Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte

How I heard about this book: In the one and only English class I took at William Jewell I was required to read it. It was the only time I ever wrote a decent paper while at William Jewell, all about comparing Jane's life to the physical buildings she was living in. It was, I must say, one of my most brilliant papers. Not as brilliant as my paper on the life of St. Anthony and monasticism in the Early Church I wrote while at UCLA, but right up there. *snerk*

Setting: mid-19th century England, the places outside of that are left specifically vague. Most of the action takes place at Thornfield Hall, a large, rambling manor house in the English countryside.

Main Characters:

Jane Eyre: A young girl/woman who is orphaned at a young age and left to be raised by her mother's brother's wife. She is a passionate girl who is trying to find the balance between her emotions and reason, but most of all is trying to stay true to herself. She eventually takes up as a governess for the rich Mr. Rochester's ward, and finds that finding that balance becomes increasingly difficult as she is more and more attracted to her employer, even as the mystery behind him and his strange house grows.

Mrs. Reed: Jane's resentful aunt, it's never fully explained why she hates Jane so, just that she does. She prevents Jane from any knowledge of or connection to any of the Eyre members of her family.

Adele: Jane's student, she is perhaps the illegitimate daughter of Rochester and an opera performer, though he isn't certain on her parentage. Now orphaned, she lives in Thornfield Hall as Rochester's ward. Mrs. Fairfax: A distant relation by marriage to Rochester, and his housekeeper at Thornfield Hall.

Edward Fairfax Rochester: The owner of Thornfield, he is a passionate, troubled, brooding man, who has spent much of his adult life in anger and pursuit of his own pleasure. Despite this he is a highly intelligent man who is attracted to Jane's own passionate nature, as well as her good and quiet spirit.

Blanche Ingram: A beautiful, rich girl from nearby Thornfield Hall, she has set her sights on Mr. Rochester and Jane supposes that the two will soon marry.

Grace Poole: A mysterious figure in the house, she is said to be a servant, but Jane doesn't know what she actually does in the house. Many of the mysterious and terrifying things that occur in Thornfield are blamed on her.

St. John Rivers: One of Jane's Eyre's cousins, he is a cold, icy person who wishes to become a missionary in India.

Diana Rivers: St. John's sister, she is as commanding a personality as her brother, but very warm and kind.

Mary Rivers: The quietest of the Rivers children, she takes lessons from Jane on drawing.

Plot: Jane Eyre is a poor, orphaned girl who lives as a dependent on her resentful aunt. She is shipped off to boarding school, where conditions are hard, but eventually Jane thrives and becomes a quiet, thoughtful, but passionate young woman. Seeking to find her fortune elsewhere, she takes up a position at Thornfield Hall as a governess to a little, French girl, Adele. It is months before she meets the actual owner of the hall and her employer, Mr. Rochester, a brooding figure who is as attracted to Jane as she to him. But strange events begin happening in Thornfield, one's that threaten Jane's new existence. When the truth comes out about Mr. Rochester's past, Jane is forced to flee the master that she loves, and finds that not only is there unexpected help in corners she never new, but family and perhaps true love and happiness after all.

Themes:

The situation of women in early Victorian society: Jane Eyre position in the books perhaps displays most clearly the situation of women in early-Victorian society in England. Women of a middle-class upbringing, who had no means of managing for themselves and no wealth by which to do it with were often, as was Jane and Mrs. Fairfax, left to take employment elsewhere, most often as governesses and housekeepers. Those of lesser means worked as servants, or in the case of Grace Poole, tending those who needed looking after. Their lives were precarious, as they had to deal with the whims and whimsies of the rich people they served. Jane, who has been in this place all her life as an orphan, is keenly aware of the precarious situation she finds herself in, and how she must act and appear so as not to lose her station and her income. While she isn't a part of the household, she is expected to dance attendance as wanted, even if she doesn't particularly want to participate or is shunned and excluded by the other 'better company' there. As a highly-placed servant, it is her duty to do as she is told.
This existence isn't an easy one. Jane hears the stories of Blanche Ingram and her siblings and how they tormented other governesses, and thinks it horrible that these poor women were held responsible for these ill-behaved children. Often this was the lo of many good women, who were responsible for the pampered and spoiled scions of the elite. Diana and Mary, Jane's cousins, must both suffer for it as well. But there is little that ladies of their education and background to do to make do if they have to independent wealth by which to live. It is either live as a dependent of another and hope that something doesn't go horribly wrong to endanger your place, or marry well to someone who can provide for you, or starve.

