Rediscovery of the Voice in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

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Jane Eyre: Rediscovery of the Voice

Jane has endured hell. Indeed, most of this novel becomes a test of what she can endure. Helen Burns and Miss Temple teach Jane the British stiff upper lip and saintly patience. Then Jane, star pupil that she is, exemplifies the stoicism, while surviving indignity upon indignity. Jane’s soul hunkers down deep inside her body and waits for the shelling to stop. Only at Moor’s End, where she teaches and grows, does her soul come out. She stops enduring and begins living. Jane begins to become an “I” in her 19th year.

In the sentence, “Reader, I married him.” Jane makes clear who is in charge of her life and her marriage; she is. That “I” stands resolutely as the subject of the sentence commanding the verb and attaching itself to the object, “him.” She is no longer passive, waiting and sitting for Rochester’s attention. Rather, she goes out and gets him.

She has gone a long way from the beginning of the novel. At Gateshead, Jane tries to direct her life. Her little “I” scolds Mrs. Reed and chastises John. Like the later Jane, she knows...

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