What functions do the descriptions of place in

What functions do the descriptions of place in “Jane Eyre” fulfil, and what ways do they add depth to the story?

Charlotte Bronte wrote the novel “Jane Eyre” during the Victorian period in 1847. She wrote under a man’s name, Currer Bell, so that she would find it easier to get her book published. The book is about the life of a strong, brave, an independent woman who has many adventures along the way to happiness.

There are five main settings in the novel where Jane finds herself. The first setting is Gateshead where she lives with her aunt by marriage. Her uncle Reed has died and the aunt, who is not a blood relative, treats her badly. Her cousins also treat her badly. Therefore, the house has no comfort for her. In fact, at the age of ten, she prefers to leave it and go to boarding school. The reader can understand why she wishes to leave Gateshead because of the actions done to her and the feelings she has for the place. At one point aunt Reed has her locked in the Red Room as punishment for arguing with her cousin. Bronte uses sympathetic background to stress the fear that Jane feels locked away,

“I heard the rain beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then my courage sank.”

The weather is in sympathy with her fearful feelings. The simile “cold as a stone” helps the reader to understand her.

Aunt Reed agrees to send Jane away to school and the future headmaster; Mr. Brocklehurst visits Gateshead. Jane had looked forward to going to school for a better quality of life but after Mr. Brocklehurst’s visit she wonders if this will be true. He says to her,

“Little girl, here is a book entitled the “Childs Guide”, read it with prayer, especially the part containing “an account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G_, a naughty child addicted to falsehood and deceit.”

Afterwards she goes into the garden and the setting reflects her mood Bronte writes,

“I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past wind in heaps, and now stiffened together.”

The garden is cold and unpleasant as she thinks about her future at the hands of Mr. Brocklehurst.

The second setting that Jane finds herself in is Lowood, the boarding school for orphaned girls. The name Lowood is not pleasant and it’s low lying place in the wood, which is damp and ...

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Afterwards she goes into the garden and the setting reflects her mood Bronte writes,

“I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past wind in heaps, and now stiffened together.”

The garden is cold and unpleasant as she thinks about her future at the hands of Mr. Brocklehurst.

The second setting that Jane finds herself in is Lowood, the boarding school for orphaned girls. The name Lowood is not pleasant and it’s low lying place in the wood, which is damp and still, brings infections to the girls in winter. Bronte wrote that many girls died of chest complaints every winter at the school. The school and its surroundings are bleak and the girls are always hungry and abruptly treated. Jane’s description of Lowood and the surroundings show her feelings for the place,

“That beck itself was a torrent, turbid, and curbless: it tore asunder the wood, and sent a raving sound through the air, often thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet; and for the forest on its banks, that showed only ranks of skeletons.”

She uses a metaphor to describe the trees as she calls them skeletons. The reader can understand her state of mind. The girls around her look like skeletons.

Jane survives Lowood because of the kindness of Miss Temple, a teacher, and her friend Helen Burns. She learns a lot and becomes a teacher herself but after eight tiresome years, she becomes interested in what the outside world has to offer. Jane is brave because she has no one outside who is interested in her but advertises in a newspaper as a governess. This shows her independence. Ladies of her age and standing usually looked for marriage to provide them with a home and very few went out to work. At the time that Jane is beginning to feel constricted by Lowood her description of the view outside of her window reflects her feelings,

“My eye passed all other objects to rest on those most remote, the blue peaks: it was those I longed to surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed prison-ground, exile limits.”

Thornfield is the third setting for Jane Eyre. Here she gets a reply from Mrs. Fairfax to work as a governess for Adele, Mr. Rochester’s ward. Jane has some good years at Thornfield and this shows through in her description of the inside of the house,

“…a large fire burning silently on the marble heath, and wax candles shining in bright solitude, druid the exquisite flowers with which the tables were adorned. The crimson curtain hung before the arch…”

Here is a house, which is warm and pleasant, and this echoes the feelings that are growing in Jane for the house and Mr. Rochester.

When the staffs at Thornfield get the house ready for visitors and there is a lot of activity and preparation the speed of description increases to match the rushing about. There is enjambment to show long periods of preparation and repetition and listing to stress action,

“ Three women were gat to help; and such snubbing, such brushing, such washing of paint, and beating of carpets, such taking down and putting up of pictures, such polishing of mirrors and lustre’s, such lightning of fires in bedrooms, such airing of sheets and feather beds on heaths, I never behold either before or since.”

After she finds out that Mr. Rochester is already married Jane, who is a woman of morals, leaves Thornfield to make a new life. Although she has no family to upset she will live with Mr. Rochester without being his wife. She runs away and finds herself at Morton where she becomes a schoolteacher at the village school.

Her first days at Morton are the worse in her life where most sympathy is felt for her. She is hungry and collapses, near to death, at the Rivers house. Finally, she inherits money from an uncle Madeira and shares this fortune with the Rivers who are actually her long lost cousins. Her excitement at inheriting the money and finding cousins is shown in the description of her Christmas preparations at Morton,

“ My first aim will be to clean down (do you comprehend the full force of the expression?) To clean down Moor House from chamber to cellar; my next to rub it up with bees-wax, oil and an indefinite number of clothes, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every chair, table, bed, carpet, with mathematical precision, afterwards I shall go rear to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in every room….”

Here there is enjambment and listing to give the feeling of excitement and activity. Jane has finally got a home of her own.

The last setting Jane is at Ferndean. When she was at Morton she wondered what had happened to Mr. Rochester, and St. John Rivers’s proposal, which she turns down, spurs her to enquire about her old master. She learns that he is blind and that his wife his dead. As she approaches his new home at Ferndean the description of the place matches his new situation. The wood around is “thick and dark” and the house walls were “dark and green”. Bronte writes it was “quite a desolate spat”. This place is appropriate for a broken and blind man.

Jane makes Ferndean comfortable for Edward Rochester and later marries him. As she transforms the house, his feelings of the descriptions of Ferndean change.

“…. I described to him how brilliantly green they were; how the flowers and hedges looked refreshed; how sparklingly blue was the sky….”

Their happiness is shown in this description. This lightness hints at the good news that follows when Mr. Rochester gets back the sight in one eye.

This novel was written around the time of the early women’s rights movement when women were starting to think about equal rights. Bronte makes reference to this.

‘Women are supposed to be very calm generally but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts just as their brothers do.’

Bronte was basically saying women are equal to men in every way. This quote reminds me of a conversation between Viola and Orsino in Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ when Viola also talks of women experiencing the same emotion as men.

‘Too well what love women to men may owe. In faith, they are as true of heart as we.’ In Jane Eyre it’s a change in setting but for Viola it means her assuming a completely new identity.

The five settings in Jane Eyre, Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield, Morton and Ferndean are important to the story. The descriptions of them reveal Jane’s feelings at the point that she is living there. Thornfield’s descriptions are positive because she is happy there at first, and Morton’s Moor House receives a warm description. Ferndean finally is described with fondness. Gateshead and Lowood are often negatively described because of her unhappiness in those two places. The pace of description is also important because we know whether she is excited or not. My favourite description is of the horizon at Lowood when Jane bravely decides to make her own way in the world. This novel shows that some Victorian women were becoming independently minded.