Use Of Anaphora In Jane Eyre

Although the passage foreshadows the events later throughout the novel, Dickens ultimately uses a pathetic tone toward the social conditions of France before the French Revolution through the use of anaphora in the first half of the passage and the diction throughout the second half of the passage.

Dickens describes the conditions of the village with a pathetic tone; throughout the passage, the village, and its people are described with uses of anaphora to emphasize the conditions that he so despises. Furthermore, the passage uses short descriptions to summarize the pathetic that he has. For example, the first paragraph ends with: “... [T]he men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly--a

Take the long lists of the physical descriptions of the village: “The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relay of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too” (Dickens 56). The previous quote is only of the many uses of anaphora-in this case the repetition of the the word poor-that emphasizes the overall destitute conditions of the people in the period, thus, revealing Dicken’s pathetic tone toward the social conditions. In addition, the passage continues to use anaphora to illustrate the cause of the destitute conditions: “... the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there … until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed” (Dickens 56). As a result, Dicken’s develops a pathetic mood for the reader by emphasizing that the village is “poor” from the superfluous taxation of the people. Dicken’s sense of pity is further illustrated by the final phrase “until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed”, which envelops and summarizes his thoughts about the social conditions leading to the French Revolution. Therefore, the use of anaphora not only emphasizes the impoverished conditions of the village and the overall conditions of France, but ultimately foreshadows the conditions that lead to the French Revolution and other future events in the novel along with the overarching tone used during those