Jane Eyre, Neurodivergence, and the UnLLMable Soul in an Age of AI

What does Jane Eyre — Charlotte Brontë’s stubborn, passionate, fiercely independent heroine — have to teach us about resilience, neurodivergence, and the future of human intelligence?

Quite a lot, it turns out.

In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, we are training ourselves to value what machines can measure: efficiency, pattern, output, optimisation. But human intelligence — especially the neurodivergent kind — often doesn’t fit these neat categories. It is messy, unpredictable, sometimes difficult. It rebels, questions, refuses to mask.

Jane Eyre is the perfect symbol of this unLLMable human spirit.

From her traumatic childhood at Gateshead and Lowood, she refuses to accept injustice quietly. She does not suppress her sense of self, even when it would be easier to obey. As a governess at Thornfield, she stands toe-to-toe with Rochester, asserting her moral autonomy and emotional depth. She will not marry for convenience, nor compromise her integrity, even when society pushes her to conform.

Today, many neurodivergent people face a similar tension. In schools, workplaces, and social systems optimised for the average and the predictable, they are often asked to mask their true selves — to flatten their differences, suppress their deep focus, or conceal their non-linear creativity.

Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation warns that we are overprotecting young people in the physical world while leaving them unprotected in the digital one — giving them little room for real-world risk and growth, while fuelling addiction to screens and algorithms. For neurodivergent youth, this environment can be especially stifling, cutting them off from the kinds of real-life exploration and resilience-building that allow their unique strengths to flourish.

And here’s where the challenge deepens:

AI systems are incredibly powerful at identifying patterns, but they are not built to hold space for the unpredictable. Yet it is precisely the unpredictable — the deeply human, the emotionally raw, the morally defiant — that characters like Jane Eyre represent.

What would it look like to build education, work, and community environments that honour not just what is efficient, but what is beautifully unLLMable?

To value the rebel, the innovator, the neurodivergent mind that sees the world sideways and, in doing so, pushes us forward?

In an age of AI, Jane Eyre reminds us: resilience isn’t about perfect compliance.

It’s about knowing who you are, standing firm in your truth, and daring to live with integrity — even when the system tells you to bend.