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Jane Eyre By Charlotte Bronte

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The nineteenth-century novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is considered to be a gothic novel. Gothic literature took place mostly in England from 1790 to 1830, falling into the category of Romantic literature. The Gothic takes its roots from previous horrifying writing that extends back to the Middle Ages and can still be found in writings today by many authors including Charlotte Bronte. The strong description of horror, abuse, and gruesomeness in Gothic novels reveals truths to readers through realistic fear. The main characteristics of Gothic literature include: being set in medieval times, dream-states, setting of dark castles and chambers, doubling, and mysterious appearances and disappearances. All of these elements play a major …show more content…

Jane also sees a light in the red-room, believing it is the ghost of her Uncle Reed, who passed away in that chamber. Jane is afraid and begins to cry, scared that he will appear to her and comfort her. This supernatural event and presence of spirits imagined by Jane adds to the gothic genre, as it increases the sense of horror in the red-room. Jane’s attraction to mysteries at Thornfield Hall is another example of gothic elements in the novel. Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, gives her a tour of the old abandoned chambers and the dark staircases. This sets Thornfield Hall as an old and mysterious castle, as Jane says it is “strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight” (Bronte 92). On this tour, Jane comes across what she believes to be a supernatural being as she hears a mysterious laugh coming from the attic. Although Mrs. Fairfax explains that it is just the seamstress Grace Poole, Bronte foreshadows a more disturbing explanation to come in the future. Jane’s comparison of a passageway in Thornfield to “a corridor in some Bluebeard’s Castle” was a very important allusion in the novel (Bronte 91). Sue Lonoff explains Heta Pyrhonen’s Bluebeard gothic: Jane Eyre and its Progeny, which is a review of this reference in the novel.
“Heta Pyrhönen draws thought-provoking parallels to the Bluebeard story. She shows in detail how both narratives link physical spaces to mental states, and she points up correspondences undetected by earlier

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