Jane Eyre (character)

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Jane Eyre is the herione of Charlotte Bronte's 1847 novel of that name, Jane Eyre.

Contents 1 Appearance 2 Childhood 3 Adulthood 4 Charlotte as Jane 5 External links

[edit] Appearance

Jane Eyre is plain, with an elfin look. Mr Rochestor once compliments Jane's "hazel eyes and hazel hair," but Jane tells that reader that Rochestor is being too kind-- in fact, she has brown hair and green eyes.

[edit] Childhood

Jane's parents died when she was very young. Jane was sent to live with Mrs Sarah Gibson Reed, the wife of her late father's brother. Mr Reed dies soon after Jane's arrival. Mrs Reed hates Jane, and treats her ill, while spoiling her own children, Eliza, Georgiana, and John. John Reed is particularly horrible to Jane, often hitting his younger, smaller cousin, whom he calls an "animal."

When Jane is ten, she is sent to Lowood school-- a miserable place run by the sadistic Mr Brocklehurst, who preaches a hypocritical religious doctrine. There, Jane makes her first friend, Helen Burns, who warns Jane that she "[thinks] too much of the love of human beings." [1]

The students at Lowood are over-taxed and under-fed, however; their care and sanitation is bad, and many become ill. Helen is one such pupil.

As she dies, Helen explains that she "[has] faith [that she is] going to God," and so is unafraid. Jane has trouble comprehending this. "Where is God? What is God?" she asks. "It is true Jane does right, and exerts great moral strength, but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law unto itself. No Christian grace is perceptible upon her," Eliza Rigby, writing about Jane Eyre for the Quarterly Review in 1847, would decree. Charles Burkhart suggested that "love is a religion in Jane Eyre." Rigby may have thought that same about this "anti-Christian composition." Jane spends her childhood searching for love, at Lowood, and cannot find it-- though she is liked by one of her teachers, Miss Temple.

By the time that she is eighteen, Jane has risen to becomes a teacher, at Lowood School.

[edit] Adulthood

When Jane is eighteen, Jane's mentor, Miss Temple, marries and leaves Lowood. Jane decides to advertise for work as a governess. She is employed by a Mrs Alice Fairfax of Thornfield Hall. Jane assumes that she will be teaching Mrs Fairfax's children, but learns that Mrs Fairfax is only the house-keeper of Thornfield. Jane will be teaching Adele, ward and possibly illegitimate daughter of Edward Rochestor, Thornfield's owner. Mrs Fairfax warns Jane that Rochestor is rarely at home; she will see little of him.

One evening, when walking through the mist on the moors, Jane is almost run into by a man on a horse. Veering to avoid Jane, the man falls off his horse; Jane helps him back to his horse, as his ankle is hurt. When Jane returns from her walk, she finds that Mr Rochestor has come home; in fact, Rochestor is the man whom she met on the moors.

Jane and Mr Rochestor fall in love, and Jane agrees to marry him. It turns out, however, that Mr Rochestor is already married; his mad wife, Bertha, lives, hidden, in Thornfield.

It has been said that "Jane is determined to find [her happiness] here on Earth," rather than in Heaven, as Helen assumed she would. [2] However, though Jane loves Rochestor, she has too much self-respect to be his mistress. Unsure of what her future holds, Jane sneaks away from Thornfield. She travels some time in a coach, and accidentally leaves her things in it, when she disembarks. Jane wanders for a few days on the moors, before collapsing-- hungry, depressed, and ill. She is discovered and saved by a young minister, St John Rivers. He takes her to his sisters, Mary and Diana; they nurse Jane back to health. When well, Jane-- calling herself Jane Elliot-- becomes a teacher to the local farm girls.

St John Rivers, in love with a local gentlewoman, Rosamund Oliver, asks Jane to marry him. Rivers wants not passion, in marriage, but a woman who would be a good worker. It is his life-long ambition to become a missionary. Jane, to this purpose, learns Hindi.

One night, however, Jane hears Rochestor's voice calling "Jane, Jane!" Desperate to see him, Jane rushes back to Thornfield... only to find that it has been burnt down. It turns out that Bertha, one night, set fire to the place, before jumping off of the roof, to her death. Rochestor tried to save her, but could not stop his wife from leaping. Rochestor has been badly hurt by a falling beam, in the fire; he has gone blind and lost one hand.

Jane travels to Ferndean, Rochestor's other house, where he is staying, looking "desperate and brooding."

Rochestor and Jane marry. At the end of the story, Rochestor is beginning to get some of his sight back; when his and Jane's first son is born, Rochestor can see him.

[edit] Charlotte as Jane

It has been said that "Charlotte Brontë may have created the character of Jane Eyre as a means of coming to terms with elements of her own life." [3] By all accounts, Brontë's "homelife was difficult." [4] Jane's school, Lowood, is said to be based on the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge, where two of Brontë's sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died.

Brontë declared that "I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself," in creating Jane Eyre. [5]

When she was twenty, Brontë wrote to Robert Southey for his thoughts on writing. "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be," he said. When Jane Eyre was published about ten years later, it was purportedly written by Jane, and called Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, with Currer Bell (Brontë) merely as editor. And yet, Brontë still published as Currer Bell, a man. [6]

[edit] External links

• The full text of Jane Eyre