Charlotte Bront

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Charlotte Bront

1854 photograph
21 April 1816
Born
Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire,
England
31 March 1855 (aged 38)
Died
Haworth, West Riding of Yorkshire,
England
Lord Charles Albert
Pen name Florian Wellesley
Currer Bell
Occupation Novelist, poet
Nationality British
Genre
Fiction, poetry
Notable Jane Eyre
works
Villette
Arthur Bell Nicholls (18541855 (her
Spouse
death))
Signature
Charlotte Bront (/brnti/ or /brnte/; 21 April 1816 31 March 1855) was an English novelist
and poet, the eldest of the three Bront sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have
become classics of English literature. She wrote her best known novel, Jane Eyre, under the pen
name Currer Bell.

Contents

1 Early life and education

2 Brussels

3 First publication
4 Jane Eyre
5 Shirley and bereavements
6 In society
7 Villette
8 Marriage
9 Death
10 The Life of Charlotte Bront
11 Heger letters
12 Publications
o 12.1 Juvenilia
o 12.2 Novels
o 12.3 Poetry
13 Notes
14 References
15 Further reading
16 External links

Early life and education

Charlotte was born in Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1816, the third of the six children of
Maria (ne Branwell) and Patrick Bront (formerly surnamed Brunty or Prunty), an Irish Anglican
clergyman. In 1820 her family moved a few miles to the village of Haworth, where her father had
been appointed perpetual curate of St Michael and All Angels Church. Her mother died of cancer on
15 September 1821, leaving five daughters, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and a son,
Branwell, to be taken care of by her sister, Elizabeth Branwell.
In August 1824 Patrick Bront sent Charlotte, Emily, Maria and Elizabeth to the Clergy Daughters'
School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. Charlotte maintained that the school's poor conditions
permanently affected her health and physical development, and hastened the deaths of Maria (born
1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815), who both died of tuberculosis in June 1825. After the deaths of
her older sisters her father removed Charlotte and Emily from the school.[1] Charlotte used the
school as the basis for Lowood School in Jane Eyre.
At home in Haworth Parsonage Charlotte acted as "the motherly friend and guardian of her younger
sisters".[2] She and her surviving siblings Branwell, Emily and Anne created their own fictional
worlds, and began chronicling the lives and struggles of the inhabitants of their imaginary
kingdoms. Charlotte and Branwell wrote Byronic stories about their jointly imagined country,
Angria, and Emily and Anne wrote articles and poems about Gondal. The sagas they created were
elaborate and convoluted, and exist in incomplete manuscripts. They provided them with an
obsessive interest during childhood and early adolescence, which prepared them for literary
vocations in adulthood.[3]

Roe Head School

Between 1831 and 1832 Charlotte continued her education at Roe Head in Mirfield, where she met
her lifelong friends and correspondents Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor.[1] In 1833 she wrote a
novella, The Green Dwarf, using the name Wellesley. She returned to Roe Head as a teacher from
1835 to 1838.
In 1839 she took up the first of many positions as governess to families in Yorkshire, a career she
pursued until 1841. In particular, from May to July 1839 she was employed by the Sidgwick family
at their summer residence, Stone Gappe, in Lothersdale, where one of her charges was John Benson
Sidgwick (18351927), an unruly child who on one occasion threw a Bible at Charlotte, an incident
that may have been the inspiration for that part of the opening chapter of Jane Eyre in which John
Reed throws a book at the young Jane.[4]

Brussels

Plaque in Brussels
In 1842 Charlotte and Emily travelled to Brussels to enrol at the boarding school run by Constantin
Heger (180996) and his wife Claire Zo Parent Heger (180487). In return for board and tuition
Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the school was cut short when their
aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who had joined the family in Haworth to look after the children after their
mother's death, died of internal obstruction in October 1842. Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in
January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the school. Her second stay was not happy: she was
homesick and deeply attached to Constantin Heger. She returned to Haworth in January 1844 and
used the time spent in Brussels as the inspiration for some of the events in The Professor and
Villette.

First publication
In May 1846 Charlotte, Emily and Anne self-financed the publication of a joint collection of poems
under their assumed names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The pseudonyms veiled the sisters' gender
while preserving their initials: thus Charlotte was Currer Bell. "Bell" was the middle name of
Haworth's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, whom Charlotte later married. Of the decision to use noms
de plume, Charlotte wrote:
Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell;
the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names
positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because without at that
time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called "feminine" we had a
vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how
critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a
flattery, which is not true praise.[5]
Although only two copies of the collection of poems were sold, the sisters continued writing for
publication and began their first novels, continuing to use their noms de plume when sending
manuscripts to potential publishers.

Jane Eyre
Main article: Jane Eyre

Title page of the first edition of Jane Eyre

Charlotte's first manuscript, The Professor, did not secure a publisher, although she was heartened
by an encouraging response from Smith, Elder & Co. of Cornhill, who expressed an interest in any
longer works Currer Bell might wish to send.[6] Charlotte responded by finishing and sending a
second manuscript in August 1847. Six weeks later Jane Eyre: An Autobiography was published. It
tells the story of a plain governess, Jane, who, after difficulties in her early life, falls in love with
her employer, Mr Rochester. They marry, but only after Rochester's insane first wife, of whom Jane
initially has no knowledge, dies in a dramatic house fire. The book's style was innovative,
combining naturalism with gothic melodrama, and broke new ground in being written from an
intensely evoked first-person female perspective.[7] Charlotte believed art was most convincing
when based on personal experience; in Jane Eyre she transformed the experience into a novel with
universal appeal.[8]
Jane Eyre had immediate commercial success and initially received favourable reviews. G. H.
Lewes wrote that it was "an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring
spirit," and declared that it consisted of "suspiria de profundis!" (sighs from the depths).
[8]
Speculation about the identity and gender of the mysterious Currer Bell heightened with the
publication of Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell (Emily) and Agnes Grey by Acton Bell (Anne).[9]
Accompanying the speculation was a change in the critical reaction to Charlotte's work, as
accusations were made that the writing was "coarse",[10] a judgement more readily made once it was
suspected that Currer Bell was a woman.[11] However, sales of Jane Eyre continued to be strong and
may even have increased as a result of the novel developing a reputation as an "improper" book.[12]

Shirley and bereavements

In 1848 Charlotte began work on the manuscript of her second novel, Shirley. It was only partially
completed when the Bront family suffered the deaths of three of its members within eight months.
In September 1848 Branwell died of chronic bronchitis and marasmus, exacerbated by heavy
drinking, although Charlotte believed that his death was due to tuberculosis. Branwell was also a
suspected "opium eater", a laudanum addict. Emily became seriously ill shortly after Branwell's
funeral and died of pulmonary tuberculosis in December 1848. Anne died of the same disease in
May 1849. Charlotte was unable to write at this time.
After Anne's death Charlotte resumed writing as a way of dealing with her grief,[13] and Shirley,
which deals with themes of industrial unrest and the role of women in society, was published in

October 1849. Unlike Jane Eyre, which is written in the first person, Shirley is written in the third
person and lacks the emotional immediacy of her first novel,[14] and reviewers found it less
shocking.

