Childhood

When Jane Eyre was published in 1847, it introduced a new voice to the world, the voice
of a passionate, angry and defiant child. There were many passionate children in the
moral instruction books designed for children in the early decades of the 19th century,
but in these cases, they were examples of bad or sinful behaviour. Such children had to
mend their ways, or suffer a terrible fate, such as Martha G-. In the case of Jane Eyre,
however, Charlotte Bront clearly expected her readers to be on the side of her defiant
child as she stands up to adult tyranny. From childhood to adulthood, Jane, unlike the
children in these stories, does not change, and the values held by 10 year old Jane are
identical to those held by adult Jane. Bront teaches her readers that childhood is
formative, and not a period of peril, or a time to salvage the souls of wicked children.

Jane Eyre is set in the early decades of the nineteenth century, where there was an
abundance of psychological and philosophical debate surrounding childhood and the way
personality and the mind was formed. Due to the wide-spread belief of Christianity, many
of these discussions were tainted by the Puritan belief that humans are born sinful as a
consequence of mankinds Fall, which led to the widespread notion that childhood was a
perilous period you have a wicked heart, and you must pray to god to change it: to give
you a new one; to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Many
also believed that childhood was merely a preparation for adulthood, and education was
seen as the most important thing. Though Bront and Jane clearly value education and
its opportunities school would be a complete change: it implied a long journey, an
entire separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life. Children were considered
immature and ignorant, which caused the experience of a child to be omitted from fiction
and narratives of the time. Jane Eyre challenges this tradition, as the novel is a
bildungsroman, and the novel begins with the narration of 10 year old Jane. Bronte
challenges the notions of the time that children were un-aware and uninformed as Jane is
inquisitive, curious and is extremely aware of the injustice that is forced upon her and the
people surrounding her If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your
own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without
friends

The novel not only is influenced by the debates of the Victorian times, but also Charlotte
Brontes own experiences. Bront first titled the novel Jane Eyre: An Autobiography,
and we see that the striking similarities between the twos experiences. The most
obvious example of the resemblance is Janes experience at Lowood School, most likely
modelled after Charlottes school and the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge,
where her two sisters, Maria and Elizabeth died after an outbreak of tuberculosis swept
the school. Bronte bases Jane Eyre from her life and Society at the time, as she paints a
vivid picture of Janes suffering at Lowood and her struggle against the narrow role that
19th-century society allotted to women and young girls, seen through the naive eyes of a
child. The inclusion and mirroring of Bronts experiences in Janes youth show the reader
how strongly Bront values the importance of these experiences.
Nevertheless, the novel also contains a strong element of fantasy. Right from the start
hidden in the window-seat, where she sits, cross-legged, like a Turk Jane escapes into
a world of imagination, losing herself in the wild frozen landscapes of Bewicks History of
British Birds, and thinking of the fairy tales and ballads told by Bessie, the nurse, on
winter evenings. Fantasy is thus established as a counterpoint to Janes real-life
privations, and as a rich source of imagery. The gothic style of the novel emulates Janes
interest in all things fantastical, and reminds us of Janes youth, and the way she is stuck
in her traumatic childhood. This fantastical side of the novel can be traced through each
Bronte novel, as originates in their childhoods, where they would invent whole fairy tale
worlds for their little toy soldiers to inhabit. This had an obvious effect on Charlotte, as
she uses an imaginative child, with an interest in faerie as her narrator. In many respects,
for instance, Jane Eyre resembles the fairy stories Cinderella and Bluebeard.

The romantic and important view of childhood is extremely apparent in Jane Eyre, as
Bront uses it with Jane's experience of the social world in the early nineteenth century
to highlight socialissues. Bronte uses the narration of a child to highlight the injustices of
the time as Jane a (10 year old girl) is experiencing the different forms of social isolation
and prejudices for the first time, and has extreme reactions to it I must resist those who
punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or
submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved. What she sees in the world is
completely at odds with the moral codes she believes in. Jane is hyper-aware of her and
the vulnerability of children all John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud
indifference, all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality, who are at the mercy
of adults like Mrs. Reed, who sees Jane as deceitful and innately different to herself, or
Brocklehurst who sees them as inherently sinful Who would think the evil one had
already found a servant and agent in her? Despite her youth, Jane is also conscious of
the way that Society and religion brands and categorises children, as she sees in Lowood.
Though Jane is often over-dramatic and tempestuous, it is because she believes she is
right, and she often is. Her perception of the Injustice around her is valued by Bronte,
who attempts to come as close as possible to Janes childhood experiences,
unquestioning their validity.

Jane Eyre was one of the first novels that set out to explore what it feels like to be a
child: unlike Charles Dickenss slightly earlier work, Oliver Twist (1838), it is recounted
by the heroine herself, supposedly in adulthood, but with all the intensity of immediate
experience. On the very first page we learn that Jane is set apart from her cousins by her
aunt who wants her to acquire a more sociable and child-like disposition. It was believed
at the time, as we see from Mrs. Reed that children who did not control themselves could
descend, into a life of crime and deceit.Jane is a defiant child, who is fully convinced of
the rightness of her rebellion. She likens her mood to that of a rebel slave with her
heart in insurrection. In her anger and passion, Jane is far removed from the
conventional model of the Victorian child (and later the governess) that should be seen
and not heard. Instead, she is part of new, emerging, more sympathetic attitudes to
childhood, which stressed that adults should pay attention to the feelings and sufferings
of children. They were not just blank slates until adulthood, but capable of even more
intense emotional suffering than adults.

When Jane is sent away to school by her aunt, she hopes her life will improve, but she is
mistaken. Lowood Institution is partly based on the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan
Bridge, which Charlotte Bront attended with her older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, and
younger sister Emily, in 1824-25. Maria and Elizabeth died of consumption, contracted at
the school, and there was also an outbreak of typhus while Charlotte was there, which
clearly helped to colour her memories of Cowan Bridge. When the Reverend Bront sent
his daughters there, however, he had every reason to believe it would be a good school,
and indeed it was not that different from other similar institutions. Lowood Institution, as
depicted by Bront, was extremely harsh. The dominating Mr Brocklehurst was partly
based on the evangelical clergyman, the Reverend Carus Wilson, who ran Cowan Bridge.
The Childrens Friend, that Mr Brocklehurst gifts to Jane carried many tales of children
who were struck down dead if they flew into a passion, or told lies. Brocklehurst also
forces Jane to stand on a stool in front of the class and orders her classmates to shun her
because she is a liar. The main idea behind harsh measures such as this was that if the
body was punished, the soul could be saved. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront challenges
these notions, and instead offers a deeply sympathetic portrayal of a rebellious child,
which helped to transform Victorian attitudes to the child.
Childhood is an extremely important part of Jane Eyre, as Janes childhood shapes her as
a person, and forms the moral code that allows her to see the Injustice and inequality
surrounding her.