Jane Eyre
:This article is about
Jane Eyre, the novel. For other versions, see
Jane Eyre (musical) or
Jane Eyre (opera)One of the most famous
novels of all time,
Jane Eyre, An Autobiography was written by
Charlotte Brontë and published in
1847 by
Smith, Elder & Company, London.
Charlotte Brontë first published
Jane Eyre under the
pseudonym Currer Bell, and it was an instant success, earning the praise of many reviewers, including
William Makepeace Thackeray, to whom Charlotte Brontë dedicated her second edition.
The story is that of a governess, Jane Eyre. Despite her plainness, she captures the heart of her enigmatic employer, Edward Rochester, but soon discovers he has a secret that could jeopardize any hope of happiness between them.
The narrator and main character, Jane Eyre, is a poor orphan with a joyless life as a child in the opening chapters. Her wealthy aunt, the widowed Mrs. Reed, has agreed to take care of Jane after her parents' deaths. However, she and her children are unkind to Jane, never failing to emphasize how she is below them. Jane's plain, intelligent, and passionate nature, combined with her occasional "visions" or vivid dreams, certainly does not help to secure her relatives' affections.
When tensions escalate, Jane is sent to Lowood, a boarding school run by the inhumane Mr. Brocklehurst. She is soon branded a liar, which hurts her even more than malnutrition and cold, but Miss Temple, the teacher Jane admires, later clears her of these charges. She also finds her only friend in
Helen Burns, who is very learned and intelligent, has a patient and philosophical mind, and believes firmly in God. Helen is often singled out for punishment by a teacher, Miss Scatcherd, who claims she is a bad child because she is disorganized, incompetent, and often late. Helen accepts these faults, and teaches Jane to do so in order to improve her fiery temper and character. While Jane responds to the injustices of the world with a barely contained burning temper, Helen accepts earthly sufferings, including her own premature death from
consumption (
TB), with calmness and a martyr-like attitude.
After a serious
typhoid fever epidemic occurring simultaneously with Helen's death, the conditions in Lowood improve as Jane slowly finds her place in the institution, eventually becoming a teacher. When Miss Temple marries and moves away, Jane decides to change careers. She is desperate to see the world beyond Lowood and puts out an advertisement in the local paper, soon securing a position as governess in Thornfield Hall.
At first, life is very quiet with Jane teaching a young French girl, Adélè, and spending time with the old housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax. But everything changes when the owner of the manor—brooding, Byronic, fiery Edward Rochester—arrives. Though on rough footing at first, he and Jane slowly become acquainted with and grow to respect each other. Mr. Rochester creates an elaborate set-up by seemingly courting a proud local beauty named Miss Blanche Ingram until Jane cannot bear it any longer. Mr. Rochester then admits that his courtship of Miss Ingram was a ruse to arouse Jane's jealousy and that it is she whom he truly loves. His feelings are returned, and they become engaged despite their differences in social status, age, and experience. Jane is young and innocent at nineteen years old, while Rochester is nearly forty—worldly, and thoroughly disillusioned with life and religion. Jane is determined to stay modest, plain, and virtuous, and Rochester is almost equally determined to offer her expensive presents and finery. The former has the moral high ground, though, and the weeks before the wedding are spent mostly as she wishes.
The wedding ceremony is interrupted by a lawyer, who declares that Mr. Rochester is already married. His mad wife Bertha Mason, a Creole from Jamaica whom he had to marry to secure an estate, resides in the attic of Thornfield Hall, and her presence explains all sorts of mysterious events that have taken place during Jane's stay in Thornfield. Mr. Rochester offers to take her abroad to live with him, but Jane is not willing to sacrifice her morals or self-respect for earthly pleasures, let alone accept the status of mistress, even though Rochester insists Jane will break his heart if she refuses him. Torn between her love for Rochester and her own integrity and religion, Jane flees Thornfield in the middle of the night, with very little money and nowhere to go.
