and intelligent, she is not vain, but she's a little proud, she's shy but has a temper. She is in fact, the perfect personification of what I would like to learn to be. Through the book Jane grows and changes and gets frustrated and struggles with the parts of herself that are not the best, and over all triumphs as herself.

Here are some fundamental quotes; The others are equally important but these are short so you can remember them easily;

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you."

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."

I know those are a little harsh, but I am going by wikiquote here, since my book is still next door.

Hence the beginning of the W.W.J.E.D program. Applying a fictional characters coping devices to my very real personal struggles with things like; maturing, becoming calm, learning to respect and be empathetic others etc.. All these little things I think about and do but without solid approach. You think I am kidding, I am so totally not.

Charlotte Bronte was amazing and a genius as well, judging by the sketches of her she was an odd duck, who was probably fairly crotchety to people she didn't care for.

In the introduction to Jane Eyre she writes ;

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

And I think it's safe to say that Jane Eyre is a living (in a sense) portrait of Brontes ideas and emotions regarding social convention and public opinion.

Brontes writing is incredibly perceptive and gets to the centre of whatever emotion, exchange or personality she is constructing.However, it isn't limited by any boring stylistic realism, it's the purplest sometimes, but purple realism, if that can even be said to exist. Like this;

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves in my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near, a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.

Sometimes people feel in purple it's true.

Also Bronte, herself a little reclusive, manages to capture this insanely genuine, almost painful understanding of what the human heart feels in love, and again without getting arch or sentimental. eg;

"Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you — especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly."

Personally I have always referred to that feeling as the gut-string, but I much prefer Heathcliff's version to my jarring colloquialism.

Really what it all comes down to though, is that Jane is the most amazing, loving, forthright, honest, stubborn character to grace a page and if I could wish any character into existence and to be my friend it would be her. I'll let her speak for herself here, because I can't even do her justice;

"It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."

"It seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control."

"I don't think, sir, that you have a right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience."

"Do you think I am an automaton? ­— a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!"