Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, has many meanings that can be found by reading it through different lenses. By looking through Jane Eyre with a biographical lenses, it gives the impression that Charlotte Brontë mirrored her own life and added her dreams into Jane’s life. This interpretation is significant through the fact that it gives more depth into the characters that she is writing about.…
Though Blanche, from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, thinks that opposites attract and thus that she will marry Rochester, Brontë has different ideas about foils. Near the end of the novel Jane marries Rochester effectively quieting Blanche’s ideas. However, Brontë does use foils in the novel for a different reason. She uses characters will opposite personalities to reveal more about them, and to keep the reader from overlooking many of the major characters’ traits. For instance, without Blanche, who is a foil of Jane, one may have thought Jane a simple and plain governess and nothing more. Similarly, without St. John the reader could have missed Rochester’s passionate side, or with no Mrs. Reed how supportive Miss Temple really is. Using foils, Brontë reveals more about the personalities of the major characters, and keeps the reader from overlooking many traits. One can see that Jane and Blanche are opposites from before they even meet. While Jane is rather plain and unattractive on the outside, Blanche is described as beautiful with, “the noble bust, the sloping shoulders, the graceful neck, the dark eyes and black ringlets” (183) Even Jane cannot deny that Blanche is beautiful. In addition, Blanche grows up in a rich noble family while Jane is an orphan who was sent to a lowly boarding school. The opposites do not stop at their looks and backgrounds, for even Jane and Blanche’s personalities are completely different. Jane is an independent, passionate, and respectful young woman, although she often seems very practical and rational. Blanche flaunts herself, gossips, talks about marriage, and can be very rude as shown when she says “she (Jane) looks too stupid for any game of the sort” (194). While Jane was in the room, Blanche speaks loudly and rudely of her without a second thought. In addition, Blanche only wants Rochester as her husband for his money, and for the title of a wife. She likes the fact that he is not handsome because as a…
Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre was produced in the Victorian era, when social elitism was in its prime and there was great segregation between the upper and lower estates. The former was composed of the clergy and nobility and was defined by wealth, privileges and lavish lifestyles. The middle class, conversely, were the most frustrated by the exclusiveness of the upper estate. Possessing skill, intelligence and assertiveness, they believed that rank and power should derive from talent and merit, rather than from noble birth. Through the demonisation and infliction of a tragic downfall upon “Master Reed”, Brontë condemns the life of pleasure and honour, the lifelong inactivity so heavily indulged by those born into the aristocracy. By characterising Mr Brocklehurst as excessively and hypocritically pious, Brontë highlights the upper clergyman’s propensity to masquerade as a great nobleman, rather than to exercise the competence and benevolence integral to his role. Finally, Brontë implements a love of “servitude” and disdain for a “still … doom”, as well as the ambiguous social position of a governess in her protagonist, Jane Eyre, rendering her an agent for the middle class’ philosophy on worthiness of privilege. Ultimately, Brontë’s Jane Eyre calls for the reformation of the Victorian social structure as the extremities involved in social elitism ignore the inherent needs of man.…
Jane Eyre, a Gothic novel by Charlotte Bronte, tells a story of a beauty and a beast. Jane Eyre grows up an orphaned girl in Victorian England who does not know love in her cruel aunt's household; after a few years her aunt sends her to a school where they abuse Jane further. After spending eight years as a student of Lowood and two as a teacher, she takes a nanny position where she meets Mr. Rochester, and sparks begin to fly. Bronte divides Jane's story into three significant sections, which have a different effect on Jane's life as seen at Gateshead, Lowood, and Thornfield .…
Today, Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece Jane Eyre continues to sell even 150 years after its release and has been mimicked ever since. What makes Jane Eyre so captivating to a modern audience is the plainness of the eponymous main character, a trait that is not found in many classic novels. It seems as though readers always turn to Jane Eyre when they feel the way she does throughout the majority of the novel; depressed and useless. Charlotte Brontë’s excellent use of character development amazingly turns a rather bleak story into an optimistic one of triumph and love. Charlotte Brontë uses her abilities as a writer to manipulate Jane’s voice throughout the novel by creating parallels between herself and Jane as a narrator by simulating the development of her character through her own description of events in Jane’s life, and as Jane recalls specific events from her childhood leading up to her marriage to Mr. Rochester she includes with beautiful detail the emotions she felt at every important moment, encapsulating the development of her character from her lonesome days at Gateshead to her wicked but motivating years at Lowood Institution and ending with the memories of her life in Thornfield…
Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, is a coming of age story, about a young, orphaned, and submissive girl growing up, through many hardships, into a young, passionate, and free willed woman. Charlotte Bronte begins the story with a ten-year-old Jane Eyre living with an impartial and sometimes cruel aunt, Aunt Reed. Aunt Reed, after neglecting Jane for the whole of her life, finally decides to send her away to boarding school, to Lowood School. Upon her departure, Jane expresses a measure of autonomy and agency, the first of many episodes in which she “gathered her energies and launched them in this blunt sentence – ‘I am not deceitful; if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you” (pg. 30). Here Jane, after living so many years in silence, makes a choice to stand up for herself, by letting Mrs. Reed know her true feelings about how she has been treated thus far; she is in a state of self-governing. Jane Eyre continues to fight for autonomy and agency – through her departure from Lowood to Thornfield, in her growing relationship with Mr. Rochester, and then through her decision to leave behind Thornfield and Mr. Rochester, and finally to go back – as she matures, and evolves from a child into a woman.…
In Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Bronte’s use of foils to reveal Jane’s true character enriches the reader’s interest when reading the novel. Characters in the novel such as Georgina Reed, Blanche Ingram, Helen Burns, Bertha Mason and Mr. Rochester show a meaningful contrast to Jane’s personality.…
Jane Eyre's character became more self-sufficient, developed moral and personal strengths,and found a freedom that she had been in search of for her entire life.Her belief in her equality to others cannot be taken from her, because it is an inherent part of her knowledge and…
“Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes” Hugh Prather. Life can be both brilliant and torture, sometimes at the same time, and we must learn to roll with the punches. In the graphic novel version of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Jane learns how to deal with her tragic life but also to love and forgive. The character Jane Eyre goes through changes in her life at every flip or a page. The common underlying message declares that not everything in life is handed to you, that instead one must reach and strive to reach greatness. Shown in the novel through the dark undertones and seasonal environment shifts, that life is not all sunshine, in fact there rarely is sunlight drawn, and when there is, Jane has worked her hardest…
Change is an essential part of development throughout life. One’s attitude toward change correlates directly with the outcome of his or her life. In the novel, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte examines how emphasizing or neglecting what makes one truly happy when dealing with change impacts one’s life. St.John throws away the possibility of a happy life when he makes the life changing decision to be a missionary and thus dies a lonely unsatisfied mad, whereas, when Jane faces the two biggest changes of her life, she puts what will make her happy first, which in turn leads her to a life of great fulfillment.…
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” This quote was said by the famous Charlotte Bronte. This very attitude reflects much throughout her book Jane Eyre, and shows that Bronte had ideals that could be found in todays society. She was far beyond her time, and longed to be an independent women. Jane Eyre was a character in Bronte’s book that had lots of similarities to her self.…
Jane Eyre is a classic coming-of-age novel, using the popular format of a character reaching maturity through a series of obstacles, similar to both Mark Twain's ‘Huckleberry Finn’, and J.D. Salinger's ‘The Catcher in the Rye’. However it creates a more complex picture through clever crafting of the novel incorporating the physical movement and growth of Jane with her spiritual development. One of the strongest influences on her movements is the notion of the family. As Jane is an orphan, she must ‘create’ her own family. Her choices reflect her need to find her own family. Jane Eyre is a novel which has no firm setting. As the locations change, Jane herself is affected in…
There is a dramatic change in Jane Eyre’s character which makes her an excellent dynamic character. In the beginning, we see Jane as this powerless and isolated girl who doesn’t know how to stand up for herself. As the story digresses she turn into a woman who respects herself enough to voice her own opinion, not only to women but to men also. She challenges the authority of men even though the consequences are severe. She doesn’t just talk about what she believes is right, she does what she thinks is right. For example, when she declined the two marriage proposals. The fact that she stood up for what she believed in to the extent of her telling the man she cared for so deeply she couldn’t marry him shows how strong of a person Jane really…
Bibliography: Bossche, Vanden and Chris R., What did Jane Eyre do? Ideology, Agency, Class and the Novel. Narrative, January 2005, Vol. 13, Issue 1, p.46-66.…
The novel Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte consists of continuous journey through Jane's life towards her final happiness and freedom. Jane's physical journeys contribute significantly to plot development and to the idea that the novel is a journey through Jane's life. Each journey causes her to experience new emotions and an eventual change of some kind. These actual journeys help Jane on her four figurative journeys, as each one allows her to reflect and grow.…