In society
In view of the success of her novels, particularly Jane Eyre, Charlotte was persuaded by her
publisher to make occasional visits to London, where she revealed her true identity and began to
move in more exalted social circles, becoming friends with Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth
Gaskell, and acquainted with William Makepeace Thackeray and G.H. Lewes. She never left
Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time, as she did not want to leave her ageing father.
Thackerays daughter, writer Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, recalled a visit to her father by
Charlotte:

Portrait by George Richmond

... two gentlemen come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious, little lady, with fair straight hair and
steady eyes. She may be a little over thirty; she is dressed in a little barge dress with a pattern of
faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in seriousness; our hearts are beating with wild
excitement. This then is the authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all London
talking, reading, speculating; some people even say our father wrote the books the wonderful
books. ... The moment is so breathless that dinner comes as a relief to the solemnity of the occasion,
and we all smile as my father stoops to offer his arm; for, genius though she may be, Miss Bront
can barely reach his elbow. My own personal impressions are that she is somewhat grave and stern,
specially to forward little girls who wish to chatter. ... Everyone waited for the brilliant conversation
which never began at all. Miss Bront retired to the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word
now and then to our kind governess ... the conversation grew dimmer and more dim, the ladies sat
round still expectant, my father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to be able to
cope with it at all ... after Miss Bront had left, I was surprised to see my father opening the front
door with his hat on. He put his fingers to his lips, walked out into the darkness, and shut the door
quietly behind him ... long afterwards ... Mrs Procter asked me if I knew what had happened. ... It
was one of the dullest evenings [Mrs Procter] had ever spent in her life ... the ladies who had all
come expecting so much delightful conversation, and the gloom and the constraint, and how finally,
overwhelmed by the situation, my father had quietly left the room, left the house, and gone off to
his club.[15]
Charlotte's friendship with Elizabeth Gaskell, while not particularly close, was significant in that
Gaskell wrote the first biography of Charlotte after her death in 1855.

Villette

Charlotte's third novel, the last published in her lifetime, was Villette, which appeared in 1853. Its
main themes include isolation, how such a condition can be borne,[16] and the internal conflict
brought about by social repression of individual desire.[17] Its main character, Lucy Snowe, travels
abroad to teach in a boarding school in the fictional town of Villette, where she encounters a culture
and religion different from her own, and falls in love with a man (Paul Emanuel) whom she cannot
marry. Her experiences result in a breakdown, but eventually she achieves independence and
fulfilment running her own school. Villette marked Charlotte's return to writing from a first-person
perspective (that of Lucy Snowe), the technique she had used in Jane Eyre. Another similarity to
Jane Eyre lies in the use of aspects of her own life as inspiration for fictional events,[17] in particular
her reworking of the time she spent at the pensionnat in Brussels. Villette was acknowledged by
critics of the day as a potent and sophisticated piece of writing, although it was criticised for
"coarseness" and for not being suitably "feminine" in its portrayal of Lucy's desires.[18]

Marriage
Before the publication of Villette Charlotte received a proposal of marriage from Arthur Bell
Nicholls, her father's curate, who had long been in love with her. She initially turned down his
proposal and her father objected to the union at least partly because of Nicholls's poor financial
status.[19] Elizabeth Gaskell, who believed that marriage provided "clear and defined duties" that
were beneficial for a woman,[19] encouraged Charlotte to consider the positive aspects of such a
union and tried to use her contacts to engineer an improvement in Nicholls's finances.[19] Charlotte
meanwhile was increasingly attracted to Nicholls and by January 1854 she had accepted his
proposal. They gained the approval of her father by April and married in June.[20] They took their
honeymoon in Kilkee, County Clare, Ireland.

Death
Charlotte became pregnant soon after her wedding, but her health declined rapidly and, according to
Gaskell, she was attacked by "sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness".[21] She
died, with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855, aged 38. Her death certificate gives the cause of
death as phthisis, but many biographers[who?] suggest that she died from dehydration and
malnourishment due to vomiting caused by severe morning sickness or hyperemesis gravidarum.
There is also evidence that she died from typhus, which she may have caught from Tabitha
Ackroyd, the Bront household's oldest servant, who died shortly before her.[citation needed] Charlotte
was interred in the family vault in the Church of St Michael and All Angels at Haworth.
The Professor, the first novel Charlotte had written, was published posthumously in 1857. The
fragment of a new novel she had been writing in her last years has been twice completed by recent
authors, the more famous version being Emma Brown: A Novel from the Unfinished Manuscript by
Charlotte Bront by Clare Boylan in 2003. Most of her writings about the imaginary country Angria
have also been published since her death.

The Life of Charlotte Bront

Portrait by J. H. Thompson at the Bronte Parsonage Museum

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography The Life of Charlotte Bront was published in 1857. It was an
important step for a leading female novelist to write a biography of another,[22] and Gaskell's
approach was unusual in that, rather than analysing her subject's achievements, she concentrated on
private details of Charlotte's life, emphasising those aspects that countered the accusations of
"coarseness" that had been levelled at her writing.[22] The biography is frank in places, but omits
details of Charlotte's love for Heger, a married man, as being too much of an affront to
contemporary morals and a likely source of distress to Charlotte's father, widower and friends.[23]
Mrs Gaskell also provided doubtful and inaccurate information about Patrick Bront, claiming that
he did not allow his children to eat meat. This is refuted by one of Emily Bront's diary papers, in
which she describes preparing meat and potatoes for dinner at the parsonage.[24] It has been argued
that Gaskell's approach transferred the focus of attention away from the 'difficult' novels, not just
Charlotte's, but all the sisters', and began a process of sanctification of their private lives.[25]

Heger letters
On 29 July 1913 The Times of London printed four letters Charlotte had written to Constantin
Heger after leaving Brussels in 1844.[26] Written in French except for one postscript in English, the
letters broke the prevailing image of Charlotte as an angelic martyr to Christian and female duties
that had been constructed by many biographers, beginning with Gaskell.[26] The letters, which
formed part of a larger and somewhat one-sided correspondence in which Heger frequently appears
not to have replied, reveal that she had been in love with a married man, although they are complex
and have been interpreted in numerous ways, including as an example of literary self-dramatisation
and an expression of gratitude from a former pupil.[26]

Publications
Novels portal
Poetry portal

Branwell Bront, Painting of the 3 Bront Sisters, l to r Anne, Emily and Charlotte Bront.
Branwell painted himself out of this portrait of his three sisters.

