When the possibility of going to school and getting an education arises, Jane cannot wait to go. This is a very unusual response to school, as many children do not enjoy school. However to Jane, an education means “an entrance into a new life”, she does not want to live with her Aunt Reed as her benefactress. Most Victorian women would intend to get married and then work at home, yet Jane is determined to get a good education and make a life for herself. The next significant stage and place of Jane’s life is at Lowood School, firstly as a pupil, then a teacher. Lowood is a chance for Jane to become learned and independent, yet it has put Jane in another oppressed situation. In this case, there is not much room for rebellion, in which Jane had found a new strength at Gateshead. The frosty, frozen weather at Lowood symbolises Jane’s feelings and the atmosphere in the school. This phase of Jane’s life is crucial to her maturity as a woman; as well as learning the basic subjects she learns that she must keep her temper or she will get nowhere in life. She is still a restricted victim, but she has strength, direction and self-discipline. The unconventionality in this stage is that she is a woman growing stronger, Jane is becoming educated and aware of the conformist way of life for a woman and she wants to change it. The growing strength and the refusal to succumb to the expectation of women is a gothic theme. Other subtle gothic elements accompany this piece of the plot. The name of the location again has a meaning: Lowood is associated with a dark, isolated, eerie wood or forest; Jane is lost in a forest and must work to get out and make a life for herself. Jane’s two allies at Lowood, Miss Temple and Helen Burns, are both images of Christianity and ‘good’, whereas Jane arrives with a hot temper and a rebellious attitude, symbolising ‘bad’. A fight between good and bad would be a gothic theme, yet at Lowood, Miss Temple and Helen Burns teach Jane to try and conform to the expectation. When Jane was a young child, although she had strong views of her cousin John and the way he treated her, she could only express how she felt in childish, simple language and by shouting and losing her temper, which made her views sound less credible. Now she has learnt that she can still express her views, but her language is more advanced and she has learnt to keep her temper. Obviously, Jane’s character will not allow her to be conventional; nevertheless the teachings aid her development as a woman. The reader at the time would believe Jane needs to be taught the correct way for a young lady in her position to behave; she would need to completely calm her temper and become a conventional women. However, although Jane does conform slightly, she can not become the type of woman that the reader would believe to be correct.
Miss Temple is an important figure in Jane’s life; she is a mother figure to Jane and along with Helen Burns, ‘calmed’ her temper and made her less fiery and helped her become a woman. Therefore, when Miss Temple gets married and leaves Lowood, Jane states that: “her friendship and society had been my continual solace; she had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and latterly companion. At this period she was married, removed with her husband to a distant country, and consequently was lost to me". Jane believed that she could not have stayed at Lowood, which at first she believed to be an awful place, without Miss Temple and when Miss Temple leaves, Jane believes that now Miss Temple has gone she can no longer stay there. “From the day she left I was no longer the same: with her was gone every settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree a home to me.” When Miss Temple leaves Jane realises that she also needs to move on; in some ways she is copying Miss Temple although she does not intend to get married, just to become independent and begin a new phase in her life. Miss Temple reflects what a conventional woman would do at this time; move on by getting married, while Jane decides to almost do the opposite, to move on, on her own. “My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.” Jane wants to experience new things and gain new knowledge so she applies for a governess job at Thornfield.
When Jane reaches Thornfield she is a young woman, wanting to become a governess. She has already worked as a teacher for two years and is not intending on finding a husband and settling down; she is determined to have a career. Most women at the time would not have a career or sometimes not even a job throughout their whole lives. Jane’s determination to be independent and earn her own money was not a common view of women in that era.
It is in this stage of Jane’s life that Charlotte Brontë puts her views and the views of Jane about women into words: “Women are supposed to feel calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties … they suffer from too rigid a restraint … precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded … to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano or embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” Brontë reveals this view at this point in the novel to show that before this stage, Jane’s outlook has just been that of being independent for herself; however now, at this point in her life she has realised that all women are being suppressed and that they should be able to do as men do. At this stage, Jane has learnt that most women are dependant on men for everything and she does not want to succumb to this trend. The majority of the Victorian audience would see Jane’s views as abnormal, although at the time there were women who held the same views on this topic as Charlotte Brontë and would believe that Jane is right to think this way. A modern audience would not see this as ‘new’ thinking but it would show them how our society has changed with time.
