jane eyre

THE Dublin-based literary magazine the Stinging Fly was founded in 1997 as a venue for new writers from Ireland and around the world. The winter issue, just out, boasts seven pieces of fiction set in such far-flung locales as Los Angeles and Donegal (who says relative location isn't everything?), as well as works by 16 poets and a quartet of book reviews.

Also in the issue is a piece by London literary agent Lucy Luck that details the pleasure she found in reading as a child. Her sense of joy quickly dissipated when she entered secondary school and was subjected to the "reading of 'proper books.' This was very different from the stories I'd been loving -- these were books read for instruction, so that essays could be written. It was all a bit like hard work."

Luckily, "Jane Eyre" got under her skin, and her enthusiasm was rekindled. "Now the written word defines much of my day," she continues, confessing: "Though there is nothing to compare to the thrill of being the first to appreciate a new literary talent, it can be exhausting to only read unpublished books when there are still so many published ones I've not managed to start."

--

Still running after all these years

IN 1978, John L. Parker Jr. found a solid niche audience for his debut novel, "Once a Runner." Who was the audience? Runners. Many of today's marathon stars consider the book a classic, citing it as essential to their own development. Success, however, didn't come easy to the novelist, as Benjamin Cheever relates in the current issue of Runner's World magazine. Parker self-published the book (he even had to set the type himself) and relentlessly peddled it everywhere, including shoe stores and races.

The occasion for Cheever's piece is the arrival this week of "Once a Runner" 's long-awaited sequel, "Again to Carthage." Cheever explores the intimidation factor involved in writing the follow-up to what is now a cult classic and candidly asks Parker why it took so long.

Although Parker admits that his first novel's success hung over him like a "sword of Damocles the whole time," he also says the long delay was simply the result of his temperament and age. "[T]he extra time and gnashing of teeth seems appropriate to me now. The first book is all about youth and hormones, winning and losing. . . . This book is a lot more poignant."

Cheever seeds his piece with interesting comments about the writing life, including glimpses of his father, a master of the short story, and insights into what writing and running have in common. Both are endurance tests, Cheever writes as he considers Parker's career, and "like the best runners, the best novelists are a little bit insane. However self-effacing, a champion has got to believe in himself."

--

David Grossman explores grief

THE new issue of the Paris Review features an extended "Art of Fiction" interview with Israeli novelist David Grossman.

Talking with Jonathan Shainin, Grossman recalls his initiation into fiction; he also discusses his work as a news anchor for Kol Israel, the state radio station, as well as the three vivid works of journalism -- "The Yellow Wind," "Sleeping on a Wire" and "Death as a Way of Life" -- in which he explored the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the chagrin of many on the Israeli side. Yet the most affecting material here has to do with Grossman's youngest, son, Uri, who was killed in August 2006 during the Israeli offensive in Lebanon. Grossman apologizes for not wanting to talk about this ("I need him to be private," he says. "I'm sorry."), then goes on to excavate the territory of his grief:

"It's a painful life now. It's like hell in slow motion, all the time. I don't try to escape grief. I face grief in an intense way in my writing, but not only in my writing. If I have to suffer, I want to understand my situation thoroughly. It's not an easy place to be, but so be it. If I'm doomed to it, I want -- it's a human predicament, and I want to experience it. . . .

"I'm always questioning what I observe. All the time I see the cracks, wherever I look -- even before what happened to me. It's a way of seeing, and I cannot say I chose it, but I surrendered to it quite happily because I think it's an accurate view of the fragility of life. Anything that is calm and safe seems to me like an illusionThe publishers have released a new edition of Charlotte Bronte's classic novel with the actress Ruth Wilson, in the title role tonight, on the cover.

It would be interesting to know how many viewers go on to buy the book.

The eldest of three Bronte sisters, Charlotte has on occasion been unfavourably compared to her sister, Emily, author of Wuthering Heights; her Jane Eyre, according to one critic, "a romanticised self-portrait".

Yet 160 years after its publication, this story of a Yorkshire orphan who becomes a governess and finds love with a troubled lord has proven one of the most enduring English novels.

Wilson, in her first major role, is a fresh and engaging not-so-plain Jane. Toby Stephens is more mannered and self-conscious as Edward Rochester.