An idealised posthumous portrait by Duyckinick, 1873, based on a drawing by George Richmond

Juvenilia

The Young Men's Magazine, Number 1 3 (August 1830)

The Spell
The Secret
Lily Hart
The Foundling
The Green Dwarf
My Angria and the Angrians
Albion and Marina
Tales of the Islanders
Tales of Angria (written 18381839 a collection of childhood and young adult writings
including five short novels)
o Mina Laury
o Stancliffe's Hotel
o The Duke of Zamorna
o Henry Hastings
o Caroline Vernon
o The Roe Head Journal Fragments

The Green Dwarf, A Tale of the Perfect Tense was written in 1833 under the pseudonym Lord
Charles Albert Florian Wellesley. It shows the influence of Walter Scott, and Charlotte's
modifications to her earlier gothic style have led Christine Alexander to comment that, in the work,
"it is clear that Bront was becoming tired of the gothic mode per se".[27]

Novels

Jane Eyre, published 1847

Shirley, published in 1849
Villette, published in 1853
The Professor, written before Jane Eyre, submitted at first along with Wuthering Heights
and Agnes Grey, then separately, and rejected by many publishing houses, published
posthumously in 1857
Emma, unfinished; Charlotte Bront wrote only 20 pages of the manuscript, published
posthumously in 1860. In recent decades at least two continuations of this fragment have
appeared:
o Emma, by "Charlotte Bront and Another Lady", published 1980; although this has
been attributed to Elizabeth Goudge,[28] the actual author was Constance Savery.[29]
o Emma Brown, by Clare Boylan, published 2003

Poetry

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)

Selected Poems of the Bronts, Everyman Poetry (1997)

Notes
1.
Fraser 2008, p. 261.
2.
Cousin, John (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. E.P.
Dutton & Co.
3.
Miller 2005, p. 5.
4.
Phillips-Evans 2012, pp. 260261.
5.
"Biographical Notice of Ellis And Acton Bell", from the preface to the 1910 edition
of Wuthering Heights.
6.
Miller 2002, p. 14.
7.
Miller 2002, pp. 1213.
8.
Miller 2002, p. 13.
9.
Miller 2002, p. 15.
10.
Fraser 2008, p. 24.
11.
Miller 2002, p. 17.
12.
North American Review. October 1848., cited in Allott, M, ed. (1974). The Bronts:
The Critical Heritage. Routledge and Kegan Paul. cited in Miller 2002, p. 18.
13.
Letter from Charlotte to her publisher, 25 June 1849, from Smith, M, ed. (1995). The
Letters of Charlotte Bront: Volume Two, 1848 1851. Clarendon Press. cited in Miller
2002, p. 19
14.
Miller 2002, p. 19.
15.
Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie. Chapters from Some Memoirs. cited in Sutherland,
James (ed.) The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes. OUP, 1975. ISBN 0-19-812139-3.
16.
Reid Banks, L., Path to the Silent Country, Penguin, 1977, p113
17.
Miller 2002, p. 47.
18.
Miller 2002, p. 52.

19.
Miller 2002, p. 54.
20.
Miller 2002, p. 55.
21.
"Real life plot twists of famous authors". CNN. 25 September 2007. Retrieved 12
June 2013.
22.
Miller 2002, p. 57.
23.
Lane 1953, pp. 17883.
24.
Juliet Barker, The Bronts
25.
Miller 2002, pp. 5758.
26.
Miller 2002, p. 109.
27.
Alexander 1993, pp. 430432.
28.
"Review of Emma Brown by Charlotte Cory". The Independent. 13 September 2003.
Archived from the original on 19 September 2011. Retrieved 12 June 2013.
29.
"Constance Savery, Life and Works". www.constancesavery.com. Retrieved 12 June
2013.; see for example Publishers of Savery's Adult Novels.[self-published source?][better source needed]

References

Alexander, Christine (March 1993). "'That Kingdom of Gloo': Charlotte Bront, the Annuals
and the Gothic". Nineteenth-Century Literature 47 (4): 409436.
Fraser, Rebecca (2008). Charlotte Bront: A Writer's Life (2 ed.). New York: Pegasus Books
LLC. p. 261. ISBN 978-1-933648-88-0.
Lane, Margaret (1953). The Bront Story: a reconsideration of Mrs. Gaskell's Life of
Charlotte Bront.
Miller, Lucasta (2002). The Bront Myth. London: Vintage. ISBN 0-09-928714-5.
Miller, Lucasta (2005). The Bront Myth. New York: Anchor. ISBN 978-1400078356.
Phillips-Evans, James (2012). The Longcrofts: 500 Years of a British Family. Amazon.
pp. 260261. ISBN 978-1481020886.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John
William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent
& Sons. Wikisource

Further reading

The Letters of Charlotte Bront, 3 volumes edited by Margaret Smith

The Life of Charlotte Bront, Elizabeth Gaskell
Charlotte Bront, Winifred Grin
Charlotte Bront: a passionate life, Lyndal Gordon
The Literary Protges of the Lake Poets, Dennis Low (Chapter 1 contains a revisionist
contextualisation of Robert Southey's infamous letter to Charlotte Bront)
Charlotte Bront: Unquiet Soul, Margot Peters
In the Footsteps of the Bronts, Ellis Chadwick
The Bronts, Juliet Barker
Charlotte Bront and her Dearest Nell, Barbara Whitehead
The Bront Myth, Lucasta Miller
A Life in Letters, selected by Juliet Barker
Charlotte Bront and Defensive Conduct: The Author and the Body at Risk, Janet Gezari,
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992
Charlotte Bront and her Family, Rebecca Fraser

The Oxford Reader's Companion to the Bronts, Christine Alexander & Margaret Smith
A Bront Family Chronology, Edward Chitham
The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte, James Tully, 1999
I Love Charlotte Bronte, Michelle Daly 2009

Jane Eyre
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the novel. For other uses, see Jane Eyre (disambiguation).
Jane Eyre

Title page of the first Jane Eyre edition

Author
Charlotte Bront
Country
England
Language
English
Gothic fiction, social criticism,
Genre
bildungsroman
Publisher
Smith, Elder, and Company
Publication
16 October 1847
date
Media type
Print
Text
Jane Eyre at Wikisource
Jane Eyre /r/ (originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by English
writer Charlotte Bront. It was published on 16 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London,
England, under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following
year by Harper & Brothers of New York.
Primarily of the bildungsroman genre, Jane Eyre follows the emotions and experiences of its title
character, including her growth to adulthood, and her love for Mr. Rochester, the byronic[1] master
of fictitious Thornfield Hall. In its internalisation of the action the focus is on the gradual
unfolding of Jane's moral and spiritual sensibility and all the events are coloured by a heightened
intensity that was previously the domain of poetry Jane Eyre revolutionised the art of fiction.

Charlotte Bront has been called the 'first historian of the private consciousness' and the literary
ancestor of writers like Joyce and Proust.[2] The novel contains elements of social criticism, with a
strong sense of morality at its core, but is nonetheless a novel many consider ahead of its time given
the individualistic character of Jane and the novel's exploration of classism, sexuality, religion, and
proto-feminism.[3]

Contents

1 Plot
1.1 Introduction
o 1.2 Jane's childhood
o 1.3 Lowood
o 1.4 Thornfield Hall
o 1.5 Other employment
o 1.6 Proposals
2 Characters
3 Themes
o 3.1 Morality
o 3.2 God and religion
o 3.3 Social class
o 3.4 Gender relations
o 3.5 Love and passion
o 3.6 Feminism
o 3.7 Atonement and forgiveness
o 3.8 Search for home and family
4 Context
5 Literary motifs and allusions
6 Adaptations and influence
7 Reception
8 References
9 External links
o 9.1 The novel online
o

Plot
Introduction
The novel Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character. The novel is set somewhere in
the north of England, during the reign of George III (17601820), and goes through five distinct
stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her
aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but
also suffers privations and oppression; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls
in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family, during
which her earnest but cold clergyman cousin, St John Rivers, proposes to her; and the finale with
her reunion with, and marriage to, her beloved Rochester. During these sections the novel provides
perspectives on a number of important social issues and ideas, many of which are critical of the
status quo (see the Themes section below). Literary critic Jerome Beaty notes that the close first
person perspective leaves the reader "too uncritically accepting of her worldview" and often leads
reading and conversation about the novel towards supporting Jane, regardless of how irregular her
ideas or perspectives.[4]

Jane Eyre is divided into 38 chapters and most editions are at least 400 pages long. The original
publication was in three volumes, comprising chapters 1 to 15, 16 to 26, and 27 to 38; this was a
common publishing format during the 19th century (see three-volume novel).
Bront dedicated the novel's second edition to William Makepeace Thackeray.

