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Jane Eyre

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Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre emerges with a unique voice in the Victorian period for the work posits itself as a sentimental novel; however, it deliberately becomes unable to fulfill the genre, and then, it creates an altogether divergent novel that demonstrates its superiority by adding depth of structure in narration and character portrayal. Joan D. Peters’ essay, Finding a Voice: Towards a Woman’s Discourse of Dialogue in the Narration of Jane Eyre positions Gerard Genette’s theory of convergence, which is that the movement of the fiction towards a confluence of protagonist and narrator, is limited as the argument does not fully flesh out the parodies that Charlotte Bronte incorporates into her work. I will argue that in the novel …show more content…

Reed, which I cannot do: I should bless her son John, which is impossible.’…’is not Mrs. Reed a hard-hearted, bad woman?’ ‘She has been unkind to you, no doubt, because, you see, she dislikes your cast of character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine; but how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited?” (69)

Helen communicates in an elegant restrained form to the protagonist that all of Jane’s passion is unvirtuous as this perspective lacks insight in contrast with Jane who impulsively voices contempt to Helen for being deficient in natural passion. Her dialogue speaks of love and blessing that should be returned to individuals that desire to harm her. She uses questions in this passage to suggest her superior language skill set. Burns may quote the Bible, may hold in high regard Miss Scatcherd and may espouse the stereotypical masculine traits of a novel, such as, “well-polished diction, restraint of feeling, an emphasis on action, and a strong, seemingly objective, often directly interposing, ‘authorial’ narrative command” (Peters 224), yet she loses her natural voice. Moreover, Burns’ voice becomes stilted as it has discarded the poignant beauty of language in favor of

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