Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte was born at Thornton, in Yorkshire, on 21st April 1816. Her mother was called Maria and her father was the Reverend Patrick Bronte. Charlotte was the third child born into the family. At this time she had two older sisters Maria and Elizabeth and then a year later her only brother Patrick Branwell Bronte was born. She then had two younger sisters, Emily born in 1818 and the youngest Anne born in 1820.

Just a year after they had moved to the Personage at Haworth in 1820 Charlotte’s mother died in 1821 and their mother’s sister Elizabeth Branwell came to live with them. The oldest child at this time was only seven years old and the six small children took comfort in each other.

In July 1824 the two older girls, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent away to school at Cowen Bridge and Charlotte and Emily followed months later. The place was cold and damp and had been set up by a clergyman to provide cheap education to poor clergyman’s daughters. Maria and her sister Elizabeth became ill at the school because of the poor conditions and Maria was sent home in February 1825 and died three months later from tuberculosis at the age of eleven.

Elizabeth was also sent home three weeks later and she too died of tuberculosis less than a month later. Mr Bronte was quick to bring his other two daughters home from the school but Charlotte always remembered the harness shown to her sisters at the school and blamed the school for their deaths. When Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre some years later she based Lowood on the school Cowen Bridge. She also models the suffering Helen who died from disease in Lowood in Jane Eyre on her sister Maria.

The novel "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë consists of the continuous journ...

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... equal to Rochester, financially, physically and emotionally. She was once dependant on him and now they are both equal as he is as dependant on her as she is on him.

Jane and Rochester marry within the three days Rochester promised her. In the final chapter Charlotte Bronte simply describes their life together and she describes it as one of sheer contentment and bliss. They were a couple suited to each other in every aspect. Bronte tells us of how her cousins Diana and Mary both marry good men and lead happy lives, Jane places Adele into a good school where she is taught well and grows up to be a fine young woman and Rochester regains the sight in one of his eyes, giving him the ability to see his newborn baby boy.

These five physical journeys mirror Jane’s four emotional journeys. Jane goes from an immune child to a mature woman at Lowood Boarding school.