Jane's childhood

Young Jane argues with her guardian Mrs. Reed of Gateshead, illustrated by F. H. Townsend
The novel begins with the titular character Jane Eyre living with her maternal uncle's family, the
Reeds, as a result of her uncle's dying wish. The novel starts when Jane is ten years old and several
years after her parents died of typhus. Mr. Reed, Jane's uncle, was the only one in the Reed family
to be kind to Jane. Jane's aunt, Sarah Reed, does not like her, treats her as a burden and discourages
her children from associating with Jane. Mrs. Reed and her three children are abusive to Jane,
physically, emotionally, and, as the reader is quick to realize, spiritually. The nursemaid Bessie
proves to be Jane's only ally in the household, even though Bessie sometimes harshly scolds Jane.
Excluded from the family activities, Jane is incredibly unhappy, with only a doll and books in which
to find solace. One day, after her cousin John knocks her down and she attempts to defend herself,
Jane is locked in the red room where her uncle died; there, she faints from panic after she thinks she
has seen his ghost. She is subsequently attended to by the kindly apothecary, Mr Lloyd, to whom
Jane reveals how unhappy she is living at Gateshead Hall. He recommends to Mrs Reed that Jane
should be sent to school, an idea Mrs Reed happily supports. Mrs Reed then enlists the aid of the
harsh Mr Brocklehurst, director of Lowood Institution, a charity school for girls. Mrs Reed cautions
Mr Brocklehurst that Jane has a "tendency for deceit", which he interprets as "liar". Before Jane
leaves, however, she confronts Mrs. Reed and declares that she'll never call her "aunt" again, that
she and her daughter, Georgiana, are the ones who are deceitful, and that she'll tell everyone at
Lowood how cruelly Mrs. Reed treated her.[5]

Lowood
At Lowood Institution, a school for poor or orphaned girls, Jane soon finds that life is harsh, but she
attempts to fit in, and befriends an older girl, Helen Burns, who is able to accept her punishment
philosophically. During a school inspection by Mr Brocklehurst, Jane accidentally breaks her slate,
thereby drawing attention to herself. He then stands her on a stool, brands her a liar and shames her
before the entire assembly. Jane is later comforted by her friend, Helen. Miss Temple, the caring
superintendent, facilitates Jane's self-defence and writes to Mr. Lloyd, whose reply agrees with
Jane's. Jane is then publicly cleared of Mr. Brocklehurst's accusations.
The eighty pupils at Lowood are subjected to cold rooms, poor meals, and thin clothing. Many
students fall ill when a typhus epidemic strikes. Jane's friend Helen dies of consumption in her
arms. When Mr. Brocklehurst's maltreatment of the students is discovered, several benefactors erect

a new building and install a sympathetic management committee to replace Mr Brocklehurst.

Conditions at the school then improve dramatically.

Thornfield Hall
Further information: Thornfield Hall
After six years as a student and two as a teacher, Jane decides to leave Lowood, like her friend and
confidante Miss Temple who recently got married. She advertises her services as a governess and
receives one reply. It is from Alice Fairfax, the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall. She takes the
position, teaching Adele Varens, a young French girl. While Jane is walking one night to a nearby
town, a horseman passes her. The horse slips on ice and throws the rider. Despite his surliness, she
helps him to get back onto his horse. Later, back at Thornfield, she learns that this man is Edward
Rochester, master of the house. Adele is his ward, left in his care when her mother abandoned her.
At Jane's first meeting with him within Thornfield, he teases her, accusing her of bewitching his
horse to make him fall, as well as talking strangely in other ways, but Jane is able to give as good as
she gets. Mr. Rochester and Jane soon enjoy each other's company and spend many evenings
together.
Odd things start to happen at the house, such as a strange laugh, a mysterious fire in Mr. Rochester's
room, in which Jane saves Rochester by rousing him and throwing water on him and the fire, and an
attack on Rochester's house guest, Mr. Mason. Jane receives word that her aunt was calling for her,
after receiving a stroke because her unruly son John had died in sad circumstances. She returns to
Gateshead and remains there for a month attending to her dying aunt and helping her cousins after
the funeral. Mrs. Reed, as she lay dying, confesses to Jane that she had wronged her, and gives Jane
a letter from Jane's paternal uncle, Mr. John Eyre, in which he asks for her to live with him and be
his heir. Mrs. Reed admits to telling her uncle that Jane had died of fever at Lowood. Soon after,
Jane's aunt dies, and she returns to Thornfield.

St. John Rivers admits Jane to Moor House

After returning to Thornfield, Jane broods over Mr. Rochester's rumoured impending marriage to
the beautiful and talented, but snobbish and heartless, Blanche Ingram. However, one midsummer
evening, Rochester baits Jane by saying how much he will miss her after getting married, but that
she would soon forget him. Then follows one of the most stirring speeches in the whole book, when
the normally self-controlled Jane opens her heart to him. Rochester is then sure that Jane is
sincerely in love with him, and he proposes marriage. Jane is at first sceptical of his sincerity, but
eventually believes him and gladly agrees to marry him. She then writes to her Uncle John, telling
him of her happy news. As she prepares for her wedding, Jane's forebodings arise when a strange,
savage-looking woman sneaks into her room one night and rips her wedding veil in two. As with
the previous mysterious events, Mr. Rochester attributes the incident to that strange woman, Grace

Poole, one of his servants. During the wedding ceremony, Mr. Mason and a lawyer declare that Mr.
Rochester cannot marry because he is still married to Mr. Mason's sister, Bertha. Mr. Rochester
admits this is true, but explains that his father tricked him into the marriage for her money. Once
they were united, he discovered that she was rapidly descending into madness and so he eventually
locked her away in Thornfield, hiring Grace Poole as a nurse to look after her. When Grace gets
drunk, his wife escapes, and causes the strange happenings at Thornfield. It turns out that Jane's
uncle, Mr. John Eyre, is a friend of Mr. Mason, and was visited by him soon after Mr Eyre received
Jane's letter about her impending marriage. After the marriage ceremony was broken off, Mr.
Rochester asked Jane to go with him to the south of France, and live with him as husband and wife,
even though they cannot be married. Refusing to go against her principles, and despite her love for
him, Jane leaves Thornfield in the middle of the night.[6]

Other employment
Jane travels as far from Thornfield as she can using the little money she had previously saved. She
accidentally leaves her bundle of possessions on the coach and has to sleep on the moor, and
unsuccessfully attempts to trade her handkerchief and gloves for food. Exhausted and hungry, she
eventually makes her way to the home of Diana and Mary Rivers, but is turned away by the
housekeeper. She collapses on the doorstep, preparing for her death. St. John Rivers, Diana and
Mary's brother and a clergyman, saves her. After she regains her health, St. John finds her a
teaching position at a nearby village school. Jane becomes good friends with the sisters, but St. John
remains aloof.
The sisters leave for governess jobs and St. John becomes somewhat closer to Jane. St. John learns
Jane's true identity, and astounds her by telling her that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left her
his entire fortune of 20,000 pounds (equivalent to over 1.3 million in 2011, calculated using the
RPI[7]). When Jane questions him further, St. John reveals that John Eyre is also his and his sisters'
uncle. They had once hoped for a share of the inheritance, but were left virtually nothing. Jane,
overjoyed by finding that she has living and friendly family members, insists on sharing the money
equally with her cousins, and Diana and Mary come back to Moor House to live.