This Jane Eyre might polarise some viewers. Some will marvel at the evocative setting. But others might wonder if the two-hour episode in this two-part series is not too long and the narrative too slowly paced.

Jane Eyre (series premiere
Jane Eyre
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This article is about the Victorian novel. For other uses, see Jane Eyre (disambiguation).
Jane Eyre
Title page of the first edition of Jane Eyre
Author Charlotte Brontë
Country England
Language English
Genre(s) Romance novel, Gothic Novel
Publisher Smith Elder and Co, Cornhill
Publication date 16 October 1847
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Jane Eyre is a classic romance novel by Charlotte Brontë that was published in 1848 by Smith, Elder & Company, London. It is Brontë's masterpiece and one of the most famous of British novels. Charlotte Brontë first published the book as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography under the pseudonym Currer Bell. The novel was an immediate critical and popular success. Especially effusive in his praises was William Makepeace Thackeray, to whom Charlotte Brontë dedicated the novel's second edition, which was illustrated by F. H. Townsend.

Contents
1 Plot introduction
2 Plot summary
3 Character list
4 Themes
5 Context
6 Literary motifs and allusions
7 Adaptations
7.1 Silent film versions
7.2 Sound film versions
7.3 Musical versions
7.4 Television versions
7.5 Literature
8 References
9 External links
9.1 The novel online



[edit] Plot introduction
Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the formative years of the title character, a small, plain-faced, intelligent, and passionate English orphan girl. The plot follows the form of a Bildungsroman, a novel that tells the story of a child's maturation and focuses on the emotions and experiences that lead to his or her maturity. The novel goes through five distinct stages: (1) Jane's childhood at Gateshead, where she is abused by her aunt and cousins; (2) her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations; (3) her time as governess at Thornfield Manor, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; (4) her time with the Rivers family at Marsh's End (or Moor House) and at Morton, where her cold clergyman-cousin St. John Rivers proposes to her; and (5) her reunion with and marriage to her beloved Rochester at his house of Ferndean. Partly autobiographical, the novel abounds with social criticism and sinister Gothic elements. Jane Eyre is divided into 38 chapters, and most editions are at least 400 pages long (although the pretext and introduction on some copies can take up another 100)


[edit] Plot summary
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.

– Excerpt from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, beginning of chapter 1

The novel begins in Gateshead Hall, where a ten-year-old orphan named Jane Eyre is living with her mother's brother's family. The brother, surnamed Reed, died shortly after adopting Jane. His wife, Mrs. Sarah Reed, and their three children -- John, Eliza, and Georgiana -- neglect and abuse Jane, for they resent Mr. Reed's preference for the little orphan in their midst. In addition, they dislike Jane's plain looks and quiet yet passionate character. Thus, the novel begins with young John Reed bullying Jane, who retaliates with unwonted violence. Jane is blamed for the ensuing fight, and Mrs. Reed has two of the servants drag her off and lock her up in the red-room, the unused chamber where Mr. Reed had died. Still locked in that night, Jane sees a light and panics, thinking that her uncle's ghost has come. Her scream rouses the house, but Mrs Reed just locks up Jane for longer. Then Jane has a fit and passes out. A doctor comes and suggests that Jane should go to school.

Mr Brocklehurst is a cold, cruel, self-righteous and a highly hypocritical clergyman who runs a charity school called Lowood. He accepts Jane as a pupil in his school. Jane is infuriated, however, when Mrs. Reed tells him that Jane is a liar. After Brocklehurst departs, Jane bluntly tells Mrs Reed how she hates and condemns the Reed family. Mrs Reed, so shocked that she is incapable of responding, leaves the drawing room in haste.

Jane finds life at Lowood to be grim. Miss Maria Temple, the youthful superintendent, is just and kind, but another teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is sour and abusive. At one point, Mr. Brocklehurst goes so far as to accuse Jane of being demon-possessed after she accidentally breaks a slate, although she is later cleared of this charge (by Miss Temple), and Mr. Brocklehurst is disliked even further by the students.

