What features of Jane Eyre can be considered Gothic?
What features of Jane Eyre can be considered Gothic? In the novel, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë uses a variety of aspects of Gothic tradition to create a mysterious and uneasy atmosphere in places, but also one of passion with hints of the supernatural in others. Through Jane, Brontë explores in depth the Gothic aspect of fear at Gateshead. For example the vivid images that are conjured in the readers mind when we are informed by Jane about John that "every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh on my bones shrank when he came near". This is such an intense degree of fear, and we see it through the eyes of a ten year old. This is an especially poignant, as well as being a highly Gothic, description. Other uses of Gothic tradition at Gateshead are isolation, use of a gloomy setting, hints at the supernatural and a macabre event when "the volume was flung" at Jane by John Reed. Another setting which is used by Brontë to explore aspects of Gothic tradition is Thornfield. Here confinement, seclusion, irony, foreboding, macabre events, passionate romance and the supernatural are used to create a chilling and mysterious atmosphere and to generate curiosity in the reader. At the beginning of the book, we see nineteenth century life through a child's eyes. Gateshead has a Gothic atmosphere, but it could not be called a Gothic setting. There are a number of Gothic ideas