Why Jane Eyre Will Always Be My Favourite Book: A Reflection on Trauma, Dignity, Poise, and the kind of love that does not ask you to shrink
There are books that change your mind. And there are books that change your life.
For me, Jane Eyre was both.
I was not a child who grew up with safety. I learned early how to read a room, how to shrink, how to survive. In many ways, I met myself for the first time in the pages of Jane Eyre. I was young when I first read it, far too young to understand everything, but old enough to recognise the ache of being overlooked. The loneliness. The longing. The quiet, fierce determination to remain yourself in a world that keeps asking you to be less.
Jane Eyre is not just a novel about love. It is a novel about trauma. About the long ache of neglect. About finding one’s self not in defiance of hardship, but within it. It is about a girl who is unloved, abused, and controlled, and who nonetheless refuses to be broken.
Jane’s early years mirror many of the diagnostic experiences described in complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD). From her time in the Red Room to her cruel treatment at Lowood School, she endures what trauma specialists call prolonged interpersonal harm in childhood, often in settings where she is supposed to be safe.
The symptoms of C-PTSD are not just flashbacks or anxiety. They include chronic shame, emotional dysregulation, mistrust of others, and a fractured sense of self. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines C-PTSD as arising from “repeated or prolonged exposure to extremely threatening or horrific events,” particularly where escape is not possible (WHO ICD-11, 2018).
Jane, like many trauma survivors, learns to mask her fear. She internalises her pain. She becomes watchful and composed. Her resilience is not noisy. It is forged in silence, much like my own: eyes that carried more weight than their voices ever could.
Jane is not glamorous. She is not the sort of woman society makes space for. She is plain, clever, emotionally intense, and morally unyielding. Her strength lies not in dominance, but in her refusal to compromise the truth of who she is.
When Mr Rochester asks her to stay with him, to be his mistress knowing he is still married, she does not bend. Even though she loves him. Even though she is tempted. “I care for myself,” she says. “The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself” (Jane Eyre, Chapter 27, Project Gutenberg).
That line, for me, was like a sacrament. I had spent years performing. Years trying to be palatable. Years believing I was only worthy if I was useful. But here was a woman, written nearly two centuries ago, who refused to trade her soul for affection.
Trauma often teaches us that love must be earned through appeasement. But Jane chooses another path. She refuses to be possessed. She refuses to be anyone’s secret. She walks away, carrying her heartbreak like a flame. Not because she is cold, but because she is whole.
In a culture that rewards spectacle and performance, poise is often mistaken for passivity. But in Jane Eyre, poise is not submission. It is restraint born of conviction. It is a refusal to be reactive, even when provoked. Jane endures cruelty, isolation, and temptation, but she does not become harsh. Her composure is not an act. It is the outworking of interior discipline; a visible sign of a soul that has chosen peace over bitterness.
Poise matters, especially for women who have survived deep harm. It is not about suppressing emotion or pretending to be unaffected. It is about reclaiming your body, your breath, and your presence in the room. Trauma teaches us to scan for danger, to anticipate rejection, to apologise for existing. But poise says, I am allowed to be here. I am not afraid to be seen.
Jane embodies this truth with radical gentleness. She is not loud, but she is clear. She is not boastful, but she does not shrink. Even in the face of injustice, she responds without rage. She allows herself to feel anger, grief, and desire, yet never lets those feelings dictate her actions. She does not beg, plead, or explain herself excessively. She simply stands her ground and walks in her truth.
That is why poise is so powerful. It is the opposite of performative strength. It is the quiet confidence of someone who knows who she is and will not barter her soul for acceptance. For women living with complex PTSD, poise is not natural. It is learned through pain. But it becomes a kind of armour; not to block others out, but to protect what is sacred within.
In Jane, we find a model of sacred feminine strength. Not strength that crushes, but strength that endures. Not confidence that shouts, but confidence that rests. Her poise is her protest. Her calmness is her courage.
I have returned to Jane Eyre many times: in medical school, in war zones, in grief. I read it while treating children with glioblastomas, while watching parents crumble, while holding a scalpel in one hand and unspoken prayers in the other. In Jane, I saw the sort of moral endurance I witnessed in parents who refused to abandon hope even as they buried their children.
Research suggests that those with C-PTSD often turn to literature and faith not as escape, but as a means of reconstructing selfhood and coherence after fragmentation (Herman, J.L., 1992. Trauma and Recovery). Jane’s story is exactly this. Not a trauma narrative that ends in ruin, but one that ends in reclamation. She finds her voice. She chooses freely. She loves again, but only after she is no longer willing to sacrifice her integrity.
I love Jane not because she is perfect, but because she is real. Because she aches. Because she argues with God. Because she longs for love and still chooses freedom. Because she endures humiliation without becoming bitter. Because she leaves, even when it costs her everything. Most importantly, because she returns, not in defeat, but in peace.
In Jane Eyre, I found permission to want more. Not just from others, but from myself. I found the courage to stop performing. I found the language to say no. And I found the quiet hope that love is not something we earn by disappearing, but something we are worthy of, even in our full and sacred complexity.
That is why Jane Eyre will always be my favourite book. Because in her quiet, brave story, I found the strength to live my own.
Further Reading and Sources
Herman, J.L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence. Basic Books
World Health Organization (2018). ICD-11: Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Penguin Books