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Jane Eyre
By
Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte

Was born of Irish
ancestry in 1816
•Lived at Haworth, a
parsonage
•Mother died of cancer when Charlotte was 5 years old.
Charlotte’s Religious Views

Father, Patrick Bronte,
was an Anglican
clergyman

Due to her upbringing,
she often wrote about
religious hypocrisy—
those who preach one
doctrine but live by
another
The Bronte Sisters


Charlotte had four sisters
and one brother.
After their mother’s death,
Brontë and her sisters were
sent to the Clergy
Daughters’ School.

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
The food was bad
Discipline was harsh
Disease was rampant
Bronte’s two older sisters
(Maria & Elizabeth) died of
tuberculosis.
All in the Family
Charlotte Bronte


Emily Bronte

The Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge
would became the model for Lowood, the fictitious
girls’ school in Jane Eyre.
Charlotte’s sisters Anne and Emily Bronte both
became successful writers.
In 1846, Charlotte & her sisters started publishing
poems and began writing novels:

The Professor was Charlotte’s attempt to
fictionalize her love for a college professor she
had met at Brussels.

In 1847 Wuthering Heights was sister Emily’s
first success. Charlotte followed with Jane
Eyre.
Anne Bronte
Branwell Bronte

Charlotte’s brother, Branwell, was a gifted painter.
All 3 Bronte Sisters…


Used a masculine pen name because
women writers were not taken seriously at
that time in Victorian England.
Charlotte used the name Currer Bell and her
famous sisters were Acton and Ellis.
Marriage Bells

In 1854 Charlotte
married her father's
curate, Arthur Bell
Nichols.

The next year, she
became pregnant, then
ill.

She died a month
before her 39th
birthday.
THE NOVEL
Jane Eyre was published in London in 1847.
Key Facts
All events are told in
the past from Jane’s
point of view.
 The setting is early
19th Century England.
 Jane Eyre is classified
as both a Gothic and
a Romantic novel.

Jane Eyre


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
Our protagonist
Orphaned as a child
Becomes governess at
Thornfield
A feisty young child, who
grows into a strong woman.
Embodies the English
working-class woman.
Will marry . . . . ?
Edward Rochester
Jane’s boss at Thornfield
 Gruff and rude
 Made wealthy by family
money
 Benefactor to Adèle Varens
 Very secretive and
sometimes deceitful

Bertha Mason
Bertha is locked in the attic
at Thornfield
 Starts the bedroom fire,
and eventually burns the
house down
 Kills herself in the house
fire
 Exotic, sensual
personification of the
Orient – ‘the other’

Bronte’s Gothic Influence

Jane Eyre displays
some characteristics of
the gothic novel:
 Imprisoned
women
 A heroine who faces
danger
 Supernatural
interventions at crucial
moments in the plot
 A romantic reconciliation
Jane Eyre’s Romantic
Heritage

The Romantic
Movement



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
Came into play in at the
end of the 18th Century.
Championed for the
rights of the individual
over the demands of
society.
Believed that humans
were inherently good
Valued imagination over
reason
Inspired by nature
Thornfield Hall



After posting an
advertisement in a local
paper, Jane becomes the
private governess at
Thornfield Hall.
Her pupil is a young French
girl named Adele.
Thornfield Hall belongs to a
Mr. Rochester


Jane does not meet him for
months.
Finally, Mr. Rochester
returns home and stays
longer than usual at
Thornfield Hall
Role of the Governess
o
o
o
o
With the new stress on female
education, governesses were
in demand.
Pay was poor, but it was one
of the only jobs available to
educated, yet impoverished
young women.
Employers & other servants
often shunned the governess
because they felt they were
“putting on airs.”
Their employers would often
ignore them, too, because they
had a superior education,
which intimidated many people
– especially men.
Jane Eyre:
A Ground Breaking Novel?
•
The heroine is small,
plain, & poor
•
The heroine is the first
female character to claim
the right to feel strongly
about her emotions and
act on her convictions
•
This romantic ground had
previously been reserved
for males
•
Such a psychologically
complex heroine had
never been created
before
Jane Eyre: A Feminist Reading
A lot of Feminist work
on Jane Eyre was
written in the 1970’s
and perhaps the most
famous is Sandra
Gilbert’s ‘Plain Jane’s
Progress’ from her book
with Susan Gubar -
A Feminist ‘reading’ of Jane
Sandra Gilbert and other
Feminist writers like Elaine
Showalter placed the novel
in the context of female
experience and within the
tradition of other female
authors.
.
Jane became the
embodiment of youthful
rebelliousness,
independence and
admired for achieving
equality in marriage.
Plain Jane’s Progress
Sandra Gilbert’s essay
explores the following
critical points:
 Gyno-criticism – a
literature for women
by women
 The nineteenth
century woman’s
escape through
madness and from
‘the angel in the
house’ ideology

