Jane Eyre is still a great favorite to readers around the world. And, it's no wonder! The young girl is a compelling heroine, painted into a life of ignoble misery. She has the infamous evil stepmother (represented by her miserly aunt, the cruel (and unkind) tormentors (her cousins). She even has elements of the supernatural. Early on, she feared ghosts and that fear would be transformed into a terrible pyromaniac-madwoman.
The book has really got everything: controversy, tragedy, abuse, self-sacrifice, psychological manipulation, and so much more.
With the ever-deepening and evolving state of Jane's emotional and physical state, the novel offers something for nearly every romantic-minded reader. And, our study of Jane Eyre becomes ever more fascinating when we consider the origins of the work...
Using the pseudonym Currer Bell, Charlotte Bronte sent off her book to Smith Elder & Company on August 24, 1847. Readers loved the book (it was an immediate success), but part of the pull of this controversial bildungsroman is TRUTH. Charlotte's sisters died at boarding school; she'd taught (though not as a governess); and she fell in love with a married man (she later married a curate and died during her pregnancy).
So much of life is sadness, disappointment and surprise revelations (that don't benefit anyone), but if Jane Eyre teaches us ONE thing, it's that there's beauty and hope to be found, even in the most ugly of situations. Bronte writes: "A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway."
Read the complete novel, learn about The Life of Charlotte Brontė, and take the 'Jane Eyre' Quiz. What's your favorite quote from 'Jane Eyre'.
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Comments
Probably my favorite book that I re-read every year or so and come across something that I had not seen previously or had forgotten. Plus I think that I have every DVD released since Orson Welles’ version.
I’ve always wondered what happened afterwards. Did Mr Rochester get fed up with Jane, and did he lock her in the attic, after driving her to distraction?
But that Martin(2),did he read “Jane Eyre”? May be he is facetious; if not he is lacking in cleverness and psychology at oll.
We must remember that we only have Mr Rochester’s word that his first wife was mad, we don’t know if he drew her to it. He tries to marry Jane whilst his first wife is secretly alive. I agree with Mrs Oliphant, Jane Eyre ultimately started the craze for ‘sensation fiction’, with a person locked in the attic, and an attempt at bigamy. It is interesting to note that Charlotte was the last of the three sisters to be published, mainly because she tried to get a version of ‘The Professor’ published first. When that was rejected she sent Jane Eyre.
Although well written, it doesn’t answer the main question, was Rochester to blame for his wife’s madness, or was it how he claimed? Seeing that he tries to commit bigamy we have to sift through everything he says with a fine toothed comb.
We are not left with Rochester’s diagnosis. We have the evidence of her first attempt to set Rochester on fire in his bed. We have the testimony of the caregiver after the disclosure of the impediment to Jane’s marriage in the bigamous marriage, we have the prior attack upon her brother that led to his nocturnal removal so his injuries would not be known to the other guests in the house, and we have the evidence of her conduct leading to the burning of the house and her own death while resisting rescue.It I hardly ipse dixit as Martin suggests.Jane knows of all but the housefire (which took place after she fled.
Nelson, the fact remains that Rochester tries to bring off a bigamous marriage and thus witholds details that he is even married. There seems to be a cult of Charlotte Bronte, and that she can do no wrong. Jane Eyre isn’t her best book, that belongs to ‘Villette’. Jane Eyre would have been a bit of a shocker at the time because of its theme of adultery. Ultimately we have to rely on the veracity of Jane’s narration, we don’t really know how honest she herself is with what she tells us, we can only suppose it is true. And remember Charlotte plays with readers in her books. She originally holds things back in ‘Villette’, she gives expectations that ‘Shirley’ is about a man, due to its title (at the time it was written Shirley was only just coming to be used more for a girl’s name, it was in more common usage as a male name).
The fact remains that the ending of Jane Eyre isn’t really the expected ending, which has resulted in its endurance; you would expect her to ditch Rochester – he ends up crippled after lying to her, which is a normal ‘piece’ for the time, i.e., he has done bad to Jane so the Heavens have made him suffer. After the lying you would expect Jane to dump him and have nothing else to do with him.
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