Jane Eyre: A Fairy Tale?

Jane Eyre: A Fairy Tale?
If there’s one thing that Charlotte Bronte could not be accused of, it is writing a simple romance novel. Jane Eyre is by all accounts a novel of love, but also a novel of personal growth, of pain, of things above human comprehension, and of happiness. Bronte intimately acquaints her readers with Jane Eyre, and gets us to love Jane despite all the obstacles she has to face .In keeping with the heart of the bildungsroman novel, Bronte lets us see not just the good times in Jane’s life, but also the bad and the ugly. Bronte further ensnares the reader with the supernatural element she laces throughout the novel that is often the harbinger of bad times for Jane. It is with this combination of elements that Charlotte Bronte writes the great Gothic novel; it is almost like a recipe, one happy fairytale plus a handful of mysterious supernatural events equals the perfect balance of romance and horror for the perfect gothic novel.
The first ingredient in our Jane Eyre recipe is a good, solid fairytale. However, this isn’t a Disney fairytale, this is much more like the Grimm Brothers. We start out in Gateshead where we meet Mrs. Reed and her horrible children. There, Jane is tortured and ridiculed by her peers which leaves her confused and reeling with questions like, “Why was I always suffering, always brow beaten, always confused, forever condemned? Why could never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favor?” (Bronte 10). This sort of childhood, though not very fairytale like, is very reminiscent of Cinderella. It turns out that just like Cinderella, Jane is able to transcend her horrible family and upbringing to fall in love with a man that she could only ever dream of, Mr. Rochester. Perhaps there is no crystal shoe or pumpkin carriage that springs to life after a “bippity boppity boo”, but as Andrew Lang remarks in a preface to Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-five Variants of Cinderella by Marian Roalfe Cox, "the fundamental idea of Cinderella [is] a person in a mean or obscure position, by means of supernatural assistance makes a good marriage" (Lang viii). The fundamental aspects of the Cinderella story are very much intact. Jane does still fall in love naturally and perhaps beautifully with Rochester who can at times be seen as her guardian or fairy godmother if you will. In her analysis of Jane Eyre, Investigating the Third Story: 'Bluebeard ' and 'Cinderella ' in Jane Eyre, Victoria Anderson points out, “In the fairy tales, the endangered princess seeks counsel from a fairy godmother-type character. Ironically, Rochester plays this role when he assumes the disguise of a gypsy fortune-teller” (Anderson). Despite the fact that this is a fairytale, Jane is a person who is in need of protection and shelter due to her harassed childhood and because Rochester can give her that, she falls in love with him despite some of his obvious flaws. It should also be noted that it has been observed that fairytale have always been rather un-feminist (Rodriguez), what is interesting about Jane Eyre, however, is that it is Jane who makes her own destiny and sticks to her morals despite the various pressures bearing down upon her to conform. For example, when she leaves Rochester when she discovers he is trying to commit bigamy by marrying her despite his pleas for her to stay, we see Jane becoming comfortable in making her own decisions. Perhaps it is this aspect that to a modern reader enhances the fairytale quality of the novel, because after all, free will does make everybody happy.
Despite the fairytale overtone, there is certainly a grave supernatural undertone that we have to add to our Jane Eyre recipe. That is not to say that all of the supernatural elements are bad for Jane. At the end of the book when Jane is almost about to give into St. John and become his wife, she hears Mr. Rochester calling out to her and she “ascends” and gets her perfect fairytale ending with Mr. Rochester. For the large part however, the supernatural element is part of Jane’s imagination. Bertha is a human, despite her mental illness, but describes her second encounter with Bertha as one with a spectral quality. She says, “I never saw a face like it! It was a discolored face—it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and fearful blackened inflation of the liniments!” “[It reminded me] of the foul German spectre, the Vampyre” (Bronte 330). In her critical essay, Helen Philpott takes note of how much of Bronte’s supernatural elements have rational explanation when she says, “Gothic novels, at their height of popularity from the 1760s to the 1820s, might include isolated mansions, gloomy settings, burial grounds, dark towers, secret rooms, dream states or nightmares, family secrets, women in distress, madness and murder: all of which motifs appear in [Jane Eyre]” (Philpott). The supernatural elements of the novel are also simply a great way for Bronte to effectuate her plot and capture the interest of the reader who is not interested in just a plain old love story.
When the supernatural and the fairytale are mixed together, we get the perfect Gothic novel. The Gothic novel, classically defined as a novel that fuses romance and horror, is quite clear in this story. The romance between Mr. Rochester and Jane is very fairytale like, it is very romantic, but in this novel it seems that there may be something of an overbalance of the horror. Jane starts out in a horrible situation at Gateshead and then has a truly horrible childhood. Then at Lowood she suffers the loss of one of her best friends and simply horrible conditions. Then, after her first marriage attempt with Rochester, she struggles to survive on the streets and almost dies. Still, despite all the tragedy, as long as the story ends well, we can call it a gothic novel. Perhaps it is because Jane Eyre is written in the style of the bildungsroman so we get to see the bad times in Jane’s life, we understand that if it weren’t for the bad times in Jane’s life, she would not develop into the same independent, strong willed, yet compassionate person that she is at the close of the novel. The gothic novel is a style of literature that is intended to let the reader understand the contrast between the good and the bad, to see that sometimes you can’t understand the good without the bad or the bad without the good, and just as importantly, sometimes the bad blends with the good. Jane Eyre shows us everything that a gothic novel should not just so we can understand Jane, but so that perhaps we can take a closer look at ourselves and look for that contrast in our own lives. Jane Eyre is an exceptional novel: it is relatable, it is captivating, and it is just plain interesting. Beyond just those qualities that make it a good read, it is also a novel that very cleverly blends fairytales with the supernatural in order to write a gothic bildungsroman. The story of Cinderella that is laced throughout the novel makes Jane Eyre a classic fairytale, a beautiful romance. It is, however, complicated by the appearance of many supernatural events that Bronte incorporates as a way to turn the love story into something more. With the combination of the fairytale and the supernatural elements that make the gothic novel that shows us the fairytale and the “supernatural” in our own lives.

