Jane Eyre
In the novel Jane Eyre, charlotte Bronte displays the different stages of maturity an individual goes through from childhood to when they become an adult. Bronte shows this idea of maturity clearly in Jane Eyre character. Jane Eyre is a dynamic character as throughout the novel she changes her decisions and ideas according to the situations she faces. Jane’s action and decision making in the novel demonstrates the growth in her maturity from a rude wilful child to an ambitious young lady and how she struggles to overcome the class and social conflicts at each stage of her life as moves from Gateshead to Lowood and finally to Thronfield. In the opening section of Gateshead, Jane is seen as rude, aggressive wilful child. Jane feels insure as she does not have a family of her own which means that she is isolated both in terms of class and social status. Jane was totally depended on her aunt who is not happy to have Jane with her. Jane’s aunt not only made Jane feel bad by mentioning that her father had no class but also kept her children away from Jane which isolated Jane socially. Jane’s aunts regular insulting of Jane made Jane hate her more. Therefore Jane collected the courage to tell her aunt “I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. / I will say that the very thought of you made me sick and that you treated me with miserable cruelty” (36). This shows the very immaturity of Jane as later in the novel when her aunt is in her dead bed and Jane visits her Jane says “I had once vowed that I will never call her aunt again: I thought it no sin to forget and break the vow now”(230). Jane is willing to forget what her aunt did to her which shows that Jane did in fact mature as time passed. Jane’s character in Gateshead is also not static as she is rude, mean and fights her cousin. However when Jane is with Bessie she tends to be more calm which means that a positive influence of elders does have an
Cited: Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1847. Ed. Margarate Smith. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Bossche, Chris R. Vanden. What did Jane Eyre do? Ideology, Agency, Class, and the Novel. The Ohio state university, 2005. Maturity in Jane Eyre’s character Wagma Rashid English 111A Dr. Alison Rukhavina