Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is a classic novel by Charlotte Brontë that was published in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Company, London, and is one of the most famous British novels.

Synopsis

Ten-year-old Jane Eyre is a poor orphan, treated maliciously by her aunt; her plain looks and perceptive and passionate nature do not appeal to her relatives. Eventually she is sent to boarding school. Her fellow student Helen Burns, who dies young of consumption, encourages Jane to be more humble, patient and forgiving. Jane learns to hide her temper, but the injustices of the world still burn in her soul. At the age of eighteen, Jane takes a job as governess to a little French girl named Adèle, the ward of Mr. Edward Rochester of Thornfield Hall. Mr. Rochester is about thirty-eight, with a blunt, capricious temperament. However, Jane admires and respects his honesty, and the two become friends. Jane falls in love, but believes that Rochester cannot love her in return because of her low status and plain looks. One night, Jane hears a strange laugh in the corridor. Investigating it, she sees that Mr. Rochester's bed is on fire, and manages to quench the flames. Mr. Rochester suggests that the culprit is Grace Poole, an odd servant who lives on the otherwise abandoned third floor.

Mr. Rochester begins courting a local beauty, Blanche Ingram, which pains Jane, who cannot believe that Rochester loves the proud, snobbish Blanche. One day, while Mr. Rochester is gone, a mysterious Jamaican gentleman, Mr. Richard Mason, arrives at Thornfield claiming to know Mr. Rochester. That same day, a gypsy woman arrives and wishes to speak with all the single women to tell them their fortunes. Jane is sceptical, but at the gypsy's request, goes anyway. The gypsy tells her that she is close to happiness and points out that she cares about Mr. Rochester. At the end of the conversation, the gypsy reveals herself to be Mr. Rochester, who is distressed when he hears that Mr Mason is there. That night, Jane hears horrible yells and goes up to the third floor to see Mason bleeding, stabbed and bitten. Again, Rochester hints that Grace Poole is the culprit.

Jane learns that her Aunt Reed is dying and that she wishes to speak with her, so she travels to Gateshead. Mrs. Reed dislikes Jane as much as ever, but wishes to clear her conscience by telling Jane that she had once received a letter from Jane's uncle John Eyre (on her father’s side long estranged), who wished to adopt her. Mrs. Reed had spitefully replied that Jane was dead. Jane forgives her, though Mrs. Reed is unwilling to make amends with Jane and dies soon after.

Mr. Rochester tells Jane that he is going to get married and she must leave Thornfield. Jane cries, saying she could not bear to leave Rochester. He asks her to marry him, revealing he loved her all along; he flirted with Blanche only to make her jealous. Jane accepts his proposal. Richard Mason and his solicitor interrupt the wedding ceremony, claiming that Mr. Rochester still has a wife living: Mason's sister Bertha. Mr. Rochester admits the whole story: Bertha is a violent lunatic under the care of Grace Poole, and it was she who lit the fire and attacked her brother. Rochester was forced into the marriage, and never loved her. He begs Jane to be his wife in all but law, but she refuses. Though tempted, her strong moral compass will not let her become a mistress.

Fearing that Rochester will detain her, and not trusting herself to resist temptation, Jane sneaks out of Thornfield in the middle of the night. She travels by coach as far as money will take her, then tries to find work and beg for food. She is rescued by St. John (pronounced "Sin-jin") Rivers, a handsome young clergyman, and his two sisters. By a remarkable coincidence, Jane discovers that the Riverses are her cousins, and that their mutual uncle, John Eyre, has died and left Jane his fortune. Jane shares the money with her cousins. St. John, who plans to go to India as a missionary, asks Jane to accompany him as his wife. However, while Jane has a sisterly affection for St John, she knows he cannot love her as Rochester did. She tries to reject him, but his force of personality and moral persuasion are difficult to refuse.

Suddenly, Jane hears Mr. Rochester's anguished voice calling to her supernaturally. She hurries to Thornfield, which has burned to the ground. She learns that Bertha escaped one night, lit a fire and jumped off the roof; Mr. Rochester lost one hand, one eye, and the sight of his other eye in the conflagration. Jane goes to where Rochester is now living. At first he fears that she will refuse to marry a blind cripple, but Jane accepts him. Speaking from a vantage point ten years on, Jane tells of their happy marriage, revealing that she has given birth to a son, and that Mr. Rochester has regained some of the sight in his remaining eye.

Characters

Jane

Jane displays genuine affection, goodness and complete lack of vindictiveness, even against Mrs. Reed and her family. Her goodness attracts affection from good people such as Miss Temple and later St John and his sisters. Her generosity speaks in giving away 75% of her money. She receives the generosity of St. John and his sisters and her uncle who she has never met. Her joy in discovering family is much greater than her joy in inheriting money. Her unpretentious character refuses Rochester’s efforts to dress her up and pass her off as a glamorous high society woman for her marriage. She insists on being her plain old simple self and being accepted for that alone.

