24 Classics for 2024 discussion

Hi! Jane Eyre is my first Brontë novel and I wanted to start a discussion about their writing styles, books, etc. Would love to hear from anyone who has read any others!

Jane Eyre is my first Brontë novel as well! 100 pages in, I’m really enjoying her writing style. Her landscape descriptions have some admirable alliteration, and her dialogues are delightful. I’ve noticed she uses a lot of colons, semicolons, and commas to break up her more complicated thoughts and digressions. I’ve found that these require a little bit more concentration to get through, but once you read through it twice, it really opens up the whole page.

I totally agree Simon. Your comment about the semi colons and long sentences reminds me of something I read in the Note on the Text. It mentions that the publisher added a lot of punctuation to the original text since Brontë’s sentences lacked grammatical structure. I wonder if it would be more or less confusing without the added grammatical edits.

That’s a good point! I must have missed that portion about the Note. This is not the typical novel that I would read, but I am thoroughly enjoying it so far, and I’m excited to read through Wuthering Heights later on this year.

I’m super excited for Wuthering Heights as well. I also look forward to reading the introduction of this novel after I’m done (since it has spoilers). From what I’ve heard (and can discern from reading so far) Jane Eyre was somewhat political when it came out.