What was that?

Twice in two days I have read something that either takes me by surprise or kind of baffles me. 

The first was Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (who wrote A Gentleman in Moscow which became one of my all-time favorite books.) It took me a while to make progress with it. I think it's because I felt as though there was a vague sense of doom hovering around the edges of the story, and I was just a few chapters in when Russia invaded Ukraine. I set it aside for weeks because there is only so much doom, actual or implied, that one can take. I finally finished it yesterday and ended up liking it by the end. I won't reveal any spoilers, but I will say that how I was preparing for the book to end was not at all how it ended. I was glad J. had already read it so I had someone to talk about it with. It was a book that needed a little processing afterwards.

The other was Jane Eyre (and as usual, there will be spoilers). It was a chapter that left all of us either baffled or annoyed, depending on the person. Yesterday, we finished the long chapter where Mr. Rochester and Jane hash out the fact that he was planning on marrying her even though he had a mad wife in the attic. Jane decides that she needs to leave and move on with her life. So far, so good. I'm thinking, she's going to move out of the house and contact her uncle and go and live with him, or at least go to live in the house we presume he had left her. Something along those lines. You know, a plan. Instead, what do we get? Jane wandering aimlessly for several days with no money and sleeping in the rain. And when she does find a town, does she tell anyone what has happened and that she hasn't eaten in several days? No. She'd rather go curl up and die because she has no one to introduce her to people and vouch for her. Usually I enjoy Victorian literature but not so much today. The whole, we don't talk to anyone or help anyone unless we know they are "worth" it is annoying and tedious. I'm also not sure I buy the whole Jane-wandering-aimlessly-to-the-point-of-collapse bit. Up until this point in the book, planning ahead and standing up for herself have been two of her main character traits. She even makes a point to maintain these up until the day of her wedding. Now, finding out that Mr. Rochester was already married must have been a shock, but still. No one in the house found it a very Jane type of thing to do. 

So have any of you read either of these books? What did you think? And more importantly, what did you think about the wandering, starving Jane chapter?