Proposals
Thinking she will make a suitable missionary's wife, St. John asks Jane to marry him and to go with
him to India, not out of love, but out of duty. Jane initially accepts going to India, but rejects the
marriage proposal, suggesting they travel as brother and sister. As soon as Jane's resolve against
marriage to St. John begins to weaken, she mysteriously hears Mr. Rochester's voice calling her
name. Jane then returns to Thornfield to find only blackened ruins. She learns that Mr. Rochester's
wife set the house on fire and committed suicide by jumping from the roof. In his rescue attempts,
Mr. Rochester lost a hand and his eyesight. Jane reunites with him, but he fears that she will be
repulsed by his condition. "Am I hideous, Jane?", he asks. Very, sir: you always were, you know
she replies. When Jane assures him of her love and tells him that she will never leave him, Mr.
Rochester again proposes and they are married. He eventually recovers enough sight to see their
first-born son.

Characters

Jane Eyre: The protagonist of the novel and the title character. Orphaned as a baby, she
struggles through her nearly loveless childhood and becomes governess at Thornfield Hall.
Jane is passionate and strongly principled, and values freedom and independence. She also
has a strong conscience and is a determined Christian.
Mr. Reed: Jane's maternal uncle, who adopts Jane when her parents die. According to Mrs.
Reed, he pitied Jane and often cared for her more than for his own children. Before his own
death, he makes his wife promise to care for Jane.
Mrs. Sarah Reed: Jane's aunt by marriage, who adopts Jane on her husband's wishes, but
abuses and neglects her. She eventually casts her off and sends her to Lowood School.
John Reed: Jane's cousin, who as a child bullies Jane constantly, sometimes in his mother's

presence. He ruins himself as an adult by drinking and gambling and is thought to have
committed suicide.
Eliza Reed: Jane's cousin. Jealous of her more attractive sister, and a slave to rigid routine,
she self-righteously devotes herself to religion. She leaves for a nunnery near Lisle after her
mother's death, determined to estrange herself from her sister.
Georgiana Reed: Jane's cousin. Although beautiful and indulged, she is insolent and
spiteful. Her sister Eliza foils her marriage to the wealthy Lord Edwin Vere, when they were
about to elope. She eventually marries a "wealthy worn-out man of fashion".
Bessie Lee: The nursemaid at Gateshead. She often treats Jane kindly, telling her stories and
singing her songs, but she has a quick temper. Later she marries Robert Leaven.
Robert Leaven: The coachman at Gateshead, who brings Jane the news of John Reed's
death, which brought on Mrs. Reed's stroke, and Mrs Reed's wish to see her before she died.
Mr. Lloyd: A compassionate apothecary who recommends that Jane be sent to school. Later,
he writes a letter to Miss Temple confirming Jane's account of her childhood and thereby
clearing Jane of Mrs. Reed's charge of lying.
Mr. Brocklehurst: The clergyman, director and treasurer of Lowood School, whose
maltreatment of the students is eventually exposed. A religious traditionalist, he advocates
for his charges the most harsh, plain, and disciplined possible lifestyle, but not,
hypocritically, for himself and his own family. His second daughter Augusta exclaimed,
"Oh, dear papa, how quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood look... they looked at my dress
and mama's, as if they had never seen a silk gown before."
Miss Maria Temple: The kind superintendent of Lowood School, who treats the students
with respect and compassion. She helps clear Jane of Mr. Brocklehurst's false accusation of
deceit, and cares for Helen in her last days. Eventually she marries Reverend Naysmith.
Miss Scatcherd: A sour and strict teacher at Lowood, she constantly punishes Helen Burns
for her untidiness, but fails to see Helen's substantial good points.
Helen Burns: Jane's best friend at Lowood School. She refuses to hate those who abuse her,
trusting in God and praying for peace one day in heaven. She teaches Jane to trust
Christianity, and dies of consumption in Jane's arms. Elizabeth Gaskell, in her biography of
the Bront sisters, wrote that Helen Burns was 'an exact transcript' of Maria Bront, who
died of consumption at age 11.[8]
Edward Fairfax Rochester: The master of Thornfield Hall. A Byronic hero, he is tricked
into making an unfortunate first marriage to Bertha Mason many years before he meets Jane,
with whom he falls madly in love.
Bertha Antoinetta Mason: The violently insane first wife of Edward Rochester; moved to
Thornfield and locked in the attic and eventually commits suicide after setting fire to
Thornfield Hall.
Adle Varens: An excitable French child to whom Jane is governess at Thornfield. She has
been Mr. Rochester's ward since her mother, Mr. Rochester's mistress, abandoned her and
"ran away to Italy with a musician or singer" (ch. 15).
Mrs. Alice Fairfax: An elderly but kindly widow and the housekeeper of Thornfield Hall.
Leah: The housemaid at Thornfield Hall.
John: An old and normally the only man servant at Thornfield.
Mary: Normally referred to as 'John's wife' and sometimes 'the cook'.
Blanche Ingram: A socialite whom Mr. Rochester temporarily courts to make Jane jealous.
She is described as having great beauty and talent, but displays callous behaviour and
avaricious intent.
Richard Mason: An Englishman from the West Indies, whose sister is Mr. Rochester's first
wife. He took part in tricking Mr. Rochester into marrying Bertha. He still, however, cares

for his sister's well-being.

Grace Poole: Bertha Mason's caretaker. Mr. Rochester pays her a very high salary to keep
Bertha hidden and quiet, and she is often used as an explanation for odd happenings. She has
a weakness for drink that occasionally allows Bertha to escape.
St. John Eyre Rivers: A clergyman who befriends Jane and turns out to be her cousin. He is
thoroughly practical and suppresses all his human passions and emotions in favour of good
works. He is determined to go to India as a missionary, despite being in love with Rosamond
Oliver.
Diana and Mary Rivers: St. John's sisters and (as it turns out) Jane's cousins. They are
poor, intelligent, and kind-hearted, and want St. John to stay in England.
Rosamond Oliver: A beautiful, kindly but not deep thinking, wealthy young woman, the
patron of the village school where Jane teaches. She falls in love with St. John, only to be
rejected because she would not make a good missionary's wife.
Mr. Oliver: Rosamond Oliver's wealthy father, who owns a foundry and needle factory in
the district. He is a kind and charitable man and is fond of St. John.
Alice Wood: Jane's maid when she is mistress of the girls' village school in Morton.
John Eyre: Jane's paternal uncle, who leaves her his vast fortune and wished to adopt her
when she was 15. Mrs. Reed prevents the adoption out of spite towards Jane.

