Jane Eyre/YMMV

• Accidental Innuendo: Some of the dated language can bring this effect on us modern readers. One part in particular:

"The clock struck eight strokes. It aroused him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me."

• • Rochester at one point describes Blanche as an "extensive armful."
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: Reader, I married him.
• Designated Villain: Bertha. She's the main obstacle that stands in the way of Jane and Rochester's romance and she gets a Karmic Death at the end, complete with Rochester redeeming himself by trying to save her, yet her only "crime" is suffering from insanity.
• Fair for Its Day: The novel is often taught as a proto-feminist work. This trope combines with Seinfeld Is Unfunny when modern readers react unfavorably to Jane's behavior, finding it not assertive enough.
• Hollywood Homely: Rochester and Jane are described as "unattractive" and "plain", respectively, but both pass up on more attractive potential mates to be with each other. Most adaptations cast attractive actors anyway, with Rochester played by dashing older gentlemen and Jane played by attractive women in somber attire.
• Idiot Ball: Handled by Jane at one point. While in hiding, she just happens to write her real name on a sheet of paper, leaving out in plain view where St. John can see it. Fortunately it ends up working in her favor.
  • Even more so when she abandons Thornfield in the middle of the night, bringing no money and only a few days' worth of food with her, and losing even that almost immediately.
• Ron the Death Eater - Rochester, who is surly and somewhat morally ambiguous, is often lumped into the same category as Heathcliff. This completely ignores the fact that Rochester is basically a moral guy who has made some mistakes over the years, and only puts up a Jerkass Facade as a defense.
• Tear Jerker: Helen's death. Bonus if you were listening to a sad song like this.
• Uncanny Valley: Jane is the only person who recognizes that there is something wrong with Mr Mason.
• Values Dissonance. Possibly the most blindingly obvious instance in 19th century English literature. Bertha Mason is shown as being evil beyond redemption because she is insane. Worse, the very first really humane asylums for the mentally ill were being opened at the time and place the book is set (Yorkshire in the 1810-1820 period). Rochester could have afforded to send Bertha to one out of his pocket change with nobody knowing who she was. Yet he instead kept her hidden in his decrepit attic in rags with only a drunken slattern as company, quite possibly a fate worse than death. Jane's acceptance of this explanation shows that she (and her author) were out of touch with the times: during the Enlightenment people started to reject the idea that people who were insane were morally degenerate and evil and that it was an illness that should be treated, however bizarre the treatments occasionally became.
  • It's actually Moral Dissonance, internal to the novel, if you read some of the Brontë sisters' social essays. You have to keep in mind that Rochester is explicitly pretty much evil for most of the novel.
  • Actually, Jane does call Rochester out on his behaviour:

"Sir," I interrupted him, "you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate -- with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel -- she cannot help being mad."

• • Rochester insists that he doesn't hate Bertha because she's mad, she was just (apparently, if you believe him) that wicked.
  • Some of that was Brontë trying to make it clear that Bertha wasn't to be reviled because she was crazy. In later years Brontë spoke in several letters about wanting readers to feel pity, not revulsion, but never quite being able to create that in the writing.
  • When Jane suggest to St. John Rivers that he need not be a missionary to the East: "Relinquish! What! ... [My hopes] of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance -- of substituting peace for war -- freedom for bondage -- religion for superstition -- the hope of heaven for the fear of hell?"
• The Woobie: Jane and Helen Burns.

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Film adaptations:

The classic film starring Joan Fontaine as Jane and Orson Welles as Rochester. Co-adapted by Aldous Huxley, after his work on Pride and Prejudice

• Hollywood Homely: It's a bit hilarious seeing Joan Fontaine, one of the most gorgeous actresses even to grace the screen, declaring herself "plain and little."

ITV's telefilm starring Samantha Morton (the 1996 Emma) as Jane and Ciaran Hinds (the 1995 Persuasion) as Rochester.

• Hollywood Homely: Perhaps inverted this with casting Cirian Hinds as Mr. Rochester, Mr. Hinds being rather rough looking. However, Samantha Morton plays "plain and little" Jane while being arguably a world-class hottie.