When I read that China had made Jane Eyre compulsory reading for ninth-graders, my first reaction was probably the same as that of many Indian teachers: so what? Charlotte Brontë’s novel has been in our classrooms for generations. I have taught it, discussed it and argued over it with students year after year. Why should another country’s syllabus matter to us?
But the news stayed with me. I am not interested in the political reasons behind China’s decision here. The question that interests me is educational. What happens when a classic travels across cultures and generations, and what should young readers take from it?
The discussion around the Chinese curriculum has presented the novel as a lesson in love, independence and self-respect. It is also seen as an answer to the shallow ideas of romance that young people pick up from popular culture. That is a fair description, but it is incomplete. And the gap is where the question becomes relevant to us. Have we been asking enough about what we want students to learn from the classics we teach? Or have we become too comfortable with the interpretations we have inherited?
Let me begin with why Jane appeals to young readers. She starts as an orphan with no money, no family influence and no social standing. Through education and work, she builds a life of her own. She insists on being treated as an equal. When she learns that Rochester has hidden his existing marriage, she leaves him, even though she loves him.
Students admire this, and they should. But is the novel simply a story about women’s empowerment? Jane’s independence is real, yet it sits within the conventions of a 19th-century novel. She does end up married to Rochester, with a home and family. Her independence does not require her to give up love.
So, the novel asks a more interesting question. Can a person love deeply without losing herself? Jane’s answer is yes, but only on certain terms. She leaves when staying would cost her moral independence. She returns only when things have changed. Here her inheritance matters. Independence is not just a matter of courage. Money changes her position. Once she is financially secure, going back to Rochester is a choice and not a necessity. Rochester, for his part, has lost much of his earlier power. Jane’s financial independence and Rochester’s changed circumstances alter the balance of their relationship, bringing them closer to equality.
This is also why the novel can be read beyond the question of female independence. Love, in Brontë’s telling, is something Jane chooses and not something she surrenders to. A young woman can ask what independence means in a relationship. A young man can ask what equality demands of him. Rochester is charming and emotionally gripping, but he is also used to having his way. He withholds the truth from Jane and tries to set the terms of their life together. The novel does make him face those limits, and it offers a useful distinction between love and possession.
Still, there is a reason not to treat this as a simple feminist text. What happens to Bertha Mason? We hear Jane’s voice throughout the book. Bertha hardly has one. Rochester’s first wife is locked in the attic and described mostly through the language of madness and monstrosity. Later writers have asked what the story looks like from her side. Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea is the best-known example. It brings race, colonialism, and gender into questions that Jane Eyre does not fully examine.
I will admit that for years, I did not push this question hard enough in my own classes. I spoke about Bertha, but mostly as a plot device or a symbol. It was easier to stay with Jane. That, I think, is the real lesson of my reaction to the Chinese decision. Familiarity can make us lazy. We teach a classic through the same categories each time, such as feminism, patriarchy, romance and Victorian society, and we stop looking for what is new. The text remains the same, but our reading of it need not.
A classic should not enter a classroom carrying one approved meaning. Students should be free to admire Jane and also to question her. They should understand Rochester without excusing him. They should ask why Bertha is denied the space Jane gets. And they should connect the book to their own experience of family, school, work and relationships. In that sense, teaching a classic is not simply about passing on an established interpretation. It is also about teaching students how to read critically.
This is important because many young people encounter ideas about love through films, social media and stories they read online. These tend to offer quick answers. Literature can offer something slower. It lets a reader stay with a complicated human situation and look at it from more than one side. That, to my mind, is the book’s real value for a young reader today. It does not hand over the right model of love or independence. It refuses to separate the two questions. Jane wants to be free, and she also wants to love. She wants equality without giving up closeness. The novel does not settle that tension. It makes it part of growing up.
Nearly two centuries later, that tension still feels familiar. Perhaps that is why readers in China, India and elsewhere keep returning to Jane. And perhaps this is why a decision made in Beijing is worth a second look for teachers in Indian classrooms. My first answer was “So what?” I no longer think that was the right one.
John J Kennedy | Former Professor and Dean, Christ (Deemed) University, Bengaluru
(Views are personal)