Why did so many contemporary critics think Jane Eyre a shocking book?

After its publication, Jane Eyre soon drew the attention of London literary society and from within critics’
circles because of its unconventionality, and distinctiveness from the mainstream of contemporary fiction. Many reviews about the sensation that Jane Eyre had created appeared in various magazines and journals. The wellknown Victorian critic of literature George Henry Lews said in the Westminster Review that Jane Eyre was “the best novel of the season” with “the originality and freshness of its style” (as cited in Barker, 2002, p.170).

An anonymous reviewer in Christian Remembrancer praised it, writing “no novel has created so much sensation as Jane Eyre” with “the remarkable power” that it displayed. This reviewer also found “masculine power, breadth and shrewdness” throughout Jane Eyre (as cited in O’Neill, 1968, p.14).

However, there were not just enthusiastic comments voiced about Jane Eyre in the early reviews. The reviewers also pointed out the defects in Jane Eyre such as the “improbability” and the “coarseness”.
Another well-known but very caustic early review was from Elizabeth Rigby (Lady Eastlake) in the famous journal Quarterly Review. Apart from the “coarseness” with which Mrs. Rigby was uncomfortable, she said the novel was an “anti-Christian composition”, which might cause the discontent among the working class, and thereby political upheaval.
She denounced Jane Eyre arguing that “the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism and rebellion at home, is the same which has also written Jane Eyre” (as cited in O’Neill, 1968, p.15).
From: Jane Eyre
read also: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/cbronte/mayer1.html
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