Rediscovering Jane Eyre

Editor’s note: Madeleine Kearns writes a weekly column noting peculiar aspects of cultural, artistic, and natural marvels.

Every English major is familiar with Freudian, Marxist, feminist, and “queer” readings, contorting and cheapening even the most potent love story into a petty power grab. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, about a young woman who falls in love with her employer, is, like all great novels, susceptible to being hijacked by monomaniacal agenda-pushers.