Summer Reading Assignment - Jane Eyre
Theme: The arduous and enduring task of garnering love without the loss of autonomy.
“. . .if others don’t love me, I would rather die than live -- I cannot bare to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from. . .whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken. . .’” (Brontë 82). Explanation: Jane Eyre, for all of her life prior to Lowood Academy, was disliked by her superiors and hated by those who should be considered her comrades. Finding comfort and love in Helen Burns, her first childhood friend, she confides her youthful desire to be loved. At such a young age, Jane desired even the most dilute of love, no matter the cost. Her immaturity hinders her happiness, causing her to feel as if she has been severely deprived of such fondness. Her tantrum not only leaves her friend stunned, but she learns a most valuable lesson in faith and doing what is most right with God that lasts with her throughout her journeys of woe and worry along Mr. Rochester’s side.
“‘I should have been glad to love you if you would have let; and I long earnesty to be reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt.’ I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. . .‘Love me then, or hate me, as you will,’” (Brontë 276).
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Reed--the woman whom conducted Jane prior to her schooling--slowly passed into the afterlife, Jane gingerly urges her aunt to love her in her death. She pleaded the dying woman to understand that she would not have hated her, would have loved her, if her aunt had so given her the possibility--she did not. Though--even by her deathbed--Jane Eyre disliked the woman wholeheartedly, she allowed her the peace of forgiveness and understanding that maturity had brought about to her through both her age and experience in love. She no longer found any anger, only sympathy towards the pathetic
It was in this tale that Odysseus is trapped in a cave by a menacing cyclops, known as Polyphemus. In an attempt to escape the young hero feeds the cyclops wine till he becomes drunk and finally passes out. Of that moment Odysseus takes his chance and stabs the giant in the eye. Preceding events then occur allowing for the hero to escape. Jane in this moment is on guard, not wishing people to discover wither her past or her true identity. She originally seemed perfectly content to tell them almost nothing. It isn’t until St. John says that he must know her history or else he cannot help her and that he will aid her to the utmost of his power that she finally obliges. This allusion stresses the fear she has of being found out and foreshadows that her telling this story or becoming close to this family will result in a blow. It is ironic, however, that unlike Polyphemus, Jane is rewarded for putting her guard down. In telling her story to her saviors, St. John is able to conclude her true identity and she collects freedom and happiness in her new found fortune and familial
Readers learn early in the story that Jane Eyre does not fit contemporary society's idea of a proper woman. As a child, Jane stands up to her aunt, Mrs. Reed, on more than one recorded occasion when Jane feels she has been treated unjustly (Brontë 28, 37). At one point, Jane bluntly tells her aunt, "I declare, I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed [Jane's cousin]" (37). This was at best improper behavior for a child in Victorian society, and it was most definitely seen as improper by Mrs. Reed who grows to hate Jane, calling her "tiresome, ill-conditioned" and "scheming" (26). But her aunt's reprimands and hatred do not deter Jane from speaking up in the face of injustice.
In the novel by Charlotte Bronte, "Jane Eyre", there is a constant battle of love versus autonomy in Jane, the main character. At points Jane feels as if she would give anything to be loved. Yet over the course of the book Jane needs to learn how to gain affection of others without sacrificing something in return.
| | |Even though she was afraid of the red room the fire made her |
On page 83, Mr. Rochester has a “massive head”, “granite-hewn features” , “great dark eyes” and fine eyes too”. The reader is supposed to think of him as someone who is a predator towards Jane because of his mean looking and dark features and because of Jane’s past experience with men in power. Readers are supposed to be wary of Mister Rochester.
Criticisms of relationships have been addressed in novels throughout our time, but they are central theme in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Specifically, readers can see criticisms of relationships built on passionate love. Example of this are seen through Rochester
Violence is the most recurrent gothic convention used in Jane Eyre, which is prominent in Charlotte Brontë's effective development of the novel and the character of Jane Eyre, who, throughout this novel, is searching for a home in which she would have a sense of belonging and love which would ultimately resolve this exact unfulfilled need she had as a child. The neglect she experienced in her childhood is manifested in the way she is treated by her aunt, Mrs. Reed, as in the first page of the novel Jane Eyre admits: ‘Me, she had dispensed from joining the group, saying, 'She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance’’. This opening shows how there is a clear line of separation drawn between Jane and her relatives due to her complicated family background which consequently results in their reluctance to accept her into their environment. These complications lead to her maltreatment, which also adds on to the violence she experiences acting as a catalyst for the development of the character and her subconscious quest.
Through a close reading of the selected passage of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, a reader can see that Jane attempts to separate herself from her decisions by personifying her emotions and giving them a specific voice, which strongly reflects the societal views of the time. At this point in the story, Jane has discovered, on her wedding day, that Mr. Rochester is still married to a woman named Bertha, and that woman still lives in his house. Distraught, Jane locks herself in her room and tries to decide what she should do. When she wakes up the next day, she is again confronted with what she needs to do in the wake of her discovery.
This starts from the ending of the end of the 3rd paragraph on page 214 “We settled into the family carriage”. I used the author’s questions, but shaped Charlotte's answers and personality to resemble a true teenager in that century.
Although the isolation that defines much of Jane Eyre’s life seems only alienating, it also proves to be enriching, for Jane uses that isolation as a basis to truly appreciate the love she discovers when her family is revealed to her after she gains a large inheritance from a distant relative. She would not have been able to truly find and value the love in her family if not for the despair experienced early in life, as that despair led her to her family. She uses her loneliness to gather strength when it is most needed, allowing her to totally heal from the trauma of the red-room and enjoy the eternal warmth her new loving life
I should say I loved you, but I declare I do not love you: I dislike
Many themes are brought into the readers' attention in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and when first reading the novel, we all tend to see it as a work built around the theme of family and Jane's continuous search for home and acceptance. The love story seems to fall into second place and I believe that the special relationship between Jane and Mr. Rochester needs to be thoroughly discussed and interpreted, because it holds many captivating elements, such as mystery, passion or even betrayal. The aim of this essay is to analyze the love story between the two protagonists and to illustrate how the elements forming their relationship resemble the ones in fairy tales. Jane Eyre has been often compared to fairy tales such as
Helen Burns’s memorable, albeit short-lived role in Jane Eyre proves to be incredibly influential on young Jane during the rest of the novel. Helen serves as Jane’s first direct interaction with strong faith in someone her own age. Helen embodies an incredibly passive faith, believing that she will be rewarded in heaven for her suffering on Earth. She goes as far to say, “...do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you” (Bronte 70). And being a student at Lowood, the boarding school where Jane first makes her acquaintance, she is quite familiar with suffering. All of the students, in fact, are familiar with the sacrifice and self-deprivation present in many aspects of their life, such as their diet of “burned porridge” and “strange
In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Jane is an orphan who is often mistreated by the family and other people who surround her. Faced with constant abuse from her aunt and her cousins, Jane at a young age questions the treatment she receives: "All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sister’s proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always brow-beaten, always accused, forever condemned?" (27; ch. 2). Despite her early suffering, as the novel progresses Jane is cared for and surrounded by various women who act as a sort of "substitute mother" in the way they guide,
Jane Eyre was born an orphan and raised under the hands of a heartless Aunt. Aunt Reed stressed to Jane that she was privileged to live so well without any