Close Reading Of Jane Eyre

Furthermore, Jane says “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself” (Chapter 27, Bronte.) This statement greatly represents the growth that Jane has undergone. She no longer dreads the solitude that once haunted her because she respects herself enough to realize that she did not deserve to experience such great dismay. Through independence and self-recognition, Jane has discovered the importance of loving oneself. Without the reliance on the thoughts of others, the once extremely troubled girl found bliss through a lack of outside control. In regards to her relationship with Mr. Rochester, Jane understands that she must leave him behind to maintain her own well-being. She does not allow the wealth or proclaimed love from Rochester to skew her decisions and she does not linger to dominate the life of her lover. Instead, she moves forward to continue her endless pursuit of happiness and independence.

When Jane enters Thornfield she thinks she is going to work for a woman named Mrs. Fairfax, but she does not. She works for a mysterious man name Mr. Rochester. This man is going to be an import aspect of Jane’s life. Jane works as a governess to a young girl named Adele. Jane encounters Mr. Rochester when she goes for a walk and runs into Rochester, whose horse is injured. After the encounter Jane and Rochester start to gain interest into each other. Mr. Rochester is a man with a large amount of money and Jane is a woman with very little money, the fact that she works for Mr. Rochester defies their unprofessional relationship. “Like governesses, these marriages between older men and younger women were viewed with great ambivalence during the Victorian period”(Godfrey). Both characters develop strong feelings for one another and become close to getting married but a discovery of a secret puts the marriage to a halt. After

Near the novel’s conclusion, St. John attempts to persuade Jane to join his mission to India, but she responds, “If I go to St. John, I abandon half myself: if I go to India, I go to premature death.” The repetition used in this line conveys how, if Jane accepted St. John’s plea to travel to India, she would suffer becoming socially isolated from Rochester. This resolves her conviction to decline St. John and return to marry Rochester within the finale. Chris Bossche comments on Jane’s feeling of exclusion, stating, “[Jane Eyre]’s heroine rebels against social exclusion yet ultimately does not seek to overturn the existing social order.” This interpretation of Jane’s motivations aligns with my own personal understanding of the character who, while not wishing herself to be excluded from Rochester, accepts Bertha’s isolation in the attic of Thornfield. This is demonstrated when Jane describes Bertha through the hyperbole, “I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me.” This exaggeration of Bertha details how Jane believes that she possesses an eccentric and dangerous nature, providing reason for why Jane does not protest her imprisonment. Yet, since Bertha remains estranged from society, she ultimately burns down Thornfield at the end of the novel. As a result of their perpetual fear of exclusion and social isolation, the actions of characters within the novel are dictated, transpiring in the text’s

Jane’s approach could be considered romantic and embodies conventional feminist concepts; she remains headstrong and stubborn in the face of injustice. The representation of Jane as a strong, independent woman upholds the belief that woman can achieve their goals. Jane does precisely this; she marries Rochester, becomes a part of a family as well as gains financial independence. The way in which Bronte represents Jane is emphasized through her narrative stance. The reader is presented with a firm and rebellious character, her diction is simple and assertive. She addresses the reader directly and is able to identify and challenge the problems she faces with determination. Furthermore Jane is able to identify and comment on how she feels woman are subjugated by their society; she denounces that “woman are supposed to be very calm generally: but woman feel just as men feel […]” (Bronte

In Thornfield Eyre changes her mind set a lot. In the beginning she felt a sense of imprisonment. She describes it as pacing the corridors like a creature caged. She was longing for her freedom. She changed her mind set when she met Edward Rochester. He offered her a chance to liberate her passions. She knew she had feelings for Rochester, but also knew that as his mistress she would be giving up her dignity and integrity. Jane didn’t know if this is the freedom she wanted. She had always had this idea that she would respect her own dignity and never undergo it, but Rochester makes her want to choose her feelings over everything. She then meets a fellow named St. John Rivers who offers her different aspects then Rochester. He allows her to act willingly when she pleases and offers her to live and work with him in India. Jane Eyre soon realizes that either way she will feel imprisoned because with St. John Rivers she would have to keep her feelings in check. Eyre ended up choosing feelings over everything. She wanted to be with Rochester because she was in love with him. Jane Eyre has the happy ending with Rochester that she now knows she

With these standards Jane feels she lacks equal standing, even with her romantic equal. And though she admits her love to him, she holds her desires back because of lack of confidence. She refuses his initial marriage proposal because of her own feelings. Though she finally finds a home in Thornfield Hall, she leaves her “delightful life” because she views herself as “poor, obscure, plain, and little... ” (290-291).

Jane Eyre is a coming of age story following a young woman and her journey of self-growth. At the start of the novel Jane is living with her aunt and three cousins. They continuously abuse her, treating her like a stranger rather than a family member. At the age of ten Jane leaves her aunt's house and attends boarding school. It is at this school where she learns lessons of forgiveness and hope from a meek young woman named Helen Burns. Subsequently studying and teaching at the school for eight years Jane decides to become a governess at the mysterious Thornfield mansion. She falls in love with the owner of Thornfield and the two make plans to marry. Nonetheless on the day of there wedding Jane discovers that Mr. Rochester is already married and that he keeps his insane wife Bertha trapped away in the attic of Thornfield. Devastated by this information, Jane flees Thornfield and nearly dies from cold and starvation. Soon after she is taken in by the Rivers, two sisters and one brother. The passing of Jane's uncle reveals that she and the Rivers are cousins. It is also revealed that this uncle has left Jane all his fortune. This in turn leaves Jane extremely wealthy. Her cousin St. John Rivers ask Jane for his hand in marriage. However Jane comes to the conclusion that she still loves Mr. Rochester. After declining St. John's proposal Jane journeys back to Thornfield. When she arrives at Thornfield Jane discovers the mysterious mansion in burnt ruins. It is revealed that the