She wanders for a few days and finally finds safe haven, under an alias, with a vicar, St. John Rivers, and his two sisters. They bond, and in due course Jane is given a position as village schoolteacher. Later, St. John learns Jane's true identity, and, by an incredible coincidence, it transpires that he and his sisters are actually her cousins. Additionally, Jane conveniently inherits a large sum of money from an uncle who lived abroad. The cousins are left without inheritance because of an old family feud, but she promptly splits the money so that all four of them are now financially secure. This gives St. John the means to pursue his true calling, to go to
India as a
missionary, but not without proposing marriage to Jane in order for her to accompany him. Though this is her opportunity to choose a husband of high morals, she knows St. John does not truly love her. Contrary to her protest, he insists they must be married if they are to go to India. Jane nearly succumbs to his proposal, but at the last minute, in another supernatural fashion, she hears Rochester's voice calling her in the wind, and feels the need to respond to it.
Jane immediately travels to Thornfield Hall, only to find it destroyed by a fire and abandoned. She learns that Mr. Rochester lost a hand, an eye, and the sight of the other eye as a result of trying to unsuccessfully save Bertha from the flames, of which she was the cause. Upon acquiring the knowledge of his location, at a country manor called Ferndean, she sets off for it. She and Mr. Rochester reconcile and marry, for he has adopted love and religion. She writes in the perspective of ten years after their marriage, during which she gave birth to a son and Mr. Rochester gained part of his sight back. Jane's long quest to find love and a sense of belonging is finally fulfilled. The book ends with a look at the noble missionary death of St. John Rivers far away in India, most likely representing the righteousness of the path Jane did not take.
The early sequences, in which the orphaned Jane is sent to Lowood, a harsh boarding school, and witnesses the death of a close friend, Helen Burns, are based on the author's own experiences: two of her sisters died in childhood as a result of the conditions at their school, the Clergy Daughters School at
Cowan Bridge. These chapters contain what is considered by many to be some of the most beautiful rhetoric in the English language.
Some speculate that Rochester's wife, Bertha, the daughter of a Jamaican planter, is emphatically characterised as being in an advanced stage of
syphilitic infection: e.g. "her vices sprang up fast and rank," "her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity," etc. This would possibly entail that Rochester was also syphilitic, a train of logical consequences which Brontë fails to follow to the conclusion . However, Rochester tells Jane that he was tricked into marrying Bertha by her family, who wanted to get rid of her because she was insane. If Bertha was indeed syphilitic, she may have contracted the disease before she met Rochester. It has also been pointed out that Rochester claims that insanity runs in Bertha's family.
However, others think that the "mad wife" is merely a plot contrivance, in place to force Jane to make a very difficult decision and to teach her a valuable lesson about herself ("I have no family or friends, who cares what happens to me? Who cares if I breach moral and ethics? — I care. I matter.") . Bertha Mason is more a powerful symbol than an actual medical case. Also, it is clearly stated that Bertha was not faithful in her marriage .
Wide Sargasso Sea
Perhaps the harshest critique of
Jane Eyre comes from a proposed "prequel"
Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), by
Jean Rhys, which places Bertha Mason at the centre of the story.
In this novel, Bertha, or Antoinette, is driven insane by Mr. Rochester's rejection of both her and her
Creole heritage.
Wide Sargasso Sea was also adapted as a play by Melbourne theatre collective Whistling in the Theatre.
The relationship between Rochester and Bertha also inspired
Daphne du Maurier's novel
Rebecca as well as the famous film adaptation,
Rebecca starring
Lawrence Olivier.
Another, more recent, use of
Jane Eyre has been in
The Eyre Affair by
Jasper Fforde. In 2002,
Sharon Shinn published a science fiction novel adapted from the plot of
Jane Eyre, Jenna Starborn.
The novel's plot also served as the basis for the (1943) horror movie
I Walked with a Zombie.
Jane Eyre has engendered numerous film and television adaptations [
1]:
Notable film versions
*
1996:
Jane Eyre, directed by
Franco Zeffirelli and starring
William Hurt as Rochester,
Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane,
supermodel Elle Macpherson as Blanche Ingram,
Anna Paquin as the young Jane, and
Geraldine Chaplin as Miss Scatcherd.