Brocklehurst embezzles the school's funds to support his family's luxurious lifestyle while hypocritically preaching to others a doctrine of privation and poverty. As a result, Lowood's eighty pupils must make do with cold rooms, poor meals, and thin garments whilst his family lives in comfort. Many are sickly from a typhus epidemic which strikes the school, and Brocklehurst's neglect and dishonesty are laid bare. Mr. Brocklehurst is disgraced and stripped of power, and conditions improve dramatically at Lowood under the new regime.

Jane is impressed when one pupil, Helen Burns, accepts Miss Scatcherd's cruelty and the school's deficiencies with passive dignity, practising the Christian teaching of turning the other cheek. Jane admires and loves the gentle Helen, but cannot bring herself to emulate her friend's behaviour. While the typhus epidemic is raging, Helen dies of consumption in Jane's arms.

The narrative resumes eight years later. Jane has been a teacher at Lowood for two years, but she thirsts for a better and brighter future. She advertises for a governess and is hired by Mrs. Alice Fairfax, housekeeper of the Gothic manor of Thornfield, to teach a lively, rather spoiled French girl named Adèle Varens. A few months after her arrival at Thornfield, Jane goes for a walk and aids a horseman who takes a fall. On her return to Thornfield, Jane discovers that the horseman is her employer, Mr. Edward Rochester, a moody, charismatic gentleman nearly twenty years older than Jane. Adèle is his ward.

Rochester seems quite taken with Jane. He repeatedly summons her to his presence and talks with her. Adèle, he says, is the illegitimate daughter of a French opera singer, Celine, who was his mistress for a time, though he doubts Adèle is his daughter. That same night, Jane hears eerie laughter coming from the hallway, and upon opening the door she sees smoke coming from Rochester's chamber. Rushing into his room, she finds his bed curtains ablaze and douses them with water, saving Rochester's life. Rochester says a matronly servant named Grace Poole is responsible, yet does not fire her, and Grace Poole shows no signs of remorse or guilt. Jane is amazed and perplexed. But by this time, Rochester and Jane are in love with each other, though they do not show it.

Soon after the fire incident, Mr. Rochester departs Thornfield, reportedly to the Continent. He returns unexpectedly with a party of high-class ladies and gentlemen, including Miss Blanche Ingram, a beautiful but shallow socialite whom he seems to be courting. The party is interrupted when a strange old gypsy woman arrives and insists on telling everyone's fortunes. When Jane's turn comes, the gypsy tells her a great deal about her life and feelings, much to Jane's surprise. Then the gypsy reveals "herself" to be Rochester in disguise.

That night, after a piercing scream wakes everyone in the house, Mr. Rochester comes to Jane for help in attending to a wounded guest, a certain Mr. Richard Mason, a queer Englishman from the West Indies. Mr. Mason has been stabbed and bitten in the arm, and a surgeon comes and secretly whisks the wounded man away. Again, Rochester hints that Grace Poole is responsible.

Jane receives word that Mrs. Reed, upon hearing of her son John's apparent suicide after leading a life of dissipation and debt, has suffered a near-fatal stroke and is asking for her. So Jane returns to Gateshead, where she encounters her cousins Eliza and Georgiana Reed. Eliza has become a self-righteous puritan, while the plump and pretty Georgiana has become vapid, always moaning about her love affairs. Although she rejects Jane's efforts at reconciliation, Mrs. Reed gives Jane a letter that she had previously withheld out of spite. The letter is from Jane's father's brother, John Eyre, notifying her of his intent to leave her his fortune upon his death. Mrs. Reed dies in the night, and no one mourns her. Eliza enters a convent in France, and Georgiana travels to London.

After Jane returns to Thornfield, she and Rochester gradually reveal their love for each other. Though Jane accepts Rochester's proposal of marriage, she is plagued by doubts about it. She feels she is Rochester's inferior and continues to address him as "master" even after they are engaged. Her forebodings deepen when a strange, savage-looking woman sneaks into her room one night and rips her wedding veil in two. Yet again, Rochester attributes the incident to Grace Poole.

The wedding goes ahead nevertheless. But during the ceremony in the church, the mysterious Mr. Mason and a lawyer step forth and declare that Rochester cannot marry Jane because his own wife is still alive. Rochester bitterly admits this fact, explaining that his wife is a violent madwoman whom he keeps imprisoned in the attic, where Grace Poole looks after her. But Grace Poole imbibes gin immoderately, occasionally giving the madwoman an opportunity to escape. It is Rochester's mad wife who is responsible for the strange events at Thornfield. Rochester nearly committed bigamy, and kept this fact from Jane. The wedding is cancelled.