Equality between men and women: In a time and society where women's roles were most certainly NOT equal, Jane struggles to be treated at least like a human being with feelings, passions, and sensibilities. In particular the men in her life seem to have a deploring lack of consideration for this. Mr. Rochester, who she loves and adores, and who seems to feel the same for her, believes he can force upon Jane that which he wishes only because he wants it. Everything from expensive clothing and jewels to the manner of their relationship is set by him with little leeway for Jane to argue on the matter. She does, on certain occasions when she knows she can leverage herself, do so, and I think it's her ability to never back down from him that does attract him the most, whether he realizes it or not. But his insistence on his way and what he wants drives Jane from him, and it's a hard lesson for him to learn that he can't just control everything as he wishes.

St. John, in his own way, is no better. Edward, while being horribly selfish and amoral, loved Jane beyond reason. St. John is very giving and moral, a good man, but has no love to give to Jane. He has his own ambitions and goals, and in that is also very selfish, but has no room for the feelings and considerations of others. It never occurs to him that Jane would not make a good fit for him because he doesn't love her, nor she him, only that Jane would be good to take with him on his mission trip. In fact, Jane wouldn't, and even Diana River's sees that, but St. John is blind to anything but his own goals, and will not consider alternatives. And if Jane turns him down, it is because she is not concerned with heavenly things, and thus is a sinner. Well gee, with arguments like that, I wonder why it is she turned St. John down.

In the end, Jane strives for equality with a partner as well as love. She doesn't want to be forced to anything because she is the woman in the relationship and must submit, she wants to be able to make her own decisions based on her own intelligence and feeling. And she wants to be loved, not tolerated because she is 'appropriate'. Jane sticks to her guns, and in the end she gets her reward, the man she has always loved in a close, equal, and loving relationship, and is happy at last.


There isn't a pot so bent that there isn't a lid to fit it: A favorite phrase of someone I know, in Jane's case this is true. While Jane herself states she is very plain, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and Mr. Rochester finds Jane beautiful not because of her physical appearance but because of her mind and her personality as well. He is drawn to something deeper in Jane that few other people ever get beyond to see, even later St. John. Mr. Rochester himself recognizes he is no looker, and Jane is honest to him about it, but despite the fact he isn't conventionally handsome, Jane loves him all the same. She finds in him other qualities to love, and even his features are attractive to her, not because they are beautiful, but because they are part of who he is, and she loves him just as that. While St. John, her cousin, is much more handsome, there is so much less of him for Jane to love than her beloved Edward.

The play of opposites: Charlotte Bronte in this novel cleverly plays opposites around Jane to show the extremities of life that Jane is trying to avoid. Jane herself is a character who is pulled many ways, but tries to find a happy equilibrium between what society expects and what she wants, between what she is and what she should be. There are many opposites portrayed in the novel. There is the family she grew up in, that of the Reeds, uncaring, cruel, petty, and mean, who neither loved or cared for Jane and saw her as little more than a nuisance. This is in stark contrast to he Rivers, (Reed, River, I thought it was funny), who are Jane's other cousins. They are caring and giving, and outside of St. John are warm and concerned about Jane. They love her unconditionally, even before they know that she is their cousin or her sharing her inheritance with them. They give Jane the sense of family and belonging that she has never had her entire life, and begin a life-long friendship with her and her husband. The Reeds she never speaks of or hears from again.