The sense of
‘doubleness’
experienced by Jane
– Bertha as her
‘secret self’/ ‘other’
Gyno-Criticism – a literature for
women by women
Gynocriticism, or gynocritics, refers to
the literary study of women as writers. It
is a critical practice exploring and
recording female creativity.
Gynocriticism
Elaine Showalter coined
the term gynocritics in
her 1979 essay “Towards
a Feminist Poetics.”
wanted to establish a
literary tradition of
women without
incorporating male
authors. Elaine
Showalter felt that
feminist criticism still
worked within male
assumptions.
Towards a Feminist Poetics
The Madwoman in the Victorian Attic
Feminist writers such as Sandra Gilbert have
commented on the main themes of ‘enclosure
and escape’ in Jane Eyre. The ‘escape’ concerns
the means through which Jane escapes from
patriarchal society in which she is silenced.
There were not many
forms of escape for
the Victorian woman
and Bertha ‘escapes’
through her
madness.
The popular Victorian image
of the ideal wife/woman
came to be known as ‘the
Angel in the House’ and had
the qualities of the wife
Patmore had praised in his
poem in 1854. She was
expected to be:
• Devoted and submissive to
her husband
•Meek, charming, graceful,
self-sacrificing, pious and
pure
Bertha as Jane’s ‘dark double’
‘This is the connection between Bertha and Jane, in
which Bertha reflects Jane’s self and ‘truest and darkest
double’, the ferocious secret self which Jane has been
trying to repress since childhood.’
Gilbert and Gubar,
The Madwoman in
the Attic: The
Woman Writer and
the 19th Century
Literary
Imagination p360
Claire Rosenfeld
Argues that a
novelist who uses
psychological
doubles frequently
juxtaposes ‘two
characters, the one
representing the
socially acceptable
or conventional
personality, the
other externalising
the free, uninhibited
self.’
Bertha does not only act
out Jane’s fantasies, she is
also an example of how
Jane should not act.
Byronic Hero

This term is created by
the famous poet George
Gordon, Lord Byron.

Characteristics are…
 Proud
 Gloomy
 Mysterious
 Passionate
Rochester is an example of
this type
Influence of Byron on Jane Eyre’s hero
Byron first introduced this type of character in his epic poem Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage, published from 1812 – 1818, and continued to
depict such individuals throughout his later work. We know that
Bronte was much influenced by Byron’s poetry; indeed, Jane Eyre,
published in 1847, even makes reference to one of his works, The
Corsair.
Many readers of Jane Eyre over the years have been fascinated by
Rochester, as he is not the type of love interest normally found in a
romantic novel. He is rude, difficult, and far from handsome.
However, Jane Eyre is no ordinary romance, and it seems in keeping
with the novel’s gothic atmosphere that its hero should be decidedly
Byronic.
Qualities of the Byronic Hero

So what exactly makes a hero
Byronic? First of all, he is
prone to moodiness. Rochester
is often snappy or terse with
Jane, but is also capable of
shows of great affection and
physical tenderness: “He
kissed me repeatedly” (chapter
23).

Both the passionate side
to the Byronic hero’s
nature and his
promiscuity is hinted at.
This certainly seems true
of Rochester: young
Adele is “the daughter of
a French opera-dancer,
Céline Varens, towards
whom he had once
cherished what he called
a ‘grande passion’”
(chapter 15).
A Dark Secret?
As well as these indiscretions, Rochester’s past also hides
a much darker secret: the existence of a mad wife he
married purely for her looks in her youth. (Wide
Sargasso Sea explores this more).
Renaissance man
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The Byronic hero is
usually widely travelled,
and has often got into
trouble whilst on one of
these journeys: again,
this reflects Rochester’s
experience in Jamaica.
Much as we may criticise
Rochester for keeping
such a secret, he does
undeniably fall in love
with Jane, demonstrating
another Byronic trait:
complete disregard for
social rank. Rochester
cares nothing of what
people will think when he
marries a former
governess: “‘You—poor
and obscure, and small
and plain as you are—I
entreat to accept me as a
husband’” (chapter 23).
Physical Appearance

Rochester is certainly not
possessed of traditional good
looks: “with his broad and jetty
eyebrows; his square
forehead, made squarer by the
horizontal sweep of his black
hair..’ Chapter 13.

Yet he has an immense
charisma: people are
drawn to him. For many
readers the most
memorable scenes of the
novel are those where
Rochester seems most
comfortable: talking alone
with Jane by the fireside.
Whilst some may prefer
the more civilised charms
of Mr Darcy, for many Mr
Rochester remains the
ultimate hero, perhaps
because of his difficult
nature rather than
despite it?