Jane Eyre

#England #novel #19thcentury #primary

Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre. (1847, England)

Everyone's favorite gothic novel.

II. Literary Genre: The Novel

2. How does a novel represent the individual's internal struggle?

Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre. (1847, England)

Supporting References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Eyre

2. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/janeeyre/
3. http://www.usfca.edu/jco/janeeyreanintroduction/
4. http://janeeyreillustrated.com/

5. Birch, Dinah. "Jane Eyre." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 26 Aug. 2013 .

“Jane Eyre. A novel by Charlotte *Brontë, published 1847. The heroine, a penniless orphan, has been left to the care of her aunt Mrs Reed. Harsh treatment rouses her defiant spirit, and a passionate outbreak leads to her consignment to Lowood School (based on the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, which the author herself briefly attended). There, consoled for the severity of the regime by the kindness of the superintendent Miss Temple and a fellow orphan, Helen Burns, who dies in Jane's arms of consumption, she spends some miserable years, eventually becoming a teacher. On Miss Temple's marriage she obtains a post as governess at Thornfield Hall to Adèle, the ward of Mr Rochester, a Byronic hero of grim aspect and sardonic temper. Rochester, despite Jane's plainness, is fascinated by her sharp wit and independence, and they fall in love. After much resistance she agrees to marry him, but on the eve of their wedding her wedding veil is torn by an intruder who Rochester assures her is a servant, Grace Poole, but who is the next day revealed to be his mad Creole wife Bertha, confined to the upper regions of the Hall for years, whose unseen presence has long disturbed Jane. The marriage ceremony is interrupted by Mrs Rochester's brother from the West Indies and, despite Rochester's full confession and pleadings with Jane to stay with him, she flees. After nearly perishing on the moors, she is taken in and cared for by the Revd St John Rivers and his sisters Mary and Diana. It emerges that they are her cousins, and that Jane has inherited money from an uncle; the legacy is equally divided between the four. Under pressure from the earnest appeals and strong personality of the dedicated Rivers, she nearly consents to marry him and share his missionary vocation in India, but is prevented by a telepathic appeal from Rochester. She returns to Thornfield Hall to find the building burned, and Rochester blinded and maimed from his attempt to save his wife from the flames. She marries him, and in the last chapter we learn that his sight is partially restored.

“The novel's exceptional emotional and narrative power quickly made it a success, though, despite its strict adherence to conventional moral standards, it was considered by many to be unsuitable for young ladies. Additional scandal attended the publication of the second edition, which Charlotte dedicated to W. M. *Thackeray, unaware that he too had a wife certified as insane. More recently its strong sexual undercurrents have led to Freudian interpretations encouraged by the author's frequent use of dream imagery, while Jane's spirited independence has attracted the attention of feminist critics; see S. Gilbert and S. Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). The story of the first Mrs Rochester became the basis of Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel by Jean *Rhys.”

6. Birch, Dinah. "Brontë, Charlotte." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 16 Aug. 2013 .

The article offers an overview of Brontë and less a discussion on the above-cited text.

“Brontë, Charlotte (1816–55) Novelist and poet, daughter of Patrick Brontë, an Irishman, perpetual curate of Haworth, Yorkshire, from 1820 until his death in 1861. Charlotte's mother died in 1821, leaving five daughters and a son to the care of their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. Four of the daughters were sent to a Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge (which Charlotte portrayed as Lowood in Jane Eyre), an unfortunate step which Charlotte believed to have hastened the death in 1825 of her two elder sisters and to have permanently impaired her own health. The surviving children pursued their education at home; they read widely, and became involved in a rich fantasy life that owes much to their admiration of Lord *Byron, Walter *Scott, The *Arabian Nights, the Tales of the Genii, and the engravings of John *Martin. They began to write stories, to produce microscopic magazines in imitation of their favourite Blackwood's Magazine, and Charlotte and Branwell collaborated in the increasingly elaborate invention of the imaginary kingdom of *Angria, Emily and Anne in the invention of Gondal (for a discussion of the juvenilia, see F. E. Ratchford, The Brontës’ Web of Childhood, 1941). In 1831–2 Charlotte was at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, returning as a teacher in 1835–8, where she met her two close friends, Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor. In 1839 she was a governess with the Sidgwick family, near Skipton, and in 1841 with the White family at Rawdon. In 1842 she went with Emily to study languages at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels; they were recalled at the end of the year by their aunt's death, and in 1843 Charlotte, whose thirst for wider experience was much greater than her sister's, returned alone for a further year. She fell deeply in love with M. Constantin Heger, who failed to respond to the letters she wrote to him after her return to Haworth; a project to establish her own school, with her sisters, also failed. In 1845 she ‘discovered’ (or so she alleged) the poems of Emily, and, convinced of their quality, projected a joint publication; a volume of verse entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (the pseudonyms of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) appeared in 1846, but did not sell and received little attention. By this time each had finished a novel; Charlotte's first, The *Professor, never found a publisher in her lifetime, but Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were accepted by Thomas Newby in 1847 and published in 1848. Undeterred by her own rejections, Charlotte immediately began Jane Eyre (in Manchester, where her father was undergoing an operation for cataract); it was published in 1847 by Smith, Elder and achieved immediate success, arousing much speculation about its authorship. To quell the suspicion (encouraged by the unscrupulous Newby) that the Bell pseudonyms concealed but one author, Charlotte and Anne visited Smith, Elder in July 1848 and made themselves known.

She was not able to enjoy her success and the many invitations now extended to her; Branwell, whose wildness and intemperance had caused the sisters much distress, died in September 1848, Emily in December of the same year, and Anne the following summer. Through this tragic period she persevered with the composition of Shirley, which appeared in 1849. The loneliness of her later years was alleviated by friendship with Elizabeth *Gaskell, whom she met in 1850 and who was to write her biography. In the same year she prepared and published a memorial edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, with a preface to the former, a ‘Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell’, and a further selection of hitherto unpublished poems. Villette, founded on her memories of Brussels, appeared in 1853. Although her identity was by this time well known in the literary world, she continued to publish as Currer Bell. In 1854, after much persistence on his part and hesitation on hers, she married her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, but died a few months later of an illness probably associated with pregnancy. ‘Emma’, a fragment, was published in 1860 in the Cornhill Magazine with an introduction by W. M. *Thackeray, and many of her juvenile works have subsequently been published, adding to our knowledge of the intense creativity of her early years. In her lifetime, Charlotte was the most admired of the Brontë sisters, although she came in for some criticism (which deeply wounded her) on the grounds of alleged ‘grossness’ and emotionalism, considered particularly unbecoming in a clergyman's daughter. Matthew *Arnold wrote in a letter (1853) that her mind contained ‘nothing but hunger, rebellion and rage’, and Harriet *Martineau offended her by claiming that Villette dealt excessively with ‘the need of being loved’, and was passionately anti‐Catholic. More widespread, however, was praise for her depth of feeling and her courageous realism, and her works continue to hold high popular and critical esteem. Biographies include Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), and W. Gérin, Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius (1967); see also Juliet Barker, The Brontës (1994); T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington (eds), The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence (1932); The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. M. Smith, 3 vols (1995–2004); M. Smith and C. Alexander, The Oxford Companion to the Brontes (2003).”