Autistic Scholar Finds Herself in Jane Eyre's Story

For generations, readers have loved Jane Eyre for her fierce independence and refusal to fit Victorian society's mold. Now, autistic scholars are recognizing something even more profound in Brontë's 1847 classic: a character who might share their neurological experience.

Chloe Riley, an autistic researcher who wrote her master's thesis on Jane Eyre, saw her own childhood reflected in the novel's pages. Like Jane, Riley tried desperately to follow every rule but still found herself in constant trouble for speaking too directly or asking questions others perceived as attacks.

The connection goes beyond one reader's experience. In 2008, scholar Julia Miele Rodas first showed how Jane Eyre could be interpreted as autistic. Charlotte Brontë's biographer has even suggested several members of the Brontë family, including Charlotte herself and her sister Emily (author of Wuthering Heights), might have been autistic.

The reading transforms our understanding of the novel's most famous symbol: Bertha, Rochester's "mad wife" locked in the attic. For Riley, who spent years learning to mask her autistic traits to fit in, Bertha represented her own hidden autism fighting against concealment. After receiving her autism and ADHD diagnoses in 2022, she began to see the entire story differently.

Why This Inspires

This reinterpretation does something powerful. It reframes Jane's story from a woman learning to suppress her "unfeminine" anger into something richer: an autistic woman navigating a world designed for neurotypical people.

The novel's most striking details support this reading. Jane experiences emotions with unusual intensity, especially feelings like anger and distress. She struggles to understand unspoken social rules despite desperately wanting to fit in. These are common autistic experiences, yet they've been invisible to readers for nearly two centuries.

Autism researcher Jessica Fox has found that autistic women face discrimination specifically because their traits don't match feminine stereotypes. Jane Eyre's Victorian world demanded women be gentle, quiet, and compliant. Jane's intensity, directness, and strong sense of justice made her seem wrong and abnormal, much like autistic women today who are told they're "not doing womanhood right."

The discovery is helping autistic readers feel less alone. Finding yourself reflected in classic literature validates your experience in a profound way. It says: people like you have always existed, even when society didn't have words for your experience.

This new lens also enriches the novel for all readers by revealing layers Brontë may not have consciously intended but nonetheless wove into her unconventional heroine. Jane Eyre continues to speak to outsiders nearly 200 years later, now in ways we're only beginning to understand.