Themes
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Morality
Jane refuses to become Mr. Rochester's paramour because of her "impassioned self-respect and
moral conviction." She rejects St. John Rivers' religious fervour as much as the libertine aspects of
Mr. Rochester's character. Instead, she works out a morality expressed in love, independence, and
forgiveness.

God and religion

Throughout the novel, Jane endeavours to attain an equilibrium between moral duty and earthly
happiness. She despises the hypocrisy of Mr. Brocklehurst, and sees the deficiencies in St. John
Rivers' indulgent yet detached devotion to his Christian duty. As a child, Jane admires Helen Burns'
life's philosophy of 'turning the other cheek', which in turn helps her in adult life to forgive Aunt
Reed and the Reed cousins for their cruelty. Although she does not seem to subscribe to any of the
standard forms of popular Christianity, she honours traditional morality particularly seen when
she refuses to marry Mr. Rochester until he is widowed. The last sentence of the novel is a prayer of
St. John Rivers on his own behalf: "Religion serves to moderate Jane's behavior, but she never
represses her true self."
In her preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, Bront makes her beliefs clear; "conventionality
is not morality" and "self-righteousness is not religion," declaring that narrow human doctrines,
which serve only to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming
creed of Christ. Throughout the novel, Bront presents contrasts between characters who believe in
and practice what she considers a true Christianity, and those who pervert religion to further their
own ends. Here are further examples:
Mr. Brocklehurst, who oversees Lowood Institution, is a hypocritical Christian. He professes aid
and charity but does the opposite by using religion as a justification for punishment. For instance,
he cites the Biblical passage "man shall not live by bread alone", to rebuke Miss Temple for having
fed the girls an extra meal to compensate for their inedible breakfast of burnt porridge. He tells Miss
Temple that she "may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their
immortal souls!".

Helen Burns is a complete contrast to Brocklehurst; she follows the Christian creed of 'turning the
other cheek' and by loving those who hate her. On her deathbed, Helen tells Jane "I'm going home
to God, who loves me." Jane herself cannot quite profess Helen's absolute, selfless faith. Jane does
not seem to follow a particular doctrine, but she is sincerely religious in a non-doctrinaire, general
way; it is Jane, presumably, who places the stone with the word "Resurgam" (Latin for 'I will rise
again') on Helen's grave, some fifteen years after her friend's death. Jane is seen frequently praying
and calling on God to assist her, especially with her struggles concerning Mr. Rochester; praying for
his wellness and safety.
After Hannah, the Rivers' housekeeper, tried to turn the begging Jane away at the door, Jane later
tells her that "if you are a Christian, you ought not consider poverty a crime."
The young evangelical clergyman St. John Rivers is a more conventionally religious figure.
However, Bront portrays his religious aspect ambiguously. Jane calls him "a very good man," yet
she finds him cold and forbidding. In his determination to do good deeds (in the form of missionary
work in India), St. John courts martyrdom. Moreover, he is unable to see Jane as a whole person,
but views her only as a helpmate in his impending missionary work.
Mr. Rochester is a less than perfect Christian. He is, indeed, a sinner: he attempts to enter into a
bigamous marriage with Jane and, when that fails, tries to persuade her to become his mistress. He
also confesses that he has had three previous mistresses. However, at the end of the book
Mr.Rochester repents his sinfulness, thanks God for returning Jane, and asks Him for the strength to
lead a purer life. It is implied that Rochester's maiming and blindness were God's judgment for his
sins, and that the partial recovery of his sight was due to his repentance. "God had tempered
judgment with mercy."

Social class
Jane's ambiguous social position a penniless yet decently educated orphan from a good family
leads her to criticise some discrimination based on class, though she makes class discriminations
herself. Although she is educated, well-mannered, and relatively sophisticated, she is still a
governess, a paid employee (middle class), and therefore relatively powerless. She respectfully
defers to Rochester and his guests from the upper class, but she asks Leah, the housemaid (lower
class), to get her a candle rather than get it herself, and has a servant girl when she is school
mistress at the small village school in Morton. While Jane is always conscious of her social position
(Rochester is master and she is employee) in everyday matters, at heart she sees herself as his equal,
as evidenced in her passionate speech prior to Rochester's first proposal. "... it is my spirit that
addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at Gods feet, equal,
as we are!"

Gender relations
A particularly important theme in the novel is the depiction of a patriarchal society. Jane attempts to
assert her own identity within male-dominated society. Three of the main male characters, Mr.
Brocklehurst, Mr. Rochester and St. John Rivers, try to keep Jane in a subordinate position and
prevent her from expressing her own thoughts and feelings. Jane escapes Mr. Brocklehurst and
rejects St. John, and she only marries Mr. Rochester once she is sure that their marriage is one
between equals. Through Jane, Bront opposes Victorian stereotypes about women, articulating her
own feminist philosophy:
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise
for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid
a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their
more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings
and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and 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. (Chapter XII)
It is also interesting to note that while most readings of Jane Eyre dwell on the fact that Bertha is

insane, it is not because she is insane that Rochester hates her (chap. 27). The two specific claims
that he makes against her, before she became insane, are that she was 'intemperate and unchaste' and
that he therefore felt degraded. Some feminist readings of the novel have taken this to mean that the
strictures imposed on women contemporary to the book were such that stepping outside of them
could have been construed as insane.
Other interpretations have seen this as evidence that Bertha was syphilitic, and that the romanticism
of the book neglects the truth that Edward Rochester would have been as well.[9] The book may use
the syphilitic condition as a metaphor for the sexual predation and narcissistic projection of Edward
Rochester; Edward says Bertha is "unchaste" in an attempt to relieve himself of the psychic pain of
his having the disease himself and his own likely role in Bertha acquiring that condition as well as
the fact he likely has the disease and risks infecting Jane. His psychological projection combined
with his position of power distorts reality such that it gives Bertha no choice but to be "insane"
(which may be combined with actual physical brain deterioration from the syphilis) if any challenge
to his veracity would cause her greater problems, such as abandonment, starvation, etc.

Love and passion

A central theme in Jane Eyre is that of the clash between conscience and passion which one is to
adhere to, and how to find a middle ground between the two. Jane, extremely passionate yet also
dedicated to a close personal relationship with God, struggles between either extreme for much of
the novel. An instance of her leaning towards conscience over passion can be seen after it has been
revealed that Mr. Rochester already has a wife, when Jane is begged to run away with Mr.
Rochester and become his mistress. Up until that moment, Jane had been riding on a wave of
emotion, forgetting all thoughts of reason and logic, replacing God with Mr. Rochester in her eyes,
and allowing herself to be swept away in the moment. However, once the harsh reality of the
situation sets in, Jane does everything in her power to refuse Mr. Rochester, despite almost every
part of her rejecting the idea and urging her to just give into Mr. Rochester's appeal. In the moment,
Jane experiences an epiphany in regards to conscience, realising that laws and principles are not
for times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this. Jane finally comes to
understand that all passion, as she had been living her life up until then, and all conscience, as she
had leaned towards during her time at Lowood, is neither good nor preferable. In this case, Jane had
allowed herself to lean too far in the direction of passion, and she is in danger of giving up all logic
and reason in favour of temptation. However, Jane finally asserts that in times of true moral trial,
such as the one she is in with Mr. Rochester at the moment, to forgo one's principles, to violate the
law given by God, would be too easy and not something she is willing to do. Jane's struggles
to find a middle ground between her passionate and conscience-driven sides frequently go back and
forth throughout the novel, but in this case she has drawn the line as to where passion is taking too
great a role in her life, and where she will not allow herself to forgo her moral and religious
principles.

