Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, is the story of Jane, an orphan girl with a harsh upbringing. During a time when women were condemned for learning more than custom pronounced necessary, Jane becomes educated intellectually, socially, and spiritually. In the course of growing up she travels to many places as she battles to learn more about herself and about the world. In the following paragraphs you’ll see how Bronte establishes that money and power do not make a person. Mrs. Reed, Mr. Rochester, and Mr. Brocklehurst all reflect this, they are not nice or perfectly content people. She demonstrates that general education is more important than wealth.
The story begins at the Reed’s residence at Gateshead Hall. Jane is excluded from the Reed’s activities so she tries to educate herself by reading books. Soon enough though, John Reed finds her, takes away the book and strikes her with it. “You are like a slave-driver” (Bronte: 43), cries Jane. In this passage Jane compares John with a slave-driver because like one, John deprives her of her endeavor to educate herself and keeps her suppressed. In the boarding school for orphaned girls called Lowood, Jane sees that movement towards progress and knowledge is retained. Mr. Brocklehurst, the director of Lowood, wants the girls to “clothe themselves with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel” (Bronte: 96). So he doesn’t allow for girls to be dressed neatly or with curls in their hair because to him that’s a sin of showing off. His goal it seems is not to truly educate this girls for their own improvement, but merely to educate them to serve the wealthy.
In spite of many hardships, Jane manages to graduate and becomes a governess under Mr. Rochester’s employment. Mr. Brocklehurst’s influence on Jane to be plain, to be an underclass to serve becomes more apparent when Jane thinks, “is it likely he (Mr. Rochester) would waste a serious thought on this indigent and insignificant plebeian?” (Bronte: 191). Having no money or a house of her own, she considers herself inferior and unlikely that Mr. Rochester, being a man of power and class, would ever lay eyes on her. When Jane leaves Thornfield after she finds out that Mr. Rochester is married, she decides that it’s better to be a schoolmistress, honest and free, than to stay and become a slave full of remorse and shame.
I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle blackness, burning! No human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better then I was loved; and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and idol. (311; ch. 27)
Jane Eyre is born into a world where she is left bereft of the love of parents, family, or friends, but instead surrounded by hateful relatives. She resolves to attend school to begin her quest for independence. This theme is seen through Jane’s behavior when she renounces her relation to her aunt Mrs. Reed, ignoring the nurse’s orders and leaving her room to see Helen again, and when she acquires the courage to speak her opinion to Mr. Rochester.
St. John Rivers makes some very intriguing choices in Jane Eyre. He is constantly faced with difficult decisions to make. Whether it be refusing his true love or moving to India to give his life serving others, there is always an interesting twist where St. John is concerned. His importance in the novel may be evident to readers, but they may not always understand his decisions and his actions. The choices he makes are exemplary of a man who has given his life to serve God and His people.
From an early age Jane is aware she is at a disadvantage, yet she learns how to break free from her entrapment by following her heart. Jane appears as not only the main character in the text, but also a female narrator. Being a female narrator suggests a strong independent woman, but Jane does not seem quite that.
In the novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte uses Jane Eyre as her base to find out how a character confronts the demands of a private passion that conflicts with her responsibilities. . Mistreated abused and deprived of a normal childhood, Jane Eyre creates an enemy early in her childhood with her Aunt Mrs. Reed. Just as Mrs. Reeds life is coming to an end, she writes to Jane asking her for forgiveness, and one last visit from her.
In Jane’s childhood, Jane was often bullied for her status and her beauty, or lack of it, and was beaten by her cousin, John Reed which was ignored by John’s mother. Moving to Lowood Institute, Jane found no more better treatment than that which she had received at the Reeds, although she was able to find solace in Helen Burns and Miss Temple, her status, along with the status of the other girls at the Institute, meant that the conditions were poor and Jane was forced to no longer not care about her status. While she had always believed herself not to be beautiful, she had never paid heed to societal roles. At Rochester’s mansion, Thornfield Manor, Jane finds company in Adele and in Mrs Fairfax, but only comes to see her own beauty once she has formed a relationship with Mr. Rochester, a kindred spirit in their low
Through the course of the novel, Jane Eyre is dependent on first her Aunt Reed, then Mr. Brocklehurst, and, subsequently, Mr. Rochester. As John Reed, her cousin, taunts her, she is “a dependent… [has] no money’” (Bronte 4), highlighting the complete control her Aunt Reed has of her life at this point. Her Aunt Reed chooses to send her to the frightful Lowood School and leads her Uncle John Eyre to believe her “’dead of typhus fever at Lowood.”’ (Bronte 217) While at Lowood, she is dependent on the dreadful Mr. Brocklehurst, a “personification of the Victorian superego,” (Gilbert and Gubar 343) who is the “absolute ruler of this little world.” (Rich 466) He uses “religion, charity, and morality to keep the poor in their place,” (Rich 466) rendering the students psychologically dependent on him. Finally, as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Jane Eyre is dependent on Mr. Rochester as his employee, required to acquiesce to his whims and to ask his...