There is the contrast between Helen, her friend from childhood, who was almost martyr-like in not letting her passions and her anger rule her, and Bertha Mason who was consumed by her emotions. Now, I know now at days we'd recognize that Bertha had a serious condition, a mental illness, I'm charitably placing this in Victorian sensibilities where they would have assumed it was a personality fault with her. Helen becomes almost a saint in Jane's eyes, while Bertha is described as little better than a demon, a strange, animalistic creature who terrifies Jane and most everyone else. While Jane recognizes she will never be the saint that Helen was, she recoils from what Bertha is, and it is that nature of standing in between that causes Mr. Rochester to fall in love with her.

Edward and St. John are again another set of opposites, one who feels passionately and acts rashly, and one is as cool as a glacier in an Antartic winter, who does nothing he would like save that which feeds his ambition. And don't be fooled, he does have ambition, even if it is on 'godly things'. Jane finds that she can't love St. John because he is unable to love anything or anyone save for his own ambition and what it means to fulfill that. While he is a good man, goodness isn't what Jane needs, happiness is. In a life where she has known to little of happiness, Jane wisely choses to side what she knows she wants and desires. And while Edward has made many an unwise decision, the fact is he loves her, and she loves him. While the concept is foreign to St. John, to Jane it is the right decision, and in the end it proves to be a good one.

Oh, the go-thi-que horror: Well, it's not as bad as in Bronte's sister Emily's famous Gothic book, Wuthering Heights, (shoot me now, but I believe that one is in the list), it still has elements of it in there, (I think Emily was rubbing off). The creepy noises in the room, the imagined apparitions in the stairs, the crazy lady in the top of the house, the references to all sorts of ghosties, goblins, and all things that go BUMP in the night. But Charlotte I must say weaves them well into the story, making it something that seems realistic for practical, level-headed Jane to reference, rather than making her a hysterical, insensible character. I think this makes Jane very relatable as she is at once a common-sense type of girl, who like many of us has moments when she lets her imagination sometimes get the better of her. (OK, so crazy lady in the top of the house wasn't her imagination...)

Every book sucks somewhere: I adore this book...but it does have some sucky things about it. First, being that it was written in the mid-19th century, it is very dull and dry in spots, and the conversation to our modern ears sounds very unrealistic. That's because it is, but it was the style of writing at the time. Still, it is the reason many a high school and college kid has ever given up on reading this book, and while I think it's a silly reason, even I got bogged down by it a bit and it made it difficult to read.

Also, I have to say that either it is 19th century writing, or the honest position of orphans in the time period, but what is it with people then that they couldn't treat a kid who had no parents with any decency. I wondered about this literary trope, because it isn't like it comes up once or twice, especially in English literature. Is there a history of abuse towards the orphaned in England? I mean, I know it wasn't till the 20th century in Western society we started to stop sending the poor children to workhouses, but even the no-so-poor ones get a raw deal with no real explanation given except they were 'inconvenient'. Perhaps it's something I just don't get.

What did I like: I adore this book, especially the romance between Jane and Mr. Rochester. I think Jane as a heroine is wonderful, she doesn't bow to the wishes of the men around her just because they try to force the issue, but she is levelheaded about it and doesn't play coy or silly. She stays true to herself in a time period when that wasn't encouraged in women. And she doesn't let life kick her down or force her into place. She is very much a maverick in her time, but a wonderful one, and in the end you find yourself thrilled at the outcome of life for her.


Rate this wormy book: This book gets a MONSTER worm from me, you must read it. Jane Eyre is a great book for any woman to read, but men too, to remember that just because you are men doesn't make you the masters of everything, especially us. But it is also, in it's own way, a Cinderella story, though with a much smarter and more resourceful Cinderella than we normally see in those sort of stories. It's a wonderful coming of age story for a young girl who in the end gets her froggy prince after many trials and many self-discoveries. How in the world can you go wrong with that?