She makes her own decision to leave Lowood after a solid ten years and earns a job with her own abilities and is determined to venture out into the world away from Lowood. When she meets Mr. Rochester, he encourages her to express herself in her own way when he admires her drawings. But as Jane falls in love with Mr. Rochester Jane learns about new emotions that she has never felt before as she finds love and learns how to suppress them. As she falls in love with Mr. Rochester, the master, she learns to conceal her feelings instead of breaking out in emotional outbursts like she did at Gateshead. They eventually fall in love and decide to get married but Jane makes a wise decision to leave Thornfield even though her decision is distressing and heartbreaking she does it for her own

Over the course of the novel it becomes clear that Jane is two separate people one practical and honest, the other simply a lonely girl looking for a place to belong. The question becomes how she will resolve the tension between each of these Jane’s who seem to be at odds with one another. This divergence is represented by her struggle to leave Thornfield, and when making that choice we see a distinct conflict between her conscious and passion. She refers to her conscience as a “tyrant” taunting passion and threatening it with agony. (335) Moreover, Jane also says that it has an “arm of iron” which alludes to its strength and foreshadows which of the two will eventually win. (335) Once she realizes what she needs to do she explains the reasoning mechanically using words that are plain and free from emotion such as, “law,” and “principles” as

Jane Eyre is a criticism of the patriarchal Victorian era; where passionate girls are forged into docile women and cannot escape this fate. Mirrors provide insight into Jane’s struggles and what she thinks of her own character. She refuses to conform to society’s expectations of proper behavior for a member of a low societal class; instead, she condemns adherence to societal expectations if that means betraying her duty to society. The tyranny of the Reeds finally comes to an end when Jane moves to Lowood. This opportunity is exceptional for Jane because it is quite unlikely for girls to get an education, let alone a poor girl like Jane. As Jane Eyre reaches the middle of the story, her reflections show that although she keeps her passion in check to prevent ostracization, she still has an urge to be independent. By promising to marry Mr. Rochester, Jane has unknowingly abandoned her independent nature and accepted her role as a servant as revealed by her own literal and figurative reflections. Jane regains some of her sense of independence when she flees from Thornfield after learning about Bertha’s imprisonment, but despite being free, Jane is ensnared by St. John -- another man who conforms to the patriarchal society -- and, ultimately, is entangled in Mr. Rochester’s

In this passage from the novel, Jane begins to understand what will become of her if she gives into the consuming passion that she often feels:

While Jane’s time at Gateshead demonstrated her immense sadness, Jane’s time at Thornfield reveals her sadness through depression, as it begins to evolve into anger and an internal struggle. Her correlation with madness and anger begins to appear when she goes into the attic. She states “I climbed the three staircases, raised the trapdoor of the attic, and having reached the leads looked out afar over sequestered field and hill, and along the dim skyline- that then I longed” (Bronte 114). Jane is trapped inside herself. She longs to escape from her emotions and internal struggles, yet cannot. The attic, the abode of Mr. Rochester’s insane wife, houses Jane’s emotions. She climbs up to the attic and views the world beyond it. She

De Keukelaere, a respected literary criticist, defines “deviated transcendancy” as idolatry that detracts from the relationship between the subject and God. Especially in the Victorian era, God was mandated to be the main focus of a life lived well. Those who put others before Him were shunned as heathens, and not given the “happily ever after” that the godly women did. Jane, in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, places her love of Rochester above her love and devotion to God, which drags her down a spiral of despair. According to Katherine Bubel’s “Transcending the Triangle of Desire: Eros and the ‘Fulfillment of Love’ in Middlemarch and Jane Eyre”, this idolation of Rochester is why Jane’s life takes the plunges it does, as her transcendancy to a higher state of living is threatened by her devotion to the metaphysical. The “imprisonment of triangular desire”, as Bubel claims, is trapping Jane, Rochester, and St. John, and in order to have a healthy relationship with Jane they all, Jane included, must “ren[ounce] deviated transcendancy” (Bubel 296). While Bubel is correct in that the relationships between both Jane and Rochester and Jane and St. John are strained due to their obsessions with possessing her as their own, I do not concur with the conclusion that this is due to a lack of morality; rather that the selfish motivations of both Rochester and St. John are deleterious to Jane’s psyche and prey upon

Perhaps as a result of her upbringing, which was full of cruelty and abuse, Jane developed a strong sense of what was right and what was wrong. As a child, these traits translated to insolence as she disobeyed and spoke out against the wrongdoing of adults that were so used to children being seen and not heard, resulting in Mr Brocklehurst warning her that “wicked” children go to hell . However, her moral compass develops and as an adult Jane begins to relish her own freedom and independence. She has been under other people’s care for so long – for example Mrs Reed, Miss Abbot and Mr Brocklehurst – that when she is able to start anew at Thornfield she values her ability to control her own life and does not wish to become a possession of Mr Rochester. This can be seen when Mr Rochester takes her to Millcote to buy new dresses following their engagement and her cheek “burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation” as she “never [could] bear being dressed like a doll by Mr Rochester” , and would value the money from her uncle in Madeira as it would give her a sense of independence from Mr Rochester. Her desire for independence and freedom is further stressed when she leaves Thornfield following the

Jane's behavior as a child was greatly influenced by passion. The collision and disagreement of two characters cause a burning conflict in