On Jane Eyre by Barbara Bortone

ALL YOU HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT

"JANE EYRE"

by Barbara Bortone

INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL CONTEXT

At the end of XIX century, society changes because of wealth coming from industrialization that creates two classes: the very rich middle class and the exploited workers.

However the predominant way of thinking belongs to this middle class, which imposes its values of patriarchal authority, good manners, schools for men only (for women there are exclusively boarding schools) and, first of all, the oppressive environment of women, who have a lucky marriage as their only dream!

But, from another point of view, we can also see the illegality of that period, full of prostitution and crimes….

AND NOW CHARLOTTE: THE LIFE…

For these reasons, in this period a novel like Jane Eyre is the symbol of the bravery of its writer, Charlotte Brönte. As a matter of fact, also the life of this woman is very different from the others!

She lives alone with her sisters and brother (her mother died and her father does not care about them) and they are self–educated by reading books that transmit Charlotte the influence of Romanticism (nature, the infinite and the finite).

Moreover she has to work to support herself and her brothers, and this is an unusual thing for a woman of that period. She starts like a governess, like the main character of her novel, and then, when she moves to Brussels, she can write her three works, Jane Eyre, Villette and The professor, all novels, a type of writing that is called "the mongrel form" because there are no fixed rules to respect and also a woman can write it without studying much. Even her male character, Mr Rochester, is autobiographical, inspired by Mr Heger, a man which she falls in love with, but who does not love her.

…AND HER "JANE EYRE"

The unique great success of Chalotte is Jane Eyre for several reasons:

The new vision of this woman who is angry, determined, not subject to a man;

The first person narrator that gives us the only vision of Jane, who becomes the centre of the plot ;

The rebellion expressed by this woman who, in all her life, does not submit either to a human being or to nature;

The independence declared by an emancipated woman, who looks after herself since she was only a child,

The will to be equal to man expressed in the fact that she does not marry Mr Rochester when he is the arrogant master of the old house known as Thornfield, symbol of his power, but only after Bertha sets fire to the mansion;

The figure of a Byronic heroine, who isn’t beautiful, but is very strong and charming;

The fact that, even if she cannot sometimes express her emotions, Charlotte creates Bertha, the mad wife of Mr Rochester who is considered the "double" of Jane, her hidden inner part (in fact Bertha is hidden in the attic), who can express her feelings of rage because of her madness (what Bertha does is what Jane would like to do).

FOCUS ON BERTHA

The secondary character of Bertha is presented by Jean Rhys, a writer of the twentieth century, in her "Wide Sargasso Sea". This novel is divided into three parts, that are the story of Bertha, of whom we know very little from Charlotte Brönte's novel.

In the first part Antoniette, who stands for Bertha, lives in the West Indies and, being the narrator, describes her upbringing and education.

In the second part Mr Rochester talks about his arrival to the West Indies and about his marriage with Antoniette.

The third part is set in England, and Antoniette talks about her prison, the attic of Thornfield House.

This "stream of consciousness" is very actual, because we can see all the events from two points of view.

Even in Wide Sargasso Sea, like in Jane Eyre, nature is full of meaning; here it seems the counterpart of the characters, because it is full of symbols, even in its colours.

In conclusion I can say that both Bertha and Jane are outsiders, because they refuses the strict rules of society. Bertha represents the unknown, dark and mysterious unconscious of Jane and this is very modern for a Victorian novel.

AND THEN THE SUMMARY

The story starts in Reed’s House, in which the little Jane lives with some relatives (her aunt and her cousins) who treat her very badly. So she goes to a school for girls, full of very strict rules and where she lives for ten years, at the beginning as a student, then as a teacher.

She decides to change, so she looks for another job: she becomes a governess at Thornfield House and here she knows her master, Mr Rochester. After a long period of talking between them, he reveals his love to the girl, and they are going to marry, when Jane, after several mysterious events, finds out that the man is already married to Bertha, a mad woman who is hidden in the attic. Jane leaves the house and finds job as teacher. Later she knows that Bertha had set fire to Thornifield and destroyed it. So she marries Mr Rochester, who is powerless and blind now.

IN CONCLUSION

Now, to focus on all this work, I give you some watchwords (that you have to use if you want to describe the real meaning of Jane Eyre) that describes all the features of this great novel: AUTHORITY, RESONANCE, INIMITABLE VOICE, UNIQUE and ICONOCLASTIC FEMALE REBELLIOUSNESS, TRIUMPH, SATISFIED HUNGER, FIERCE SENSE OF INTEGRITY, AGGRESSIVE HEROINE IN CONTROL OF THE SITUATION, FREEDOM.

Barbara Bortone