Jane Eyre. Bront engages sympathy towards Jane because of the utilization of the first person by the narrator. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks. By using I the writer ensures that we see things and feel things from Janes point
Robert Luca 10CW Sunday 10 May 2009
GCSE Coursework Assignment
Prose Study
How does Charlotte Brontë engage the reader’s sympathy for Jane Eyre in the opening two chapters of the novel?
Charlotte Brontë the third daughter of Patrick and Maria Brontë, who was born in 1816 at Thornton, a moorland village near Bradford and was almost four when the family moved to Haworth. There, she, like the rest of her family was to spend almost all her life. The family liked privacy and since Mr. Brontë was busy with work and their mother was ill with cancer and died after only 18 months at Haworth, the children spent all their time together and were extremely close. The nurse who looked after Mrs. Brontë said that they were different from any children she had ever seen because they seemed so quiet and serious. When Charlotte was eight, Mr. Brontë sent her, with Maria, Elizabeth and later Emily, to a school for the daughters of clergy at Cowan Bridge. He thought education would be useful to his girls in the future, but their experiences were all too similar to those Charlotte Brontë gives Jane Eyre at Lowood. Maria and Elizabeth both died of tuberculosis, after less than a year, and Charlotte and Emily were taken away from the school and returned to studying at home with their father. Charlotte considered herself to be very plain, even ugly, and did not really hope for marriage, although she received three proposals. Like Jane Eyre, she was always sad that she was not more obviously attractive. Beauty was something she admired and longed for. At Roe Head, she worked hard, was successful and made several long life friends. She hated the job but when she was not teaching or marking books she had to work at mending the pupils’ clothes. She became so depressed and ill that she had to leave. The next idea was that the girls should set up a school of their own. In order to finish training for this, Charlotte and Emily went to study in Brussels. As well as learning much, however, she fell in love with Monsieur Heger, the husband of the head of her school. No real relationship could ever develop, apart from friendship, and she left Brussels broken-hearted. This Experience provided the ideas for two of her books “The Professor” and “Villette”. At the age of 38, Charlotte agreed to marry Arthur Bell Nicholls, a curate who assisted her father for many years and who had loved her for a very long time. She had rejected his affection in the past, but their marriage was successful and they developed a happy companionship so it was all the more tragic that she enjoyed it for only one year. She died in 1855 of complications arising from pregnancy. Her father, who had outlived all her children, had said that “she was not strong enough/for marriage”.
