Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre in 1847, when no women had succeeded in writing a play; essay, history or philosophical treatises of generally acknowledge merit. But when it came to novels, Charlotte Bronte is a prime example of a woman who had already triumphantly demonstrated her ability.
Jane Eyre is a fictional-autobiography, as many of Charlotte Bronte's own experiences are mirrored in those of her heroine, the pagtontominist of the book, Jane Eyre throughout the book. When Charlotte Bronte's father was left a widower with six children, he arranged for his dead wife's sister to act as housekeeper. Although she seems to have been a respectable and dutiful person, she never ceased to regret being obliged to spend her life in windswept Yorkshire, (where Charlotte Bronte was born), instead of sunny Cornwall. Thus she never became a warm or loving substitute for the mother the six children had lost. This mirrors Jane Eyre's childhood, because as a 10-year-old orphan, she was unwanted and neglected in the home of her uncle's widow Mrs Reed, of Gateshead Hall. Her cousins, Eliza, John and Georgiana are fondly treated, while Jane is made to feel unwanted. Jane was "consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John and Georgiana Reed" (pg 1). Mrs Reed tells her quite unfairly, that until she can be more frank and sociable, she cannot be accepted on her cousin's terms.
The unquestionably autobiographical quality in the writing of the first part of Jane Eyre is also portrayed, when Jane is sent away to be educated at Lowood, a charity school for girls of good family. During her first few months, Jane suffers greatly, as do all the girls, from hunger, cold, and severe discipline, and following an outbreak of typhus, the school was reformed and improved. It is at this school that Jane loses her best friend Helen Burns' through tuberculosis. Similarly in 1824, Charlotte's two eldest sisters were sent off to a boarding school for the 'daughter's of clergymen', called Cowan Bridge School, in the northwest of Yorkshire. They both died of tuberculosis, probably because, like Lowood, the school was not a good one. Charlotte and Emily were also sent to Cowan Bridge for short periods while still absurdly young, about eight and six respectively. The death of the older sister's probably saved them from a similar fate, and they were mercifully removed. Charlotte however was obviously old enough to retain a vivid recollection of the sufferings and miseries that marked the daily routine of the girls boarding at Cowan Bridge. They were probably the first formative stimulus in her developments as a creative writer, just as Lowood in the book is seen to be a strongly formative influence in the early development of Jane's character.
At Lowood, Jane was well educated. She remained eight years within the school walls, six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher. She is essentially, a young woman who is trying to grow up in a society that does not value her, or her skills. Because of Miss Temple's departure from Lowood, Jane's "allegiance to duty and order" seems to be coming to an end. She discloses that she wants, if not liberty, then a;
"new servitude... A new place, in a new home, amongst new faces, under new circumstances".
Here, we can see that Jane is a credible and realistic character and it is therefore all too easy to treat her as a real person who has an independent existence beyond the text. At first, she does not know how to make a change, but a thought comes to her mind: "Those who want situations advertise". Jane decides to offer herself as a governess.
Jane's further employment at Thornfield is as a governess. In these Victorian times, governesses were all thought of as 'disconnected, poor and plain', and they were frowned upon by the aristocratic upper class. There are frequent unkind and offensive comments made on governesses, in general by Blanche Ingram and the other ladies visiting Thornfield. Governesses, were thought of as incompetent and capricious, and this is clearly evident by the attitude to them from Mrs Ingram, an old high-society woman:
"...half of them detestable and the rest ridiculous and all incubi". (Pg 183)
Apart from the several times, where Jane was made to feel inferior when arriving at Thornfield, she is welcomed kindly, which she finds unexpected;
"I little expected such a reception; I anticipated only coldness and stiffness: this is not like what I have heard of the treatment of governesses; but I must not exult too soon." (Pg 97)
The word governess summed up a life of loneliness; social inferiority and general abuse and I believe Charlotte Bronte used the novel to highlight this, and also to attack all the social injustices of the time. Later in the novel, we learn that both Diana and Mary Rivers, who are Jane's newly found cousins, are employed as governesses in what we are led to suppose, not very pleasant households. When Jane gets herself a new post in Morton, it is as a village schoolmistress, where she worked hard:
"I continued my labours of the village school as actively and faithfully as I could."
Charlotte Bronte's attitude to the employment of women in education, whether public or private, reflects pretty accurately Charlotte and her two sister's real-life experiences in schools and private homes. Here it is made evident that Jane is an advocate for her sex, and asserts herself, liberates herself and makes herself happy because she believes she has the right to be so.
Throughout her childhood, Lane is unaware of any other relations she had. She only knew of her Aunt Reed, and ...
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"I continued my labours of the village school as actively and faithfully as I could."