Both she and Rochester have extraordinary insight into character and are able to read people perceptively from their facial expressions and behavior. Jane has a wonderful frankness that charms by being completely free of both pretense and malice as when she readily says she does not find him handsome. She has the strength of personality, intelligence and skill to handle Rochester when he demands and threatens she stay with him after confessing he is already married. Her frankness and strength is what he admires so much in her. She so admires strength, that she nearly succumbs to St. John’s demands that she marry him, even though there is no emotion on either side.

Rochester

Rochester is strong, passionate and intelligent. He uses strength and roughness to bully people. Jane is the first who is not intimidated by him. His goodness is shown by his adopting Adele and maintaining his mad wife instead of abandoning her and his efforts to save her life during the fire, which cost him an arm and an eye.

St. John

1. He is idealistic, honest, proper, dogmatic, ambitious and incapable of affectionate emotions.
2. His natural goodness is demonstrated by the generosity with which he takes in Jane and cares for her when she falls on his doorstep. He shows the same care in tending to the needs of his parishioners, regardless of the risks to his own health.
3. His refusal to reveal that he is also an Eyre speaks of his genuine unselfishness and idealism.
4. He is passionately committed to sacrifice himself for the upliftment of the ‘heathens’, whatever the risks to himself. His intense ambition is to please God and be righteous according to his own understanding.
5. He resorts to vital power and domination to claim Jane when he cannot do it by reason.

Character of Life

1. Having lost both her parents soon after birth, Jane had to endure 10 years of persecution by her aunt, Mrs. Reed, before she is sent away to Lowood School. What is the source of her suffering early years and the strength of the character that emerges from it? What gives her the strength to be honest and bold?
2. At Lowood Miss Temple and Helen befriend her with kindness – she has outlived the need for cruelty and it has bread a strong, self-reliant, shy, unpretentious kind character in her. Mrs. Reed’s prejudice and meanness is replaced by Miss Temple’s objectivity and fairness, which Jane acquires from her.
3. Her best friend, Helen, dies of TB – Jane still carries misfortunre. From Helen she acquires a pure and simple goodness and faith in God.
4. When Brocklehurst loses his position and power over the school after the fatal plague, Jane is finally freed from persecution and enjoys more humane treatment for the first time in her life. Evil gives rise to good.
5. Rochester falls and injures his leg at first sight of her. She is there to help Rochester when he falls from the horse – foreshadowing her future role in helping lift him from the depths to which he later falls psychologically.
6. She is awakened in the night and there to save Rochester’s life when his wife Bertie starts the fire in his room.
7. Her aunt, who banished her and so mistreated her, is forced by conscience to call her back and reveal the existence of her uncle’s letter.
8. It is actually Jane who professes her love (proposes) not Rochester. He has teased and taunted her into expressing her emotions, placing the onus on her out of his sense of guilt that what he does is wrong.
9. The chestnut tree Rochester proposes to her under is destroyed by lightning the very same night, split in two, signifying their own later separation.
10. The marriage veil which Rochester gave her is destroyed. This was the sole gift she had accepted, she who wanted to avoid all semblance of social artifice and device. It gets destroyed. She refused to be what he wants to pretend she is.
11. The night before their wedding, she dreams of carrying a small baby down a long road looking for Rochester and then sees Thornfield Hall burnt to the ground and deserted.
12. When she is on the verge of marrying a bigamist, Mason comes to warn her and prevent a violation of her conscience. Jane being sincerely frank and good, she is protected from believing his false representations.
13. Jane is brought at the moment of desperation and starvation to the very house of our sole living relatives.
14. On the verge of surrendering to St. John’s demands for marriage, she hears Rochester’s call which he actually issues at that very moment, and he hears her response. Their love is that true and intense.
15. When Jane rejects a married Rochester and runs away, the same night Bertie burns down the hall and jumps to her death and Rochester loses an arm and use of both eyes.

Social differential

1. Jane is unable to marry Rochester until he is maimed and blinded and she becomes into an inheritance. The social gap between them was too wide to be bridged without his falling even further (after marrying a mad woman) and her rising.

Questions

1. Both Jane and Rochester have suffered greatly in their earlier lives. She by her Mrs. Reed’s treatment and the rigors of Lowood School; he by his father’s preference for his brother and marriage to a mad woman. Can we say that their shared suffering is a source of their attraction and sympathy?
2. How can a girl who suffered ill treatment from the time of her birth emerge with such genuine emotions and natural goodness, devoid of vindictiveness or meanness?
3. How can a man who has such keen insight into human nature have married so blindly and foolishly?

External links

• Jane Eyre at The Victorian Web
• Jane Eyre at the Brontë Parsonage Museum Website

See Also

• Other articles on Character of Life in Literature
• Other fictions works