JANE EYRE

Charlotte Bronte
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Charlotte Bronte
Brontë was born on April 21, 1816 in the village of Thornton, West Riding,
Yorkshire. Her father, Patrick Brontë, was the son of a respectable Irish
farmer in County Down, Ireland. As the eldest son in a large family, Patrick
normally would have found his life’s work in managing the farm he was to
inherit; instead, he first became a school teacher and a tutor and, having
attracted the attention of a local patron, acquired training in the classics
and was admitted to St. John’s College at Cambridge in 1802. He graduated
in 1806 and was ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 1807. In
addition to writing the sermons he regularly delivered, Patrick Brontë was
also a minor poet, publishing his first book of verse, Cottage Poems, in 1811.
His rise from modest beginnings can be attributed largely to his
considerable talent, hard work, and steady ambition—qualities his
daughter Charlotte clearly inherited.
One of the most famous Victorian women writers, and a prolific poet,
Charlotte Brontë is best known for her novels, including Jane Eyre (1847),
her most popular. Like her contemporary Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Brontë experimented with the poetic forms that became the
characteristic modes of the Victorian period—the long narrative poem
and the dramatic monologue—but unlike Browning, Brontë gave up writing
poetry after the success of Jane Eyre.
THEMES
 THEMES
 Social Position

 Religion

 Family

 Love & Passion

 External Beauty vs Internal Beauty

 Race

 Feminism
RACE
 RACE
 Throughout the novel there are frequent themes relating to ideas of ethnicity (specifically that of
Bertha), which are a reflection of the society that the novel is set within. Mr. Rochester claims to have
been forced to take on a "mad" Creole wife, a woman who grew up in the West Indies, and who is
thought to be of mixed-race descent.In the analysis of several scholars, Bertha plays the role of the
racialized "other" through the shared belief that she chose to follow in the footsteps of her parents.
Her alcoholism and apparent mental instability cast her as someone who is incapable of restraining
herself, almost forced to submit to the different vices she is a victim of.Many writers of the period
believed that one could develop mental instability or mental illnesses simply based on their race.
 This means that those who were born of ethnicities associated with a darker complexion, or those
who were not fully of European descent, were believed to be more mentally unstable than their white
European counterparts were. According to American scholar Susan Meyer, in writing Jane Eyre
Brontë was responding to the "seemingly inevitable" analogy in 19th-century European texts which
"[compared] white women with blacks in order to degrade both groups and assert the need for white
male control"
FEMINISM
 FEMINISM
 The idea of the equality of men and women emerged more
strongly in the Victorian period in Britain, after works by earlier
writers, such as Mary Wollstonecraft. R. B. Martin described
Jane Eyre as the first major feminist novel, "although there is
not a hint in the book of any desire for political, legal,
educational, or even intellectual equality between the sexes."
This is illustrated in chapter 23, when Jane responds to
Rochester's callous and indirect proposal:

 Do you think I am an automaton? a machine without

feelings?...Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and
little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong — I have as
much soul as you, — and full as much heart...I am not talking to
you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor
even of mortal flesh; — it is my spirit that addresses your spirit;
just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at
God's feet, equal, — as we are
PLOT
 PLOT
 Jane Eyre is divided into 38 chapters. It was originally
published in three volumes in the 19th century, comprising
chapters 1 to 15, 16 to 27, and 28 to 38.
 The novel is a first-person narrative from the perspective of
the title character. Its setting is somewhere in the north of
England, late in the reign of George III (1760–1820).It has 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 gains friends and
role models but suffers privations and oppression; her time as
governess at Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her
mysterious employer, Edward Fairfax Rochester; her time in
the Moor House, during which her earnest but cold clergyman
cousin, St. John Rivers, proposes to her; and ultimately her
reunion with, and marriage to, her beloved Rochester.
Throughout these sections, it provides perspectives on a
number of important social issues and ideas, many of which
are critical of the status quo.
CHARACTER
ANALYSIS
 JANE EYRE
 Jane Eyre: The novel's narrator and protagonist, she
eventually becomes the second wife of Edward Rochester.
Orphaned as a baby, Jane struggles through her nearly
loveless childhood and becomes a governess at Thornfield
Hall. Though facially plain, Jane is passionate and strongly
principled and values freedom and independence. She also
has a strong conscience and is a determined Christian. She is
ten at the beginning of the novel, and nineteen or twenty at
the end of the main narrative. As the final chapter of the novel
states that she has been married to Edward Rochester for ten
years, she is approximately thirty at its completion.
 She values intellectual and emotional fulfillment. Her strong
belief in social equality, challenging the Victorian prejudices
against women and poor.
 Edward Rochester
 Jane’s employer and the master of Thornfield.
 He is a wealthy, passionate man with a dark secret that gives
the reader much of the novel’s suspense.
 He is unconventional, ready to go against polite manners,
propriety, and consideration of social class, in order to
interact with Jane frankly and directly.
 He is rude, impetuous, and has spent much of his life roaming
about Europe trying to avoid the consequences of his youthful
past.
 His problems are partly the result of his own recklessness, but
he is a sympathetic figure, and has been describing as a
suffering character because of his early marriage to Bertha.
 Bertha Antoinetta Mason
 The first wife of Edward Rochester. After their wedding, her
mental health began to deteriorate, and she is now violent
and in a state of intense derangement, apparently unable to
speak or go into society. Mr. Rochester, who insists that he
was tricked into the marriage by a family who knew Bertha
was likely to develop this condition, has kept Bertha locked in
the attic at Thornfield Hall for years. She is supervised and
cared for by Grace Poole, whose drinking sometimes allows
Bertha to escape. After Richard Mason stops Jane and Mr.
Rochester's wedding, Rochester finally introduces Jane to
Bertha: "In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a
figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether
beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell… it
snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it
was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled
hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face."
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I
am a free human being with an
independent will.”

― Charlotte Brontë, „Jane

Eyre“