Romance...romance?

I was brought up short by the following quotation, courtesy of Crooked Timber:

[Prof. Schell’s] female students loved to discuss the chick-lit book “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and the sexual follies of Jones and her boss, Daniel Cleaver. But they were not enthralled with Edward Rochester’s lengthy courtship in “Jane Eyre.” Quick flings, or hookups, were okay, “but love was rarely mentioned in class discussions,” Schell says.

As it happens, my older students are rarely "enthralled" by Rochester's courtship either, largely because so much of it is, you know, carried out while he's still married.  (Or are we supposed to be over all that by now?)  And much of it is frequently manipulative and downright unpleasant--the mindgames Rochester plays with Jane and Blanche, for example.  Moreover, the novel condemns the initial phase of their courtship: yes, they fall in love, but they do so by elevating their relationship to each other over their relationship to God.  As Jane repeatedly acknowledges, their "love" turns into idolatry.  (Marianne Thormahlen is quite good on this point.)  You can make a good case that the most significant part of the "courtship" is their enforced separation after the failed marriage ceremony.  So, yes, Jane Eyre is a "romance," but it's really not such a good idea to appropriate it for this ideological purpose.