Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1816 - 1855)
The Story :
Psychological romance
Settings
Northern
England; 1800s
Principle Characters :
Jane Eyre, an orphan girl
Mrs. Reed, Jane's aunt, and mistress of Gateshead Hall
Edward Rochester, the once-handsome owner of Thornfield Manor
St. John Rivers, a young clergyman
Summary
Orphaned at birth, Jane Eyre was left
to live at Gateshead Hall Manor with her aunt-in-law, Mrs. Reed. Jane remained
for ten years, subjected to hard work, mistreatment, and fixed hatred .
After a difficult childhood
, Jane was sent to Lowood
School, a semi-charitable
institution for girls. The place was very hostile towards her
,because she was considered a liar from Mr. Brocklehurst and because he esorted the other girls to stay away from Jane .But
only one girl ,disobeying from the orders, become her great friend :Helen Burns
.Their friendship lasted until Helen falled ill and died of tuberculosis .Jane
excelled at Lowood and over the years became a teacher. Then she left Lowood to
become the governess of a little girl, Adele, the ward of one Mr. Edward
Rochester, stern, master of Thornfield Manor.
At Thornfield, Jane was comfortable
with life - what with the grand old house, its well-stocked and silent library,
her private room, the garden with its many chestnut, oak and thorn trees, it
was a veritable palace. Mr. Rochester was a princely and heroic master, and,
despite his ireful frown and brusque, moody manner, Jane felt at ease in his
presence. Rochester
confided that Adele was not his own child but the daughter of a Parisian dancer
who had deserted her in his care. Still, even with this forthright confession,
Jane sensed that there was something Rochester
was hiding.
Off and on, Jane heard bizarre,
mysterious sounds at Thornfield. She finally discovered that Rochester kept a strange tenant on the third
floor of the mansion. This hermit-like woman, once
employed by Rochester
- or so he said - often laughed maniacally in the night. And other disturbances
soon followed.
One evening, after the household had
gone to sleep, Jane was aroused by the smell of smoke - to find Mr. Rochester's
bed on fire. Only with a great deal of exertion did she manage to extinguish
the flames and revive her employer.
Some time later, a Mr. Mason from Jamaica arrived
for a house party. Shortly after retiring that evening, Jane and the house
guests were awakened by the sound of a man screaming for help. Rochester reassured his guests that it was
merely a servant's nightmare and persuaded them to return to their rooms. But
Jane was obligated to spend the rest of the night caring for Mr. Mason, who had
somehow received serious slashes to his arm and shoulder. After hinting that he
had obtained these wounds from an attack by a madwoman, he quietly left the
house on the next morning.
One day Jane was urgently summoned to Gateshead: Mrs. Reed was dying. Upon Jane's arrival, Mrs.
Reed presented her with a letter from her childless uncle, John Eyre,
requesting that Jane come to him in Madeira,
as he wished to adopt her. The letter had been delivered three years before,
but, because of her dislike for the girl, Mrs. Reed had written John Eyre to
inform him that Jane had unfortunately died in an epidemic earlier that year.
Adoption by her uncle would have given Jane not only a family but an
inheritance - one she still might claim. However, she decided to return to
Thornfield.
One night, in the garden at
Thornfield, Mr. Rochester proposed marriage - and Jane accepted. She excitedly
wrote to her Uncle John to tell him the news. But one month later, on the
morning of her wedding day, Jane was startled from sleep by a repulsive old
woman in a long, white dress and fondling Jane's veil. Before bounding out the
door, the wretch shredded the veil. Jane's groom comforted his shaken bride;
and Jane calmed herself and prepared for the marriage.
The ceremony was near its end; the
clergyman had just uttered the words, 'Wilt thou have this woman for thy
wedded wife?' when a voice suddenly broke in: 'The marriage cannot go
on. I declare the existence of an impediment.' When asked for the facts,
this man - a lawyer - produced a document proving that Rochester
had married one Bertha Mason in Jamaica
some fifteen years earlier. Mr. Mason, the mysteriously wounded house guest,
stood as witness to the fact that Bertha was still alive and living at
Thornfield. At last Rochester
stepped forward and acknowledged that the accusation was true, but that his
wife had gone mad; in fact, she came from a family of idiots and maniacs for
three generations back. Rochester
further maintained that this early wedding had been arranged by his father and
brother in hopes that he would marry into a fortune.
The groom-to-be next invited the
lawyer, the clergyman, and Mr. Mason to accompany him to Thornfield and see for
themselves the woman to whom he had been bridled. Only
then could they judge if he didn't have the right to break this compact.
Rochester led the company to the third-story room where his wife was kept. As he
advanced toward a ure in the back corner of the room, 'it grovelled,
seemingly on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal:
but it was covered with clothing; and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild
as a mane, hid its head and face.' When Rochester finally restrained the raging,
bellowing beast, he turned to the spectators and declared, 'That is my
wife.'
That night, Jane left Thornfield,
bewildered and heartbroken. With the little money she had, she bought a ride on
the first coach that happened by. After traveling for two days, she was dropped
off at a remote crossroads and spent the night huddled in the heather. Her
meager meals were made up of bilberries. Finally, the woman found her way to
Marsh End, the home of St. John Rivers and his two sisters, Mary and Diana.
They were very kind to the girl - who introduced herself as Jane Elliot - and
nursed her back to health.
Then one day St.
John received word from Madeira
that his cousin John Eyre had died, leaving twenty thousand pounds to his next
of kin - Jane Eyre. The family lawyer was now trying to locate Jane through her
uncle's cousin, St. John Rivers himself. Amazed and delighted to find that St. John and his sisters
were in fact family, Jane insisted on apportioning
them a share of the inheritance.
Jane remained in the home of St. John. One day,
however, he came and expressed to Jane his long-felt desire to travel to India as a
missionary, and asked Jane to accompany him - as his wife and assistant. Jane
kindly declined his offer: St. John
did not love her as she wished to be loved. By some intuition, she sensed that
she was needed elsewhere.
Then one night Jane had a vivid dream,
in which Edward Rochester called to her and beckoned her to come to him. In
response to the dream she returned to Thornfield. But upon her arrival, she
found only a blackened ruin where the mansion had stood. At a nearby inn Jane
learned that during harvest time a fire had broken out in the night at
Thornfield. Rochester
had desperately attempted to rescue his lunatic wife, who was on the roof
screaming wildly and waving her arms. But just as he approached her, she had
leaped to her death.
Jane rushed to the farm where Mr.
Rochester was now living, only to find her once strong and handsome master a
lonely, helpless cripple. He had lost both his sight and his hand in the
attempted rescue. Jane's love for Rochester
was still strong, and she gladly chose to marry him. Eventually, sight returned
to one eye, so that her husband could witness the birth of a son - who had
obviously inherited his father's once-fine features.
Comment
Because the publishing industry of the
early and middle nineteenth century spurned female writers, Charlotte Bronte
chose to work under the androgynous pseudonym Currier Bell.
Jane Eyre was written in the first-person,
autobiographical form, allowing Bronte to draw the reader into her heroine's
plight. This was a successful approach, for even though critics point out some
structural flaws in the book, it has always remained a very popular work.