Charlotte Bronte's attitude to the employment of women in education, whether public or private, reflects pretty accurately Charlotte and her two sister's real-life experiences in schools and private homes. Here it is made evident that Jane is an advocate for her sex, and asserts herself, liberates herself and makes herself happy because she believes she has the right to be so.
Throughout her childhood, Lane is unaware of any other relations she had. She only knew of her Aunt Reed, and her cousins John, Eliza, and Georgiana, who for the duration of her stay with them, detested and bullied her. When she was at Gateshead, Jane was deprived of love. This was the one thing that she thrived for, for she once revealed to Helen Burns:
"...if others don't love me I would rather die than live...Look here: to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other who I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me." (Pg 68)
Here there is an immediate indication of the 'abruptness' of the dialogue between Jane and Helen, two intelligent girls, using language with straightforward accuracy to represent clear-cut thinking. Jane's narrative style, which is fully adult, comes across as coming from a woman of thirty and not a child of around ten.
All through Jane's life, particularly her childhood, she is left to feel 'disconnected'. At Gateshead she puzzles over the injustice of her treatment and is a total outcast. Miss Abbot tells her:
"And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with Misses Reed and Master Reed... it is your place to be humble and to try to make yourself agreeable to them." (Pg 7)
Jane enters upon a period of frustrated hope and expectancy, during which time her outcast state is confirmed:
"Don't talk to me about her, John: I told you not to go near her; she is not worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or your sisters should associate with her." (Pg 22)
Jane stands up against Mrs Reed for the first time, somehow finding the courage to deny the accusations that she is unfit to associate with her cousins:
"...leaning over the banister, I cried suddenly, and without at all deliberating on my words: 'They are not fit to associate with me'." (Pg 22)
Here, Jane displays an independence of mind, which Mrs Reed hates and fears. Jane makes Mrs Reed feel uneasy, and the reason Mrs Reed gives for this, is that Jane does not behave, as a child should. She is not "sociable" or "childlike" (pg 1). When Mrs Reed summons Jane to meet the Principal of Lowood School, Mr Brocklehurst, he asks her question and lectures her. Jane becomes distressed when Mrs Reed accuses her of being deceitful, as she thinks this will ruin her prospects before she even arrives at the school. This provokes Jane's outrage sense of justice, which is too strong for her, and she bursts out in indignant self-defence. She addresses Mrs Reed with such uncontrollable passion and fervour that, so far from being punished, she actually wins a moral victory over her:
"I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed; and this book about the liar, you may give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I." (Pg 32)
Jane develops a powerful sense of right and wrong. There is more bluntness and directness in the dialogue. A feeling of fulfilment and triumph follows Jane's victory over Mrs Reed. She is to be one of life's fighters and she has just won her first battle.
In asking why she is to be punished,
"What does Bessie say I have done?" (Pg 1),
Bessie, the servant, also portrays her dislike of Jane's independence of mind:
"Jane, I don't like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent." (Pg 1)
Bessie here, speaks with a tone on authority, which I looked upon as odd, because even the servants are treated with more respect and kindness than Jane:
"You are less than a servant." (Pg 6)
At Gateshead, Jane was constantly reminded of her practical and financial position:
" You are a dependant, mama says, you have no money; your father left you done; you ought to beg, and not live here with gentlemen's children like us." (Pg 5)
This is the first indication in the novel that Jane is 'poor', and throughout the book, she is never very rich. As a child, at the beginning of the novel, Jane is frightened by the prospect of ending up in a poorhouse. Poverty is always at Jane's side, no matter where she went, even as a child. Jane's intelligence is again evident, plus the sensitivity and powerful emotions that even as a young child she was able to portray. She was aware of the significance of gentle rank. This was evident when Mr Lloyd asks if she would prefer to live with the Eyre's if they were poor, but Jane dislike of Gateshead Hall and the Reed's cannot outweigh her distaste for poverty in a lower social class.
"I reflected, poverty looks grim to grown people, still more so to children, they have not mush idea of industrious, working, respectable poverty, they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners and debasing vices, poverty for me was synonymous with degradation." (Pg 19)
Jane noticeably had a very comprehendible feeling towards poverty. At Thornfield, Jane is glad to feel herself, to be of the same class of Mrs Fairfax - genteel in origin even if obliged by poverty to work for a living. She accepts that she is socially inferior to the Ingram's, Lynn's, Dents and Eshtons, but nevertheless, she clings defiantly to her own independence.
The power of money is inevitably an issue that Charlotte Bronte believes separates each and every one of us, into the 'different societies'. At Lowood, with the ills and pains of a severe winter adding to the almost prison-like existence with its poor food and routine labour, Mr Brocklehurst, visits the school and lectures pupils and staff, including Miss Temple, on the moral virtues of grim poverty unrelieved by any natural pleasure. He is quite ready to bully Miss Temple, as well as the girls, because she is a paid employee.
"Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature; I wish these girls to be the children of Grace; and why the abundance? ..." (Pg 62)
The hypocrisy of his attitude is underlined by the luxury and extravagance displayed in the dress and style of his wife and daughters who accompany him. I personally believe that the violence of Charlotte Bronte's hatred of evangelism and hypocrisy are combined together and represented as one character, in this case, Mr Brocklehurst.
Only when she is a governess at Thornfield and is at Mrs Reed's deathbed, does Jane learn that she has an Uncle in Madeira who wished to adopt her, "... I wished to adopt her during my life."
Agonised by the thought that in obeying her conscience, she is betraying the object of her love - Mr Rochester - advised by her dead mother in a dream to 'flee temptation', Jane decides to run away. By chance, Jane discovers cousins whom she never knew off:
"You three, then are my cousins, half our blood on each side flows from the same source."
Jane cherishes these cousins and loves them as if they were her own brother and sister's:
"It seemed I had found a brother... one I could love, and two sister's."
In the village she is staying with them, she is unable to find work despise her well-spoken manner and neatly dressed appearance and is forced to beg.
"... give it to her if she's a beggar. T'pig doesn't want it."
Until Jane was actually inside the house that offers her a refuge, she did not encounter much charity or kindness during her wandering. When we recall that all these sufferings are on top of the awful loss of happiness she has endured at Thornfield, we cannot be surprised that she would be content to die. St John Rivers tees Jane that the post of teacher to the Morton village girls is open to her, if she is willing to accept it. Although this may prove to be a humble job than she has known, and be no contribution at all in her search for a place in society, Jane agrees at once. She has assured herself that it will at least provide her with independence. After her first day, Jane has found that the girl's are rough and illiterate and she can hardly regard the future with any optimism and cheerfulness. A change of attitude comes when Jane finds her job increasingly rewarding and enjoyable. She becomes generally well liked by her girls' parents, but she continues to grieve over Mr Rochester who cannot be by any means substituted.
"Their parents then (the farmer and his wife) loaded me with attentions. There was an enjoyment in accepting their simple kindness, and in repaying it by a consideration - a scrupulous regard to their feelings - to which they were not, perhaps, at all times accustomed... it made them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they received." (Pg 387)
It is becoming evident that Jane's confidence is beginning to increase and she is now beginning to feel needed. She may also have started to feel that she might now be rewarded with her 'place in society':
"I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went out, I heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with friendly smiles... At this period of my life, my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than sank with dejection..." (Pg 388)
Things then all change for the better when Jane inherits twenty thousand pounds, due to the death of her only uncle, John Eyre, whom had previously wished to adopt Jane. Upon learning that she has inherited this fortune, she immediately retires from her post. Just as when she was a governess with no love for money, Jane again displays this, as she generously shares her inheritance equally between herself and her three newfound cousins, whom were previously depressed because of the news that the same uncle had died leaving them virtually nothing of the money their father had led them to hope they might inherit from him.
Jane is "lifted from indigence to wealth in a moment." (Pg 404)
She feels loved by her cousins and she loves them equally in return. Although Jane is plain both as a child and as an adult, her cousins see her as quite the opposite:
"Plain! You! Not at all. You are much too pretty, as well as too good to be grilled alive in Calcutta." (Pg 441)
There are many other opinions of Jane, which contradict and contrast the opinion of her cousins. As Mr Rochester's servants comment at Ferndean in the Conclusion: "she ben't one o' th' handsomest". Jane also hears Miss Abbot commenting that:
"if she was a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that." (Pg 21)
Mr Rochester says to Jane; "You are not pretty any more than I am handsome." (Pg 136)
But, as Jane and Mr Rochester's relationship blossoms, he contradicts what he said and pronounces Jane, "fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life but the desire of his eyes." (Pg 302)
Jane often reminds us of her small size, her plain face and the simplicity or drabness of her clothes. I believe she dose so, because this is how she believes everyone else opinionated her. When Bessie, first sees the adult Jane, she says that she is "genteel enough" (Pg 92), and looks like a lady, but that was as much as she expected because Jane was "no beauty as a child." (Pg 92) Jane is humble about her appearance and personal charm, and she always tries to appear clean and neat. The only time she becomes beautiful is in the full flush of her love for Mr Rochester, when he says she looks, "blooming and smiling and pretty", and her complements on all the features that make Jane far from plain;
"This little sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and rosy lips; the satin-smooth hazel hair, and the radiant hazel eyes?" (Pg 271)
Jane takes little pride in her social position and none at all in her possessions, which are negligible until she inherits a fortune from her uncle. She is nevertheless fiercely proud of her status as an educated and independent woman, which her conversation with Hannah at Moor House illustrates:
"Are you book-learned?" she inquired presently
"Yes, very."