Works Cited
Anderson, Victoria. "Investigating the Third Story: 'Bluebeard ' and 'Cinderella ' in Jane Eyre." Horrifying Sex: Essays on Sexual Difference in Gothic Literature. Ed. Ruth Bienstock Anolik. Jefferson: McFarland, 2007. 111-121. Web.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2003. Print.
Lang, Andrew. "Introduction." Cox, Marian Roalfe. Cinderella: Three Hundered and Forty-five Variants of Cinderella. London: Strand, 1893. viii. Digitized Google Books.
Philpott, Helen. "Something Dangerous in Her Nature: Madwomen in Jane Eyre and The Woman in White." The Bronte Influence 2004: 23-38. Web.
Rodriguez, Carolina Fernandez. "The deconstruction of the male-rescuer archetype in contemporary feminist revisions of 'The Sleeping Beauty '. (Scholarship in Translation)." Marvels & Tales 2002. Web.

Cited: Anderson, Victoria. "Investigating the Third Story: 'Bluebeard ' and 'Cinderella ' in Jane Eyre." Horrifying Sex: Essays on Sexual Difference in Gothic Literature. Ed. Ruth Bienstock Anolik. Jefferson: McFarland, 2007. 111-121. Web. Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2003. Print. Lang, Andrew. "Introduction." Cox, Marian Roalfe. Cinderella: Three Hundered and Forty-five Variants of Cinderella. London: Strand, 1893. viii. Digitized Google Books. Philpott, Helen. "Something Dangerous in Her Nature: Madwomen in Jane Eyre and The Woman in White." The Bronte Influence 2004: 23-38. Web. Rodriguez, Carolina Fernandez. "The deconstruction of the male-rescuer archetype in contemporary feminist revisions of 'The Sleeping Beauty '. (Scholarship in Translation)." Marvels & Tales 2002. Web.