Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Introduction

The character of Charlotte Bronte's second novel, JANE EYRE, was advertised from the outset by its subtitle, "An Autobiography," and was received as such by its first critics. Blackwood's reviewer (October 1848) said that it was "a pathetic tale, so like the truth that it si difficult to avoid believing that many of the characters and incidents are take from life." G.H. Lewes found the same thing: "Reality--deep significant reality, is the characteristic of this book . . . . "

In JANE EYRE the author gathered together not merely the recent experiences of her adult years, but the unobliterated recollections of childhood at the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge. Confined as that experience had in reality been to a period of ten months in the author's ninth year, it is given a duration and a prominence in the novel that cast its shadow over all the subsequent action. Jane Eyre, the heroine, is essentially a "deprived child," a penniless orphan whose isolation in an inimical world makes her doubly vulnerable to its indifference and cruelty. It also makes her doubly responsive to the least proffer of friendship and love. At the orphanage the child forms a passionate attachment to an older and precociously intelligent girl, HELEN BURNS (whose prototype was Charlotte's own eldest sister, Maria, who died of tuberculosis at thirteen), because Helen is good to her. It is also so with the school superintendent, MISS EVANS, who treats Jane with justice and confidence in her ability to make good. Normal human relationships based on mutual trust and humanity take a disproportionate place in Jane's affections, because of the traumatic experiences of her childhood. This point is made manifestly clear by the author before engaging her heroine in the vortex of her love for her employer, Mr. Rochester.

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With the figure of the master/lover, EDWARD ROCHESTER, Charlotte reached the parting of the ways between the early obsessive dream creation of her Angrian chronicles and the experience of real life. Rochester is invested with the conflicting attributes of the real-life Belgian professor, Constantine Heger, whom Charlotte had loved, and much of the Byronic swagger of the imaginary Zamorna. With Rochester, Zamorna makes his last appearance in Charlotte Brontes writing, and it is a notable one. The romantic ideal of Zamorna, conceived in girlhood and evolved for over ten years throughout a voluminous literary output, died hard with its ...

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