Jane Eyre
Acceptable with guidance. Age: 15+. A Catholic review of this book for parents.
Our review
Jane is an orphan girl who is treated badly but grows up brave and good. She falls in love with Mr. Rochester, then learns he already has a wife. Jane does what is right even though it breaks her heart, and God brings good out of it in the end. This is a story about a young woman who will not sin to keep the man she loves. Jane refuses to be Rochester's mistress and walks away with nothing, and that choice is the heart of the book. Wikipedia says the novel has a strong sense of Christian morality at its core. Helen Burns teaches Jane to love her enemies. The author was an Anglican, and a few passing lines give a false picture of Catholic penance and of convent life, which parents should correct. Good Books for Catholic Kids places it at sixteen and up because of the adultery theme, so ninth graders need a parent's guidance.
For parents
Independent reading from fifteen or sixteen. A strong ninth-grade reader can manage it with a parent reading along, but that is earlier than the Catholic placement. Common Sense Media says 13+, Plugged In says 15 and up, and Good Books for Catholic Kids says 16 and up, so Lumen shows the gap and follows the Catholic source. Rochester has had mistresses, tries to marry Jane while his wife lives, and then asks her to live with him. The book treats all of this as wrong. Ask: why does Jane leave when no one would know or blame her? What does Helen Burns teach her about forgiving? How are Brocklehurst and St. John Rivers poor pictures of Christian faith? Why can Jane marry Rochester at the end and not before? Talk about marriage as a bond that lasts until death, and about how Rochester's duty to his sick wife did not end because she was ill. The author was an Anglican, and two remarks about the Church need correcting. In chapter 14 Rochester says he keeps his ward 'on the Roman Catholic principle of expiating numerous sins, great or small, by one good work.' That is not Catholic teaching. A good work does not buy forgiveness. Sin is forgiven by God in absolution, and penance then helps repair the harm sin has done. The Catechism says such penances 'help configure us to Christ, who alone expiated our sins once for all' (CCC 1459-1460). In chapter 22 Jane says her cold cousin Eliza's good sense 'will be walled up alive in a French convent.' Religious life is not a burial. The Catechism calls it a 'more intimate' consecration, 'rooted in Baptism and dedicated totally to God', freely chosen for love of Him (CCC 915-916). Chapter 13 also has a joke about a novice who should 'worship her priest'. Catholics worship God alone.