Back at the manorhouse, Rochester explains further. Under pressure from his father to make an advantageous marriage, and lured by Bertha's vast inheritance and personal beauty, Rochester had as a young man married Bertha. When Bertha became openly insane, Rochester locked her up in Thornfield and departed for a life of sensuality in Europe.

Rochester then asks Jane to accompany him to the south of France, where they will live as husband and wife, even though they cannot be married. But Jane refuses to give up her self-respect by becoming a rich man's mistress, even though she loves him still.

But she does not trust herself to refuse a second time. In the dead of night, Jane slips out of Thornfield and takes a coach far away to the north of England. When her money gives out, she sleeps outdoors on the moor and reluctantly begs for food. One night, freezing and starving, she comes to Moor House (or Marsh End) and begs for help. St. John Rivers, the young clergyman who lives in the house, admits her.

Jane, who gives the false surname of Elliott, quickly recovers under the care of St. John and his two kind sisters, Diana and Mary. St. John arranges for Jane to teach a charity school for girls in the village of Morton. At the school, Jane observes the interactions of St. John, a cold and stern man but a truly devout Christian, and Rosamond Oliver, a beautiful but silly young heiress. Jane comes to believe that the two are in love, and boldly says so to St. John. St. John confesses his love but says that Rosamond would make a most unsuitable wife for a missionary, which he intends to become.

One snowy night, St. John unexpectedly arrives at Jane's cottage. Suspecting Jane's true identity, he relates Jane's experiences at Thornfield and says that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left Jane his fortune of 20,000 pounds. After confessing her true identity, Jane arranges to share her inheritance with the Riverses, who turn out to be her cousins.

Not long afterwards, St. John decides to travel to India and devote his life to missionary work. He asks Jane to accompany him as his wife. Jane consents to go to India but adamantly refuses to marry him because they are not in love. St. John is not cruel or hypocritical like Mr. Brocklehurst, but he does not respect other people's feelings when they conflict with his own. He continues to pressure Jane to marry him, and his forceful personality almost causes her to capitulate. But at that moment she hears what she thinks is Rochester's voice calling her name, and this gives her the strength to reject St. John completely.

The next day, Jane takes a coach to Thornfield. But only blackened ruins lie where the manorhouse once stood. An innkeeper tells Jane that Rochester's mad wife set the fire and then committed suicide by jumping from the roof. Rochester rescued the servants from the burning mansion but lost a hand and his eyesight in the process. He now lives in an isolated manor house called Ferndean. Going to Ferndean, Jane reunites with Rochester. At first, he fears that she will refuse to marry a blind cripple, but Jane accepts him without hesitation.

Speaking from the vantage point of ten years, Jane describes their married life as blissful.

"I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest—blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character—perfect concord is the result." (Chapter XXXVIII)

Meanwhile, St. John has gone to India as a missionary and dies there.

Rochester eventually recovers sight in one eye, and can see their first-born son when the baby is born.


[edit] Character list
Jane Eyre: The protagonist and title character, a plain-featured and reserved but talented, empathetic, hard-working, honest (not to say blunt), and passionate girl. Skilled at studying, drawing, and teaching, she works as a governess at Thornfield Manor and falls in love with her wealthy employer, Edward Rochester. But her strong sense of conscience does not permit her to become his mistress, and she does not return to him until his insane wife is dead and she herself has come into an inheritance. Then their marriage is blissful because it is between equals.

Edward Rochester: The owner of Thornfield Manor, and Jane's lover and eventual husband. He possesses a strong physique and great wealth, but his face is ugly and his moods mutable. Impetuous and sensual, he falls in love with Jane because her simplicity, bluntness, and plainness contrast so much with those of the shallow society women he is accustomed to. But his unfortunate marriage to the maniacal Bertha Mason postpones his union with Jane, and he loses a hand and his eyesight while trying to rescue his mad wife after she sets a fire that burns down Thornfield. He is what is referred to as a Byronic hero.

