Daily News Item 2026-09-29 10:32

This fall, ninth-grade students across China are being required to read Jane Eyre (Smith Elder, 1847) in its entirely, according to the New York Times. The Charlotte Brontë classic is popular in China, celebrated for its emphasis on independence and equality between the sexes. Its inclusion in the ninth grade curriculum coincides with a renewed push by the government to get young people to marry and have children. “Jane Eyre is about an independent woman, but she’s not too outrageous in her challenge of patriarchal power,” Ping Zhu, a professor at the University of California in San Diego who focuses on Chinese feminism and literature, said. Marrying and having a child, as Jane does by the end of the book, are “what the Chinese government wants the younger generation to do.”