An Introduction toCharlotte Brontë's Jane

EyreBy

Stephanie Forward

Cover illustration courtesy of Stephen Collins

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‘It is a book to make the pulses gallop and theheart beat, and to fill the eyes with tears.’

(From a review in the Atlas, 1847).

The life of CharlotteBrontë (1816-1855)Charlotte Brontë was the third child of six born tothe Reverend Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria,and from 1820 she grew up in Haworth, Yorkshire.After her mother died from cancer in 1821, AuntElizabeth Branwell came to look after the familyand stayed for the rest of her life. Four of thechildren, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily,became pupils at the Clergy Daughters’ School,Cowan Bridge, Lancashire in 1824. Here theunhealthy conditions made Maria and Elizabeth ill,leading to their deaths from tuberculosis in 1825.Later Charlotte used the institution as a model forLowood School in Jane Eyre, and Maria inspired thestoical character Helen Burns.

Reverend Brontë decided to keep the children withhim at the parsonage. He encouraged their keen

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interest in reading: they even produced their ownextraordinarily tiny books, which they filled withminuscule writing and illustrations. Branwell, theonly son, once received a set of toy soldiers, whichinspired the youngsters to invent an imaginaryworld. Their fantasies about the kingdom of Angriacontinued into their adult years.

Plans had to be made for future employment, butthe children’s options were limited. At that timetutoring seemed the obvious solution. Charlotteattended Roe Head School in Mirfield in 1831, atthe age of fifteen, to acquire the necessaryknowledge and skills for her career. Subsequentlyshe left to educate her sisters at home, beforereturning to the school in 1835 as a teacher.

When Charlotte was twenty she sent a selectionof her poems to the Poet Laureate, RobertSouthey. His response was not encouraging:

The day dreams in which you habitually indulgeare likely to induce a distempered state ofmind…Literature cannot be the business of awoman’s life, and it ought not to be. The moreshe is engaged in her proper duties, the lessleisure will she have for it, even as anaccomplishment and a recreation. To those

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duties you have not yet been called, and whenyou are you will be less eager for celebrity. Youwill not seek in imagination for excitement…

In 1839 Charlotte duly became a governess withthe Sidgewick family, leaving after only threemonths. That same year she rejected twomarriage proposals. Her next post was with theWhites, for six months in 1841. Money from theirAunt Branwell provided funds for Charlotte andEmily to study at a Pensionnat in Brussels.Although the girls came home when she died,Charlotte decided to go back to Belgium, whereshe was besotted with the married headmaster,Constantin Heger. Her unrequited passion for himpermeates the pages of her novels Villette (1853)and The Professor (which was publishedposthumously in 1857).

In 1844 Charlotte returned to Haworth, and thesisters attempted – unsuccessfully - to found theirown little school. They hoped to publish theirpoems, producing a selection in 1846, under thepseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.Unfortunately only two of the copies were sold!Also at this time Charlotte’s novel The Professorwas rejected. However the year 1847 proved tobe a remarkable one for the three young women,

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with the publication of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre,Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s Agnes Grey.Their real identities were revealed in 1848. In thecourse of that year Charlotte was devastated bythe deaths, from tuberculosis, of both Branwell (inSeptember) and Emily (in December); then Annepassed away in May 1849.

Shirley was issued. Charlotte was now beginningto move in literary circles, and would soon bemixing with celebrated authors including W.M.Thackeray and Mrs Gaskell; but – understandably -it was difficult for her to enjoy her fame. Her griefwas clear when she reflected: ‘A year ago - had aprophet warned me how I should stand in June1849 - how stripped and bereaved - had heforetold the autumn - the winter, the spring ofsickness and suffering to be gone through - Ishould have thought - this can never be endured.’Thackeray recalled their first meeting: ‘I rememberthe trembling little frame, the little hand, the greathonest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to meto characterise the woman.’

Charlotte married her father’s curate, theReverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, in 1854; sadly, herhappiness was brief. She died on 31 March 1855,in the early stages of pregnancy.

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The storyYoung Jane Eyre is an unwanted, neglectedorphan. She is sent away to Lowood School, asupposedly charitable establishment, run by harshMr Brocklehurst. Her choices in life are narrow, andshe eventually becomes a teacher there. Her nextposition is at Thornfield Hall where she is to carefor Adèle, the ward of the enigmatic EdwardRochester.

Jane is deeply attracted to her master, and actuallysaves his life. Assuming that he will marry BlancheIngram, she is astonished when her employerproposes to her. On the day of their wedding shelearns that he is already married: in fact his wife,an insane woman called Bertha, is housed in theattic. Even though Jane genuinely loves Rochester,she is not willing to live as his mistress.

Impoverished and desperate, she is befriended bythree siblings named Rivers. In one of thosecoincidences that are so common in Victorianfiction, it transpires that they are Jane’s cousins!Furthermore, she gains financial security from an

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unexpected inheritance. St John Rivers is eager tomarry her, hoping that she will accompany him toIndia: he believes he has a ‘calling’ to be amissionary there.

Suddenly Jane senses that Rochester is crying outto her. She rushes to his aid, only to discover thatBertha has burned down the house and has dieddespite her husband’s attempt to rescue her.Rochester has been blinded and maimed in theconflagration. Jane is now prepared to marry him,because she feels that there will be true equalityin their relationship. It is thought that Rochesterwas modelled on Constantin Heger. Brontë hadbecome infatuated with him when she was inBelgium, to no avail; but writing Jane Eyre enabledher to envisage a different ‘outcome’: ‘Reader, Imarried him.’