Jane is not the sort of person to use the word 'very' lightly or unnecessarily in the whole of her long, urgent and impassioned conversation with Mr Rochester after the broken ceremony a few days before she does not use the word once. Yet now, when her rank as a trained intellectual is in question, she feels forced to use it. Curtly, sharply, without boasting, she is a good scholar. This flash of pride is a very human touch. Jane's pride in her intellectual and artistic achievements is intense but not blind. For example, she is aware of her limitations on the piano. She is not distressed to be described as a "little bungler", by Mr Rochester, before he takes her place at he instrument. He comments that Jane plays the piano:
"like any other English schoolgirl: perhaps rather better than some but not well." (Pg 127)
She is extremely proud of her skills as an artist, and rejoices in the tributes paid to her by Bessie, Mr Rochester, Diana, Mary and Rosamond. Bessie says that her picture is:
"As fine as any Miss Reed's drawing master could print, let alone the young ladies themselves who could not come near it." (Pg 92)
She takes an understandable pride in her excellent French that earns such warm praise from Adéle. Above all, she values the intellectual training and skill that enable her to match Mr Rochester in the conflict of conversation. All this evidence shoes that Jane is turning out to be quite an accomplished young lady, quite the opposite of the typical, disconnected, poor and plain young lady.
Jane's independence is under the greatest threat by the proposal of marriage from St John Rivers. He does not, as he promised, treat her as a sister. Instead he seems to regard her as a disciple or trainee for some hard life ahead. Jane is becoming increasingly unhappy, although the great news of her inheritance. She has failed to get any news of Mr Rochester, and finds herself becoming unnaturally submissive to St John's will, which is entirely selfish. When St John proposes that Jane should accompany him to India, as his missionary-aid, Jane is shocked. But believing that she must give up all hope of Mr Rochester and feeling in any case depressed and weak, she reluctantly consents to go with St John as his sister or curate. He rejects this and insists that she must go as his wife.
Jane can imagine herself working along side him, although the work in Calcutta would be hard, at least her, "heart and mind would be free" (Pg 432), but she could not marry him, because in doing so she would lose her very self:
"As his wife - at his side always, and always checked - forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry though the imprisoned fame consumed vital after vital - this would be unendurable." (Pg 432)
St John does not pretend to love Jane, and thinks that it is quite normal to do so. He would regard her as devoted to God but married to him as part of her missionary service, and suggests that love might follow marriage:
"...and undoubtedly enough of love would follow upon marriage to render the union right ever in your eyes." (Pg 433)
St John has no shame in saying this, because women rarely married for love, because they were too worried that they would never be proposed to again and would be contemptuously termed 'spinsters' and 'old maids'. The women were also expected to marry and devote their lives to their husbands and children. Jane admirably summons up the courage and strength to reject this proposal from St John, and tells him that she scorns his idea of love, and scorns him for offering it. She wants to marry for all the right reasons and she soon develops a declaration of the rights of women:
"Women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their brothers do... it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow - creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings to play on the piano and embroidering bags." (Pg 112)
Divorce was almost unheard of, and for those who stepped outside these boundaries, social scorn must be endured. This is why Jane is so careful about who she marries and exactly how she feels about them. Even though Mr Rochester is the love of her life, she feels that it is necessary to be careful:
"Gentlemen in his station are not accustomed to marry their governess."
(Pg 279)
Jane took this especially to heart, because for her she was a governess with absolutely nothing to offer: "A women who could bring her husband neither fortune, beauty nor connections." (Pg 295)
Jane is an example of a woman who thinks for herself. When faced with a decision, she chooses to follow the course that will maintain her self-respect, however difficult it may be. In practical terms it very difficult for a woman of her time to achieve true independence. A woman of 'middle-class' who did not have money of her own would have to choose between being financially dependant on a husband, living as a dependant in a house where she is employed as a governess of the drudgery of teaching in a school. Fortunately, Jane is 'rescued' from this by the money left by her uncle, which is enough to make her financially independent. Now for Jane, marriage sounds appropriate to her, as she would still retain her independence, as she would be independent on no one. She does abandon some of her dreams of travel and experience to marry the now disabled Mr Rochester, but by this time, she can do so as an equal independent person, or also as the stronger partner in the relationship because of his unfortunate position. At this point in her life, marriage is what she wants. It is as much her own free choice as her earlier decisions.
Jane once thought that she was 'plain', despise Mr Rochester's view of her as, "theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry and fascination" (Pg 116), 'poor', (Jane inherited twenty thousand pounds), and 'disconnected', (she gets married). In contrast to this, it is clearly evident that Jane is the antithesis of what she originally though of her self.
Jane's great strength of mind, vitality, strong religion, independence, generosity and intelligence, transform her into a beautiful, elegant young lady, who is an inspiration to us all.
English Literature Coursework 2001
Zahra Lamsiah
