Jane Eyre

1. Jane Eyre Valeria Bustamante

2. Charlotte Brontë • Birth Place: Yorkshire, England • Birth Date: April 21, 1816 • Died: March 31, 1855 (age 38) • Died of pneumonia while pregnant • Parents: Maria Branwell & Patrick Brontë • Patrick was an Anglican clergyman • Siblings: Maria, Elizabeth, Emily, Anne, & Branwell • Spouse: Arthur Nicholls (1854-1855) • Charlotte married Arthur without loving him

3. Charlotte Brontë • Charlotte’s mother died on September 15, 1821 due to cancer. • After her mother’s death, Elizabeth (maternal aunt) took over the children to care for them. • In August 1824; Charlotte, Emily, Maria & Elizabeth were sent by their father to the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. • Charlotte and her sisters were mistreated, which affected their health & physical development. • Maria & Elizabeth died in June 1825 due to tuberculosis

4. Charlotte Bronte • After the deaths of her older sisters, Charlotte & Emily were removed from the school. • Several years later, Charlotte returned to school in Roe Head. • In 1835 she became a teacher at the Roe Head school. • Charlotte decided to become a private governess and was hired to live with & tutor the children of the Sidgewick family in 1839. • She hated the job therefore quit but her dream to have her own school didn’t work out.

5. Charlotte Brontë • Charlotte was hired again as a private governess with a different family but hated it as bad. • Finally Charlotte gathered her sisters to join her in working as writers. • A few years later Emily & Barnwell died in 1848, Anne died in 1849 • Charlotte marries Arthur in 1854 • Charlotte dies in 1855.

6. "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" 

7. foundation • Setting: • TIME: Early decades of the nineteenth century. • PLACE: The novel is structured around five separate locations, all supposedly in northern England: the Reed family’s home at Gateshead, the wretched Lowood School, Rochester’s manor house Thornfield, the Rivers family’s home at Moor House, and Rochester’s rural retreat at Ferndean. • Point of View: • All of the events are told from Jane’s point of view. Sometimes she narrates the events as she experienced them at the time, while at other times she focuses on reflection of the past events. • Tense: • Past-tense; Jane Eyre tells her story ten years after the last event in the novel, her arrival at Ferndean

8. Important characters • Jane Eyre • Protagonist • Feels out of place & ignored • Cruel treatment by her aunt & cousins • Struggles while searching for freedom • Helen Burns • Jane’s best friend at Lowood School • Represents a mode of Christianity • Believes that she will find her prefect home in Heaven • She counts on God for support, guidance, reward the good and punish the evil • Edward Fairfax Rochester • Master of Thornfield Manor • St. John Rivers

9. Secondary characters • Mr. Reed • Jane’s maternal uncle • Mrs. Sarah Reed • Jane’s aunt by marriage • Georgiana Reed • Eliza Reed • John Reed • Jane’s cousins • Alice Fairfax • Elderly widow & housekeeper of Thornfield Manor. • Bertha Antoinetta Mason • Edward’s first wife • Violent & insane

10. Secondary characters • Grace Poole • Bertha’s caretaker • Is in charge to keep Bertha hidden • Weakness for drinking that occasionally allows Bertha to escape • Adele Varens • French child to whom Jane is governess at Thornfield • Daughter of Mr. Rochester’s mistress (Celine Varnes) • Celine Varens ran away to Italy with a musician or singer • Richard Mason • An Englishman from the West Indies • Brother to Bertha • John Eyre • Jane’s uncle who leaves her his vast fortune of 20,000 ounds

11. Summary overview • Jane is a young orphan (parents died due to typhus) • Mr. Reed adopts Jane • Mrs. Reed, Georgiana Reed, Eliza Reed, John Reed mistreat & bully Jane • At the age of 10 she rebels and is locked up in “the red room” where her uncle died she thinks that his ghost appears • Because of the hysterical fit she is sent to Lowood (a religious boarding school for orphans) • Lowood never has enough food or warm clothes • Jane meets Helen • Mr. Brocklehurst’s neglect and dishonesty is discovered & several benefactors erect a new building to improve the school

12. Summary overview • Jane spends eight more years in Lowood, six as a student and two as a teacher. • Alice Faifax (the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall) hires Jane to be Adele’s governess • When Edward Rochester (owner of the house) gets home, he teases Jane and they start to spend a lot of hours together and she secretly falls in love with him. • Jane starts to notice strange things to happen at the house, like laughs, the attack to Mr. Mason and a mysterious fire in Mr. Rochester’s room. • She is called back to Gateshead by her dying aunt and remains there for a month to take care of Mrs. Reed. • Mr. Rocherster’s marriage to Blanche Ingram surprises Jane at her return.

13. Summary overview • Mr. Rochester proclaims his love for Jane & proposes • Wedding plans start but one night a strange savage looking woman sneaks into her room and cuts her wedding veil in two. • All the mysterious events are blamed on Grace Poole and her being drunk • The wedding day • Jane leaves Thornfield in the middle of the night which forces her to be homeless & beg for food • Jane is to the point of her death when she faints but St. John Rivers saves her & takes her in • Jane returns to Thornfield to only find ruins because Bertha set the house on fire and committed suicide • Jane & Mr. Rochester reunite, he proposes, they get married and Mr. Rochester recovers enough sight to see their first born son

14. Author’s techniques • Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman novel. • A novel that tells the story of a child’s maturation. • Focuses on the emotion & experiences that accompany the growth to adulthood. • The novel was originally published Jane Eyre: An Autobiography • Also under the fake name Charlotte used as the author of her books: • Currer Bell

15. Underlying themes • God & Religion • 3 main religious figures • Mr. Brocklehurst- Dangers & Hypocrisies (19th century Evangelicalism movement) • Helen Burns- Christianity of being patient & forgiving • St. John-Christianity of ambition, glory, & extreme self-importance • Social Class • Jane is a figure of unclear class standing and therefore, a source of extreme tension for the characters around her. • Gender Relations • Jane struggles continually to achieve equality and to overcome oppression. • Love & Passion • Jane looks for a romantic love, but also for a sense of being valued, and of belonging.

16. symbols • Bertha Mason • Represents the “trapped” Victorian wife, who is expected never to travel or work outside the house and becomes ever more frenzied as she finds no outlet for her frustration and anxiety. • The Red Room • Represents towards what Jane must overcome in her struggles to find freedom, happiness, and the sense of belonging.

17. quotes • "I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me“ • "Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt? May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine.  May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love"