St. John Eyre Rivers: A clergyman who is Jane Eyre's cousin on her father's side. He is a devout, almost fanatical Christian of Calvinistic leanings. He is charitable, honest, patient, forgiving, scrupulous, austere, and deeply moral; with these qualities alone, he would have made a saint. However, he is also proud, cold, exacting, controlling, unwilling to listen to dissenting opinions, and lacking the milk of human kindness. Jane venerates him and likes him, regarding him as a brother, but she refuses to marry him because he doesn't love her and is incapable of being in love.

Bertha Mason: The violently insane secret wife of Edward Rochester. From the West Indies and of Creole extraction, her family possesses a strong strain of madness, which Rochester did not know until after he, lured by her wealth and beauty, had married her. Her insanity manifested itself in a few years, and Rochester resorted to imprisoning her in the attic of Thornfield Manor. But she escapes four times during the novel, and on each occasion wreaks havoc in the house, the fourth time actually burning it down and taking her own life in the process.

Helen Burns: An angelic fellow-student and best friend of Jane's at Lowood School. Several years older than the ten-year-old Jane, she stoically accepts all the cruelties of the teachers and the deficiencies of the school's room and board. She refuses to hate the tyrannical Mr. Brocklehurst or the vicious Miss Scatcherd, or to complain, believing in the New Testament teaching that one should love one's enemies and turn the other cheek. Jane reveres her for her profound Christianity, even though she herself believes that resisting evil is necessary to prevent evil from taking over. Helen, uncomplaining as ever, dies of consumption in Jane's arms.

Mrs. Sarah Reed: Jane's aunt, who resides at Gateshead. Although she raises Jane as per her late husband's request, Jane receives nothing but neglect and abuse at her hands. At the age of ten, Jane is sent away to school. Years later, Jane attempts to reconcile with her aunt, but Mrs. Reed spurns her, still resenting that her husband loved Jane more than his own children.

Mr. Brocklehurst: The arrogant, hypocritical clergyman who serves as headmaster and treasurer of Lowood School. He embezzles the school's funds in order to pay for his family's opulent lifestyle. At the same time, he preaches a doctrine of Christian austerity and self-sacrifice to everyone in hearing. When his dishonesty is brought to light, he is publicly disgraced and stripped of power.

Adèle Varens: A naive, vivacious, rather spoiled French child whom Jane is governess to at Thornfield. She is Rochester's ward because her mother, Celine Varens, an opportunistic French opera dancer and singer, was Rochester's mistress. However, Rochester does not believe himself to be Adèle's father. Although not particularly fond of her, he nonetheless extends the little girl the best of care. In time, she grows up to be a very pleasant and well-mannered young woman.

Mrs. Alice Fairfax: An elderly widow and housekeeper of Thornfield Manor. She treats Jane kindly and respectfully, but she disapproves of Jane's engagement to Mr. Rochester. She believes that marriages should be limited to within one's own class.

Miss Maria Temple: The kind, attractive young superintendent of Lowood School. She recognizes Mr. Brocklehurst for the cruel hypocrite he is, and treats Jane and Helen with respect and compassion. She helps clear Jane of Mrs. Reed's false accusation of deceit.

Richard Mason: A strangely blank-eyed but handsome Englishman from the West Indies, he stops Jane and Rochester's wedding with the proclamation that Rochester is still married -- to Bertha Mason, his sister.

Diana and Mary Rivers: St. John's sisters and Jane's cousins, they are kind and intellectual young women who contrive to lead an independent life while retaining their intelligence, purity, and sense of meaning in life. Diana warns Jane against marrying her icy brother.

Grace Poole: Bertha Mason's keeper, a dowdy woman verging on middle age. She drinks gin immoderately, occasionally giving her maniacal charge a chance to escape. Rochester and Mrs. Fairfax attribute all of Bertha's misdeeds to Grace Poole.

Rosamond Oliver: The beautiful but rather shallow and coquettish daughter of Morton's richest man. She donates the funds to launch the village school because she is in love with St. John. In time, however, she becomes engaged to the wealthy Mr. Granby.

Georgiana Reed: One of Mrs. Reed's daughters and Jane's cousin. Plump, pretty, and vapid, she seems to spend most of her time either having love affairs or talking about them. After Mrs. Reed's death, she marries a wealthy but worn-out society man.

