Jane Eyre - First two chapters review

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JANE EYRE COURSEWORK

Charlotte Brontë was born on April 21st 1816, at Thornton, in Yorkshire.  She had many brothers and sisters, two of whom died of tuberculosis before she was born.  Brontë had had a hard childhood trying to keep healthy and had been very unhappy at school, and the novel, Jane Eyre appears to draw on her own life and experiences in various aspects.

 The setting of the novel is in the Victorian Times, when a woman’s place was at home and the husband’s earning money by being a landowner or pursuing a profession.  Brontë has created a heroin but has still made the character, Jane, to have a difficult childhood like herself (orphaned and penniless Jane being treated unfairly by her relatives) but to make something of her life as an independent woman.

 In the first two chapters of the novel, the author, Charlotte Brontë, establishes the background and uses a particularly exceptional technique to make us believe that Jane’s relatives use her as a scapegoat and therefore this creates sympathy for her.

 The technique she uses in this novel, is descriptive writing to show in depth the feelings and surroundings in the first two chapters.  She describes the feelings of Jane as a first person analysing herself and her own situations and how the Reed family bullies her.  She also describes John’s feelings because he is the only boy in the house and is portrayed as a bully.  Then she explains the feelings of Mrs Reed of how she is cold, unfair, jealous of her husband’s care for Jane and is unrealistic about her own children.

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Brontë illustrates the surroundings by talking about the weather and the house in which the family live in.  The weather condition symbolises emotions and feelings for example, in chapter one, the bad weather represents her miserable feelings.

 Charlotte Brontë in this story creates an image of Jane looking petite, scrawny and unattractive, which is the total opposite of Jane’s Aunt.  Jane knows she’s not the ideal child as she says, “I know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child, though equally dependant and friendless – Mrs Reed would have endured my presence more complacently” she ...

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