Through Jane Eyre, Charlotte shows the reality of a governess’s job that makes a governess’s life miserable. However, the Bronte sisters started to establish their own private school in order to provide a good environment and formal education for girls. Unfortunately, their project failed because they had no financial or governmental support that might help them to run their school. After that, all the Bronte sisters, as well as Jane Austen, transfers all their efforts in writing literary works that criticized several issues, especially the educational system of England. These literary works help to show British people’s suffering from class distinction, especially females who become inferior and have unequal positions in English society in the eighteenth century. This leads some political party to perform an act that supports the idea of equality between classes and males and females, especially in
The story begins as Jane lives with the Reed family in their home at Gateshead Hall. Here, the theme of education vs. containment develops immediately, as Jane is kept confined indoors on a cold winter day. The other children (Eliza, John, and Giorgiana) are "clustered round their mamma in the drawing-room" (Bronte: 39) being educated, as Jane had been excluded from the group. Jane tries to educate herself by reading from Berwick's History of British Birds, but once again, she is held back from her attempt at enlightenment by the abuse of John Reed, who castigates her and throws the heavy book at her. In anger, Jane cries out, "You are like a murderer - you are like a slave-driver - you are like the Roman emperors" (Bronte: 43). In this passage, Jane compares John Reed to a slave-driver because, like a slave-driver, he deprives Jane of her attempt at education and keeps her suppressed. Afterwards, Jane is blamed for the entire incident and...
This brought into question Jane’s grand need for independence. Jane’s equality in a relationship is derived from her desire for independence. Jane reveals her need for independence in her relationship with Mr. Rochester when she told him she would always call him master but she would not be inferior to him. Haiyan Gao asserts in her article “Reflection On feminism in Jane Eyre,” “Jane loves Rochester with all her heart and Rochester’s status and wealth make him so high above for Jane to approach, yet she never feels herself inferior to Rochester though she is a humble family teacher.” It is also notable that Jane does not pursue a relationship with Mr. Rochester with the intention of gaining money.
In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, it was love, and not age or education, that led Jane to mature and grow as a person. With the help of Helen Burns and Miss. Temple, Jane Eyre learned what it meant to love someone. Both these people influenced Jane to mature into a young lady by showing Jane their love and affection. When Jane left Lowood to become a governess, she met the love of her life, Mr. Rochester. With his love, Jane Eyre eventually matured fully and grew into a self-sufficient woman and left the hatred and anger behind.
The novel Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, depicts the coming of age of a woman who encounters great hardships, obstacles, and heartbreak. During the Victorian era women were subordinate to men and often times lacked the same opportunities and privileges that society and the family structure gave to men. Although society and the family structure of the Victorian era treated men and women differently, men were also oppressed, experienced suffering, and had to overcome poverty, but due to the masculinity that men were forced to portray during the era often times the hardships of men have been overlooked when analyzing the men in Jane Eyre. The characters John Reed, St. John Rivers, and Edward Rochester suffer various forms of lack and poverty that contributes to their oppressive and suffering nature precipitated by societal and family structure as well as being impoverished by their circumstances throughout the story even though they come across as having wealth and power.
Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre, is set in a Victorian England, where social class is a huge factor in life. Brontë is very critical of Victorian England’s strict hierarchy. the main character, Jane, is a governess. Her social position is very complicated in which she has to be sophisticated, educated, intelligent, and soft spoken but she is then talked down to as she is of a lower class. The job of a governess is to teach children, whether it be art, writing or reading english literature. Victorian society is very corrupt and in the novel Brontë truly captures and illustrates the challenges that Jane has to face as a governess. The novel also emphasizes the social gap between individuals and how big it really is. In Victorian society, the rich get the most out of life and life for the poor gets harder. No individual should judge or belittle another due to the very minor factor of social status, but it seems to be very important in Jane’s society. The message that Brontë expresses in the novel is that social class is a meaningless catalyst in the progression of relationships, creating giant gaps between individuals.
Women, in all classes, were still living in a world which was misogynistic and male-dominated. Their purpose in life was to produce male heirs and maintain the home by hiring and overseeing servants. It was also taboo for one to marry significantly below one’s social class. This is one reason that Jane is not a conventional heroine for the society of her time. Although, as a governess, she is not considered to be as low as a housemaid, she is still part of the hired help in the house. This is why it is unconventional for her and Mr Rochester to be in a relationship. Yet this is not as peculiar as how Jane Eyre ends their relationship due to her sense of betrayal. It would have been considered extremely foolish for a working-woman’s sense of betrayal to end and turn down a man of great wealth.
At the beginning of the book, Jane was living with her aunt Mrs. Reed and her children. Although Jane is treated cruelly and is abused constantly, she still displays passion and spirit by fighting back at John and finally standing up to Mrs Reed. Even Bessie ‘knew it was always in her’. Mrs. Reed accuses Jane of lying and being a troublesome person when Mr. Brocklehurst of Lowood School visited Gateshead. Jane is hurt, as she knows she was not deceitful so she defends herself as she defended herself to John Reed when he abused her, as she said “Wicked and cruel boy! You are like a murderer – you are like a slave driver – you are like the Roman emperors!” to John Reed instead of staying silent and taking in the abuse, which would damage her self-confidence and self-worth. With the anger she had gotten from being treated cruelly, she was able to gain ...