Eliza Reed: Mrs. Reed's other daughter and Jane's cousin. Bitter because she is not as attractive as her sister, she devotes herself self-righteously to the Catholicism. After her mother's death, she enters a French convent, where she eventually becomes the Mother Superior.

Blanche Ingram: A beautiful but shallow socialite whom Rochester courts in order to make Jane jealous. She despises the rather dowdy Jane and hopes to marry Rochester for his money.

Bessie Lee: The maid at Gateshead. She is the only person in the house to treat Jane kindly, telling her stories and singing her songs. Later she marries Robert Leaven, the coachman, who brings Jane the news of Mrs. Reed's stroke.

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.

Miss Scatcherd: A sour and vicious teacher at Lowood. She behaves with particular cruelty toward Helen.

Uncle Reed: Mrs. Reed's late husband, he made his wife promise to raise the orphaned baby Jane as her own child.

John Eyre: Jane's uncle, who leaves her his vast fortune of 20,000 pounds. He never appears as a character. Has distant relations with St. John. Leaves him and his sisters 31 pounds as a result. Jane divides her 20,000 pounds amongst the four of them ( St. John, Mary, Diane and herself) leaving each of them with 5,000 pounds


[edit] Themes
Morality: Jane refuses to become Rochester's paramour because of her "impassioned self-respect and moral conviction." She rejects St. John Rivers's puritanism as much as Rochester's libertinism. Instead, she works out a morality expressed in love, independence, and forgiveness.[1] Specifically, she forgives her cruel aunt and loves her husband, but never surrenders her independence to him, even after they are married. For he is blind, more dependent on her than she on him.

Religion: Throughout the novel, Jane endeavours to attain an equilibrium between moral duty and earthly happiness. She despises the hypocritical puritanism of Mr. Brocklehurst and rejects St. John Rivers's cold devotion to his perceived Christian duty, but neither can she bring herself to emulate Helen Burns's turning the other cheek, although she admires Helen for it. Ultimately, she rejects these three extremes and finds a middle ground in which religion serves to curb her immoderate passions but does not repress her true self.

Social Class: Jane's ambiguous social position — a penniless yet learned orphan from a good family — leads her to criticize discrimination based on class. Although she is educated, well-mannered, and relatively sophisticated, she is still a governess, a paid servant of low social standing, and therefore powerless. This is why she hesitates to marry Rochester; it is not a marriage of equals but of master and servant. Nevertheless, Charlotte Brontë possesses certain class prejudices herself, as is made clear when Jane has to remind herself that her unsophisticated village pupils at Morton "are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy."

Gender Relations: A particularly important theme in the novel is patriarchalism and Jane's efforts to assert her own identity within a male-dominated society. The three main male characters, Brocklehurst, Rochester, and St. John, try to keep Jane in a subordinate position and prevent her from expressing her own thoughts and feelings. Jane escapes Brocklehurst and rejects St. John, and she only marries Rochester once she is sure that theirs is a marriage between equals. Through Jane, Brontë refutes Victorian stereotypes about women, articulating what was for her time a radical 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)


[edit] Context
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 consumption recalls the deaths of Charlotte Brontë's sisters Maria and Elizabeth, who died of tuberculosis in childhood as a result of the conditions at their school, the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge, near Tunstall in Lancashire. Mr. Brocklehurst is based on Rev. William Carus Wilson (1791-1859), the Evangelical minister who ran the school, and Helen Burns is likely modelled on Charlotte's sister Maria. 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 Charlotte, Jane becomes a governess. These facts were revealed to the public in The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) by Charlotte's friend and fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.[2]

The Gothic manor of Thornfield was probably inspired by North Lees Hall, near Hathersage in the Peak District. This was visited by Charlotte Brontë and her friend Ellen Nussey in the summer of 1845 and described by Ellen Nussey 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.[2]


[edit] Literary motifs and allusions
Jane Eyre uses many motifs from Gothic fiction, such as the Gothic manor (Thornfield), the Byronic hero (Rochester) and The Madwoman in the Attic (Bertha), who Jane perceives as resembling "the foul German spectre - the vampire" (Chapter XXV) and who attacks her brother in a distinctly vampiric way: "She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart" (Chapter XX).

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.[2] The novel also deliberately avoids some conventions of Victorian fiction, e.g., not