I found
Wide Sargasso Sea, the story of
Jane Eyre's mad attic-bound wife, to be a better book than
Jane Eyre itself. I found Antionette to be a very
sympathetic and
compelling character, while
Jane Eyre always seemed a bit too
saccharin for my taste.
The subject of madness has been of great concern to feminist thought, since women, especially women who are at all rebellious, are often labeled "crazy" or "hysterical" (that word itself, of course, coming from the word for "womb"). Go read The Yellow Wallpaper.
So the story that emerges is that Antionette, and her mother before her, are actually driven crazy. Antionette shows no signs of lunacy until she is forced into an arranged marriage with a visciously manipulative man* who takes all her money and then cavorts with the servants, she is forced to leave her Caribbean home for cold, grey England, and then locked in an attic and sedated because her husband doesn't want to deal with her and is afraid she will go mad (kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy). And then some goody-two-shoes bitch tries to come in and marry her husband, the only man she's ever loved (they did have a nice honeymoon, before he started sleeping with the servants and drugging her and locking her in the attic). I'd set them on fire, too.
As a girl, I loved Jane Eyre. As a woman, I much prefer the story of Wide Sargasso Sea.
*
Okay, granted, he's being manipulated here, too, by his money-loving father who has tricked him into the marriage. But there's no reason for him to take that out on Antionette.