Just after this passage, ‘Grace Poole’s’ laugh is mentioned, which Brontë could have brought up to link in with Bertha being an oppressed women and being locked away and marked as ‘mad’ for wanting to be different. This does not anticipate a ‘happy ending’ between Jane and Mr Rochester as Jane is also an oppressed women, wanting to be different.
Before Jane reaches Moor House, she has a period where she is completely alone and dependant on ‘mother nature’. This is important to her development as she has never known her mother or had a caring mother figure in her life. “I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose … Nature seemed to me benign and good: I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I … clung to her with filial fondness. To-night … I was her child; my mother would lodge me without money and without price.” Jane has become a conventional woman, or even child for this period of time; she has gone through a lot of heart-ache with Mr Rochester, just like any woman would and she needs time to arrange her thoughts and intentions. Nevertheless, she is still unconventional as she does not want sympathy from people or to think over it and cry, but to spend time alone in the wilderness, composing herself. This links with the time that Jesus was in the desert where he went to resist temptations. Jane uses this time to ‘purify’ herself and clear her thoughts so that she can move on to the next stage in her life.
When Jane enters the village of Morton, she has no money and has to offer to exchange gloves for food and ask for work. It is an experience that most women of the time would not have coped with, as they have been brought up to depend on other people and would not know how to react in this situation. However, most women at Jane’s age and in her place in society would already be married and would never find themselves in a situation like Jane’s; still, Jane makes it to Moor House. Again, at Moor House Jane must be dependant on the Rivers family because she is ill. Yet as soon as she is able she forces Hannah, the Rivers’ servant, to allow her to help preparing a pie: “But I must do something”. Jane is never able to be waited on; she wants to earn her keep and not be regarded as a beggar or a beneficiary as she was at Gateshead. Furthermore, she is proud of her achievements as a learned woman who has managed to “keep herself”, i.e. look after herself. When Jane fully recovers she wants to fend for herself again and find work, St. John asks her: “You would wish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with … my charity … you desire to be independent of us?” To which Jane answers: “I do … show me how to seek work … if it be but the meanest cottage.” Jane does not mind where she works, but she dislikes charity from people, she could not live off other people; just as she could not live as Rochester’s mistress, depending solely on him. St. John offers Jane the role of mistress at the girls’ school he intends to establish and she accepts it gladly. St. John tells Jane he believes she is “impassioned” and that she will not stay in Morton long for very long time as she would not be content to spend her time doing monotonous labour. He believes she has too much ambition to be tied down. Nevertheless, she finds a home in Morton and seems content with her life at present. When Jane receives news that she has inherited “a small fortune” from her Uncle John Eyre she says: “One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! At hearing one has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business … we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.” Jane does not revel in the excitement of inheriting money but immediately considers the implications of the news. However, when informed that the Rivers’ were her cousins she becomes very elated and happy. This shows material things are not as important to Jane as family, whereas many women at the time would marry for money or status and material objects.
Consequentially, Jane now has money to be an equal to a husband and coincidentally one night she hears Mr Rochester calling out to her. This is a very important scene with gothic elements included in it: Jane is having some sort of psychic message from Thornfield. When she runs outside it is very dark with a low sighing wind which gives the scene an eerie setting. When Jane returns to Thornfield she hears that it had been burnt down which links in with what she heard. The final stage of Jane’s development is when she meets Rochester at Ferndean and learns that he has been disabled by the incident at Thornfield. She now feels she is an equal to him as she has enough money to not be reliant on him and she can be a nurse to him, she will be content with looking after him.
In this novel I believe Charlotte Brontë portrays Jane as a feminist; she does not believe in the traditional status of women and she endeavours to be equal to Mr Rochester. I feel that Brontë used the gothic elements such as the weather and specific themes throughout the novel enhance Jane’s unconventionality as they reflect the themes appearing in gothic novels. I also noticed how the language used developed with Jane throughout her life; at the beginning when she was a small child the narrative included advanced vocabulary as the narrator was Jane as an older woman, however Jane’s speech was very simple and childish. As Jane grew up her speech became more sophisticated and religious as well, as she was taught at a religious school; I believe Brontë used Jane’s language development to aid her development into a woman with views that she could portray well. I think Jane Eyre was written with the intention to change the way women were portrayed in the Victorian times. Jane was a model of a modern women becoming equal to her husband and being independent.