Feminism
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The role and standing of women in the Victorian era is considered by Bront in Jane Eyre,
specifically in regard to Jane's independence and ability to make decisions for herself. As a young
woman, small and of relatively low social standing, Jane encounters men during her journey, of
good, bad, and morally debatable character. However, many of them, no matter their ultimate
intentions, attempt to establish some form of power and control over Jane. One example can be seen
in Mr. Rochester, a man who ardently loves Jane, but who frequently commands and orders Jane
about. As a self-assured and established man, and her employer, Mr. Rochester naturally assumes
the position of the master in their relationship. He sometimes demands rather than questioning Jane,
tries to manipulate and assess her feelings towards him, and enjoys propping up Jane through
excessive gifts and luxuries that only he would have been able to provide. Jane, however, believes

in the importance of women's independence, and strives to maintain a position in life devoid of any
debts to others. Her initial lack of money and social status unnerves her, as she realises that without
the means to be an independent woman, she is bound to either struggle through life trying to make a
living or marry and become dependent on a man. Even after Jane agrees to marry Mr. Rochester,
and is swept up in the passion of the moment, the feminist elements of her personality still show
through. She is uncomfortable with the showering of lavish gifts, as she resents that they will make
her further reliant on and in debt to Mr. Rochester, and thus tries to resist them. Furthermore, Jane
asserts that until she is married to Mr. Rochester, she will continue to be Adle's governess and earn
her keep. This plan, which was entirely radical and unheard of for the time, further illustrates Jane's
drive to remain a somewhat independent woman. It was for this reason she suddenly remembered
and wrote to her uncle who until now thought her dead. "... if I had but a prospect of one day
bringing Mr. Rochester an accession of fortune, I could better endure to be kept by him now." This
feminist undercurrent also presents itself in Jane's interaction with her long-lost cousin, St. John
Rivers. St. John repressed Jane's feeling and controlled her excessively. She often felt that he "took
away [her] liberty of mind".[10] During her stay with her cousin, St. John proposes to Jane, by
claiming her "as a soldier would a new weapon".[11] Jane realises that she cannot marry a man who
constantly forces her into submission and treats her like an object, and she refuses to marry him.
Once again, her need for independence shines through.
The only time Jane truly feels ready to marry a man is when she is equal to him. In the end of Jane
Eyre, Jane inherits a fortune from her uncle. This allows her to be economically independent from
Mr. Rochester. Also, Mr. Rochester becomes lame and blind after the fire that ripped through his
home. He now depends on Jane, rather than Jane depending on him. This change in the power
dynamic of their relationship unites the two of them once again.
While the significant men present in Jane's life throughout the novel all try to, in some form or
another, establish themselves as dominant over Jane, she in most cases remains resistant at least to a
certain degree, refusing to submit fully or lose all of her independence. The only time Jane feels
comfortable attaching herself to a man is when she knows that she is his financial, intellectual, and
emotional equal. This final adherence to her strong convictions on the independence of women
point out Bront's similar views on the patriarchal Victorian society of the time.

Atonement and forgiveness

Much of the religious concern in Jane Eyre has to do with atonement and forgiveness. Mr.
Rochester is tormented by his awareness of his past sins and misdeeds. He frequently confesses that
he has led a life of vice, and many of his actions in the course of the novel are less than
commendable. Readers may accuse him of behaving sadistically in deceiving Jane about the nature
of his relationship (or rather, non-relationship) with Blanche Ingram to provoke Jane's jealousy. His
confinement of Bertha may bespeak mixed motives. He is certainly aware that in the eyes of both
religious and civil authorities, his marriage to Jane before Bertha's death would be bigamous. Yet, at
the same time, Mr. Rochester makes genuine efforts to atone for his behaviour. For example,
although he does not believe that he is Adele's natural father, he adopts her as his ward and sees that
she is well cared for. This adoption may well be an act of atonement for the sins he has committed.
He expresses his self-disgust at having tried to console himself by having three different mistresses
during his travels in Europe and begs Jane to forgive him for these past transgressions. However,
Mr. Rochester can only atone completely and be forgiven completely after Jane has refused to
be his mistress and left him. The destruction of Thornfield by fire finally removes the stain of his
past sins; the loss of his left hand and of his eyesight is the price he must pay to atone completely
for his sins. Only after this purgation can he be redeemed by Jane's love.[citation needed]

Search for home and family

Without any living family that she is aware of (until well into the story), throughout the course of
the novel Jane searches for a place that she can call home. Significantly, houses play a prominent
part in the story. (In keeping with a long English tradition, all the houses in the book have names).
The novel's opening finds Jane living at Gateshead Hall, but this is hardly a home. Mrs. Reed and

her children refuse to acknowledge her as a relation, treating her instead as an unwanted intruder
and an inferior.
Shunted off to Lowood Institution, a boarding school for orphans and destitute children, Jane finds
a home of sorts, although her place here is ambiguous and temporary. The school's manager, Mr.
Brocklehurst, treats it more as a business and a place of correction than as school in loco parentis
(in place of the parent). His emphasis on discipline and on spartan conditions at the expense of the
girls' health make it the antithesis of the ideal home.
Jane subsequently believes she has found a home at Thornfield Hall. Anticipating the worst when
she arrives, she is relieved when she is made to feel welcome by Mrs. Fairfax. She feels genuine
affection for Adle (who in a way is also an orphan) and is happy to serve as her governess. As her
love for Mr. Rochester grows, she believes that she has found her ideal husband in spite of his
eccentric manner and that they will make a home together at Thornfield. The revelation as they
are on the verge of marriage that he is already legally married brings her dream of home
crashing down. Fleeing Thornfield, she literally becomes homeless and is reduced to begging for
food and shelter. The opportunity of having a home presents itself when she enters Moor House,
where the Rivers sisters and their brother, the Reverend St. John Rivers, are mourning the death of
their father. She soon speaks of Diana and Mary Rivers as her own sisters, and is overjoyed when
she learns that they are indeed her cousins. She tells St. John Rivers that learning that she has living
relations is far more important than inheriting twenty thousand pounds. (She mourns the uncle she
never knew. Earlier she was disheartened on learning that Mrs. Reed told her uncle that Jane had
died and sent him away.) However, St. John Rivers' offer of marriage cannot sever her emotional
attachment to Rochester. In an almost visionary episode, she hears Mr. Rochester's voice calling her
to return to him. The last chapter begins with the famous simple declarative sentence, "Reader, I
married him," and after a long series of travails Jane's search for home and family ends in a union
with her ideal mate.