*
1944:
Jane Eyre, with a screenplay by
John Houseman and
Aldous Huxley. It features
Orson Welles as Rochester,
Joan Fontaine as Jane and a very young (and uncredited)
Elizabeth Taylor as Helen Burns.
Notable television versions
*
2006:
Jane Eyre, with
Toby Stephens as Rochester,
Ruth Wilson as Jane, and
Georgie Henley as Young Jane.
*
1997:
Jane Eyre, with
Ciaran Hinds as Rochester and
Samantha Morton as Jane.
*
1983:
Jane Eyre, with
Timothy Dalton as Rochester and
Zelah Clarke as Jane.
*
1973:
Jane Eyre, with
Michael Jayston as Rochester and
Sorcha Cusack as Jane.
*
1970:
Jane Eyre, starring
George C. Scott as Rochester and
Susannah York as Jane.
Additional versions
*The first
Hollywood talkie version of the novel was released in 1934. It starred
Colin Clive and
Virginia Bruce.
*It was released in 1956 in
Hong Kong as
Mei gu or
The Orphan Girl.
*It was also released in
Mexico first in 1963 as
El Secreto and later in 1978 as
Ardiente Secreto.
*A number of adaptations appeared on British and American television in 1946, 1956, 1961, and 1963.
*A 1952 live television version was presented by "Westinghouse Studio One (Summer Theatre)" starring Kevin McCarthy as Mr. Rochester.
*A
musical version with a book by
John Caird and music and lyrics by
Paul Gordon opened at the
Brooks Atkinson Theatre on December 10, 2000. It closed on June 10, 2001.
*Four adaptations appeared in
Hollywood in 1910, 1914a & 1914b, and 1921.
*The novel,
Jane Eyre, was the basis for
The Castle of Thornfield (1915) and
Woman and Wife (1918).
*It was also released in 1926 in
Germany as
Waise von Lowood, Die (
Orphan of Lowood).
*"It seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control." (Ch 4)
*"I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt as long as I live." (Ch 4)
*"If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust; the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should - so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again." (Ch 6)
*"It is not violence that best overcomes hate - nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury." (Ch 6)
*"What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart... Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs... I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last." (Ch 6)
*"What have I to do with millions [of people]? The eighty I know despise me." (Ch 8)
*"It felt the one point where it stood - the present; all the rest was formless cloud and vacant depth: and it shuddered at the thought of totering, and plunging amid that chaos." (Ch 8)
*"By dying young I shall escape great sufferings." (Ch 9)
*"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 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 as we are" (252)
*"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." (Ch 12)
*"I think he was swearing, but am not certain; however, he was pronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me directly." (Ch 12)
*"I don't think, sir, that you have a right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have - your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience." (Ch 14)
*"I evny your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure - an inexhaustiable source of pure refreshment: is it not?" (Ch 14)
*"It's a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.'" (Rochester, Ch 20)
*"Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I have a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly." (Rochester, Ch 23)
*"My bride is here," he said, again drawing me to him, "because my equal is here, and my likeness" (Rochester, Ch 23)
*"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself." (Ch 27)
*"'I scorn your idea of love,' I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. 'I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer; yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.'" (Ch 34)
*"I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before; it seemed in mea delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration." (Ch 36)
*"Reader, I married him." (Ch 38)
*
Brontë Parsonage Museum Website*
News magazine of the Brontë Parsonage Museum*
Jane Eyre message board*
Literary Encyclopedia*
The Victorian Web*
Defining Romanticism: The Implications of Nature Personified as Female in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre*
Complete Summary*
Jane Eyre – complete book in HTML one page for each chapter.
*
Bronte Sisters Links: the biggest online link-database regarding the Bronte Sisters, their lives and works*
News and information about the Brontës using a blog format.*
Brontëana: Brontë Studies Weblog