Narrative style andgenreOriginally the novel bore a subtitle, AnAutobiography, which was removed in latereditions. Brontë’s use of an androgynous nom de

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plume was not unusual. Contemporary femaleauthors often chose ambiguous, gender-neutralpseudonyms: male writers tended to beprioritized; they were paid more than women, andwere less likely to suffer from prejudice andcensorship.

Brontë employs first-person narration, althoughthe ‘voice’ is not consistent throughout. Sometimeswe ‘hear’ young Jane; at other points a moremature woman seems to be addressing us; thereis also an extremely wise, more rounded speaker.Furthermore, Jane is not the sole narrator: MrRochester and St John Rivers contribute to thetext. Indeed it is St John who is given the lastword.

Jane Eyre can be categorized as a Bildungsroman –a novel of education and development – butBrontë, in keeping with many nineteenth-centurywriters, blended genres. We accompany theheroine on her troubled journey through life. Eachstage is marked by a named location that isredolent with symbolism: Gateshead, Lowood,Thornfield, Marsh End and Ferndean. Theselandscapes are both literal and metaphorical.

There is a foundation of realism in Jane Eyre. Jane’s

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poverty and suffering grip the reader because theaccount is believable and distressing. In someregards, the text ‘fits’ with the domestic fiction thatwas popular in Brontë’s day. Critics have exploredJane Eyre as a ‘governess novel’. Tutoring was oneof the few available options for impoverishedmiddle-class spinsters, who could find themselvesplaced in an anomalous position: not part of thefamily; yet not at ease with the servants either.The author engages with social issues, in keepingwith the ‘condition of England’ theme addressed inother well-known novels of the period: forexample, by Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Kingsley,Mrs Gaskell and Charles Dickens. There weredeep-seated fears of social unrest. The Chartistswere seen as dangerous revolutionaries, and1848 was to be the Year of Revolutions in Europe.

Brontë also experiments with romantic modes: theRomantic movement had set a trend for certainliterary stereotypes. Byron’s Childe Harold (1812-1818) introduced the figure of a melancholy, dark,brooding, rebellious ‘Byronic hero’; an image thatlingered. Such protagonists were regarded by menas ‘cool’ and by women as alluring. The poet’suntimely death had fuelled the appeal, inspiring anumber of complex and intriguing fictional heroes.

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There is something of the Byronic hero aboutRochester. Another generic strand of the book isthe Gothic. Incarcerated in the red-room, Jane’splight echoes that of an imprisoned Gothic heroine.

The passages about Bertha enhance our sense ofthe uncanny – the disturbance of the familiar. Intheir seminal work The Madwoman in the Attic,Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar interpretBertha as ‘Jane’s truest and darkest double’. Shecan be seen as ‘the angry aspect of the orphanchild, the ferocious secret self Jane has been tryingto repress ever since her days at Gateshead’. Thetext is endlessly fascinating because it lends itselfto so many different readings, in terms of gender,class and race issues. The portrayal of Bertha canbe problematic for modern readers: she isdescribed as a Creole, and is depicted asderanged, violent and lascivious. Yet it is importantnot to impose twenty-first century values on awriter from a different era.

Publication andresponse

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Brontë wrote Jane Eyre while nursing her father,during his recuperation after a cataract procedure.On its publication, by Smith, Elder and Co., itreceived extreme reactions. John Gibson Lockhart,an author and the editor of the Quarterly Review,enthused: ‘I have finished the adventures of MissJane Eyre…Worth fifty Trollopes and Martineausrolled into one counterpane, with fifty Dickensesand Bulwers to keep them company; but rather abrazen Miss.’

There was a good deal of speculation about theidentity of the author. When it became known thata woman was responsible, there were qualms.Throbbing passionate moments met with invectivefrom critics. The Rambler judged the novel to be‘one of the coarsest books we ever perused’.Those who heartily disapproved of the bookdenounced it as ‘dangerous’, with its ‘outrages ondecorum’, its ‘furious love-making’ and its‘grossness’. Although Jane is constrained by hercircumstances, we see flashes of her rebelliousnature; hence, in the Quarterly Review ElizabethRigby viewed the heroine as ‘the personification ofthe unregenerate and undisciplined spirit’.

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The lasting appeal of JaneEyreJane is not a flawless heroine: perhaps this helpsto explain why readers have warmed to her downthrough the decades. Physically, she is veryordinary: indeed Brontë specifically rejected theconvention of having a good-looking protagonist.Mrs Gaskell noted:

She once told her sisters that they were wrong– even morally wrong – in making theirheroines beautiful as a matter of course. Theyreplied that it was impossible to make aheroine interesting on any other terms. Heranswer was, ‘I will prove to you that you arewrong; I will show you a heroine as plain andas small as myself, who shall be as interestingas any of yours.’

In terms of her personality, Jane has to learn tocontrol her imagination and her outbursts. Sheveers between submission and transgression:sometimes she is restrained, demure and passive;on other occasions, we witness her anger. Janecan be seen as a subversive heroine: for example,

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there are nuances of The Pilgrim’s Progress, yetBrontë seems to invert John Bunyan’s famousallegory.

Forced to make her own way in life, Jane faces herordeals with courage, retaining her dignity andintegrity. Above all she asserts her right to thinkfor herself, insisting to Rochester that they areequals:

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 toyou now through the medium of custom,conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; - itis my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as ifboth had passed through the grave, and westood at God’s feet, equal, - as we are!(chapter 23)

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