Context

The Salutation pub in Hulme, Manchester. This is where Charlotte Bront began to write Jane Eyre;
the pub was a lodge in the 1840s.[12][13]
The early sequences, in which Jane is sent to Lowood, a harsh boarding school, are derived from the
author's own experiences. Helen Burns's death from tuberculosis (referred to as consumption)
recalls the deaths of Charlotte Bront's sisters Elizabeth and Maria, who died of the disease in
childhood as a result of the conditions at their school, the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan
Bridge, near Tunstall, Lancashire. Mr. Brocklehurst is based on Rev. William Carus Wilson (1791
1859), the Evangelical minister who ran the school. Additionally, John Reed's decline into
alcoholism and dissolution recalls the life of Charlotte's brother Branwell, who became an opium
and alcohol addict in the years preceding his death. Finally, like Jane, Charlotte became a
governess. These facts were revealed to the public in The Life of Charlotte Bront (1857) by
Charlotte's friend and fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.[14]
The Gothic manor of Thornfield Hall was probably inspired by North Lees Hall, near Hathersage in
the Peak District. This was visited by Charlotte Bront and her friend Ellen Nussey in the summer
of 1845 and is described by the latter in a letter dated 22 July 1845. It was the residence of the Eyre

family, and its first owner, Agnes Ashurst, was reputedly confined as a lunatic in a padded second
floor room.[14]
It has been suggested that the Wycoller Hall in Lancashire, close to Haworth, provided the setting
for Ferndean Manor to which Mr Rochester retreats after the fire at Thornfield: there are similarities
between the owner of Ferndean, Mr Rochester's father, and Henry Cunliffe who inherited Wycoller
in the 1770s and lived there until his death in 1818; one of Cunliffe's relatives was named Elizabeth
Eyre (ne Cunliffe).[15]
The sequence in which Mr Rochester's wife sets fire to the bed curtains was prepared in an August
1830 homemade publication of Bront's The Young Men's Magazine, Number 2.[16]

Literary motifs and allusions

Jane Eyre uses many motifs from Gothic fiction, such as the Gothic manor (Thornfield Hall), the
Byronic hero (Mr. Rochester) and The Madwoman in the Attic (Bertha), whom Jane perceives as
resembling "the foul German spectrethe Vampyre" (Chapter XXV) and who attacks her own
brother in a distinctly vampiric way: "She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart" (Chapter
XX). The mystery of Thornfield Hall with its dark secrets creates a typically Gothic atmosphere of
suspense. When resolved, we then get the theme of madness, also common in Gothic fiction, as is
the motif of two characters, John Reed and Bertha Mason, who commit suicide. Although the novel
contains no overt supernatural occurrences, hints of apparently supernatural happenings are
frequently mentioned such as Jane's prophetic dreams, her sense of the ghost of her uncle, the
lightning striking the chestnut tree on the night she agrees to marry Mr. Rochester, and Jane and Mr.
Rochester being able to hear each other's call over miles of separation when St John forces Jane into
a decision to marry him.
Jane Eyre also combines Gothicism with romanticism to create a distinctive Victorian novel. Jane
and Rochester are attracted to each other, but there are impediments to their love. The conflicting
personalities of the two lead characters and the norms of society are an obstacle to their love, as
often occurs in romance novels, but so also is Rochester's secret marriage to Bertha, the main
Gothic element of the story.
Literary allusions from the Bible, fairy tales, The Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, and the novels
and poetry of Sir Walter Scott are also much in evidence.[14] John Reed is compared to Caligula.
Jane is compared to Guy Fawkes. Both Biblical figures like Samson and figures from Greek myths
such as Apollo are referred to at various times.

Adaptations and influence

Main article: Adaptations of Jane Eyre
The novel has been adapted into a number of popular forms, including film, television and theatre.
However, perhaps more importantly, the novel has been the centre of a number of rewritings and
reinterpretations. Most notably reinterpretations and rewritings by notable authors have become
important within British and American literature, including novels such as Jean Rhys's Wide
Sargasso Sea.

Reception
According to a review of Jane Eyre in The Quarterly Review, it was found to be "pre-eminently an
anti-Christian composition".[17] Although Bront clearly intended for the book to be a protest against
Victorian lifestyle, which caused a great unrest with the Quarterly Review, they found Jane Eyre to
be more radical than its original intent: "We do not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and thought
which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered
Chartism and rebellion at home, is the same which has also written Jane Eyre".[17] Although Jane
Eyre is now commonly accepted into the canon of secondary school English literature, its
immediate reception was in stark contrast to its modern-day reception. In 2003 the novel was
ranked number 10 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.[18]

References
1.
Harold Bloom declared Eyre a "classic of Gothic and Victorian literature." Bloom,
Harold (July 2007). "Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre"". Midwest Book Review (Chelsea House
Publishers): 245.
2.
Burt, Daniel S. (2008). The Literature 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential
Novelists, Playwrights, and Poets of All Time. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 9781438127064.
3.
A classic feminist discussion of Jane Eyre is the book The Madwoman in the Attic by
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (Yale University Press, 1979) See also Martin, Robert B.
Charlotte Bront's Novels: The Accents of Persuasion. NY: Norton, 1966
4.
Jerome Beaty. "St. John's Way and the Wayward Reader" in Bront, Charlotte (2001)
[1847]. Richard J. Dunn, ed. Jane Eyre (Norton Critical Edition, Third Edition ed.). W.W.
Norton & Company. pp. 491502. ISBN 0393975428.
5.
Bronte, Charlotte (16 October 1847). Jane Eyre. London, England: Smith, Elder &
Co. p. 105.
6.
Bronte, Charlotte (2008). Jane Eyre. Radford, Virginia: Wilder Publications.
ISBN 160459411X.
7.
"Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a UK Pound Amount, 1830 to
Present". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
8.
Gaskell, Elizabeth (1857). The Life of Charlotte Bront 1. Smith, Elder & Co. p. 73.
9.
Oates, Joyce Carol (1988). "Jane Eyre: An Introduction". University of San
Francisco. Retrieved 3 February 2013.
10.
Bronte, Charlotte (1926). Jane Eyre. New York: the Book League of America.
p. 323.
11.
Bronte, Charlotte (1926). Jane Eyre. New York: the Book League of America.
p. 329.
12.
"Jane Eyre: a Mancunian?". BBC. 10 October 2006. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
13.
"Salutation pub in Hulme thrown a lifeline as historic building is bought by MMU".
Manchester Evening News. 2 September 2011. Retrieved 6 September 2011.
14.
Stevie Davies, Introduction and Notes to Jane Eyre. Penguin Classics ed., 2006.
15.
"Wycoller Sheet 3: Ferndean Manor and the Bront Connection" (pdf). Lancashire
Countryside Service Environmental Directorale. 2012. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
16.
"Paris museum wins Bronte bidding war". BBC News. 15 December 2011. Retrieved
16 December 2011.
17.
Shapiro, Arnold (Autumn 1968). "In Defense of Jane Eyre". 4 8: 683.
18.
"The Big Read", BBC, April 2003. Retrieved 21 December 2013