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JANE EYRE by CHARLOTTE BRONTE

The novel focuses on social questions, problems of middle class people, especially women. The importance of the middle class is constantly growing. ! Political issue are very important but this doesn’t make the novel of limited interest, archetypal questions ( =universal values which can be recognised everywhere ) ! It is an open text, which is a definition for a classic novel → it means that it is a literary text that never fails to talk to different types of people from different cultures; it asks questions and provides answers. ! → tendency to use quotes and characters (like in Pride and Prejudices) as if they had an important significance to the reader. That’s why it is still very popular, because the novel is still able to provide a personal meaning. ! Topics that readers find easier to remember:! - mnemic = dis-membered episodes/characters (easily decontextualised and readapted)! - suffering, romance (=love story. We also have a subtext of gothic romance combined with realist narrative, so when don’t have a dismissal of the gothic romance but we have a combination and cooperation of the 2 narrative modes. Jane Eyre is a text that makes sense in a way because of this cooperation)! - egalitarian marriage = Jane and Mr Rochester have to be considered equal. Jane, the governess, tells Mr Rochester, the master, that they are equal → strongly innovative in the Victorian mindset. Still today the power of the 2 genders are questioned and that’s another reason why Jane Eyre is still popular. ! Jane Eyre’s reception Published in 1847 in October. In the same year were published: Wuthering Heights ( by Ellis Bell ) and Agnes Grey ( by Acton Bell )! → all the novels were signed by male pen name ( in reality they were the 3 Bronte sisters ). !

Upon publication JE it caused a literary sensations, many critics praised its figure, strength and freshness. It underwent a second edition the following year, because it was so successful. But it was also criticised, in 1848 there was a review, which accused the novel of “moral Jacobinism” → the word Jacobine refers to the french revolution (1789). England was divided into: the ones who supported the revolution and those who didn’t. The novel is accused of moral Jacobinism because it deals with serious political issues. We clearly have the expression of a sense of rebellion, visible in Jane’s childhood, where she’s described as a rebel, and outcast, she feels very strongly for justice and injustice. But also when she grows up, she continuously defend her position and struggles against the convention that regulate social dynamics of power, she speaks up to Mr Rochester and Mrs Reed. She is described as a slave who is rebelling against her position. When she is a child she is even compared to Guy Fawkes → a conspirator who attacked king James, he tried to overthrow the power of the king. ! Initially it was praised but some problem were born when people started to think that the author pf these novels weren’t man, but young women and therefore these novels were accused f being anti christian because the protagonist were too ambitious. Unwomanly assertions. Some people even thought that there was only one author.! 1849: Charlotte visits London, to give the proof that there are actually 3 authors. Here her authorship is being known, she become famous. Here we have a sort of split:! On the one hand we have the determined Jane Eyre, on the other hand we have Charlotte Bronte, who didn’t want her reputation to get ruined by her characters.! Split between 2 values: ! self-confidence , women who get on with their life, being successful with your own talent (value of the middle class). While Charlotte Bronte is extremely guarded, presenting herself as a respectful woman. !

1850: she published the2nd edition of Withering Heights and Agnes Grey, where she added “ A Biographical Notice of the authors” → where she admits that the 2 authors were actually 3 sisters. Here Charlotte Bronte is very straight forward, she describes her sisters as women who lived in isolation, not particularly wise or witty. Why does she do that? Because she is trying to defend her own reputation and the reputation of her family. ! Jane Eyre is a rebel, although her author didn’t praise rebel women in real life. ! 1857: publication of Elizabeth Gaskell’s “the life of Charlotte Bronte” → she was a friend of Charlotte and she published a biography. It represents the birth of “the Bronte myth” of “the Haworth myth” (village where the sisters lived). Gaskell presented the village as a wild, detached village, far away from the cities in England. She describes the life of the sisters as a life of isolation from proper education, from taste and culture. The first pilgrimage started the year after the publication and the visitors were surprised because the village wasn’t as Gaskell had described it. It was lively, active thanks to the2nd wave of the industrial revolution, it wasn’t secluded from life. That’s why we talk about a myth.! Gaskell wanted to clear the reputation especially of Charlotte, so that the novels could be read → before the publication the novels were considered vulgar. Gaskell also presented the family as “victims” fo the father, they couldn’t do what they wanted, and writing novel was an escape for the daughters. Also this myth was debunked, in fact the father was nice. ! → we have to remember that this myth was created by Charlotte herself when she published the biographical notice. ! Gaskell just wanted to move the readers sentimentally, to drive them to understand the difficulties that the Bronte siblings had to overcome. ! In the victorian age JE continued to breed but t wasn’t considered an artistic piece of work, she wasn’t appreciated by literary critics, it was considered to be spoilt by the excessive attention to passion and the emotional life of the characters. !

D.Cecil in 1934 describes Jane Eyre as an example of vulgarity and incompetence, the plot is not plausible, the formal level is ruined by the excessive attention to the feelings. ! E.M.Forster 1927 described Jane eyre as over-emotional! W.Woolf in 1925: appreciates Charlotte Bronte. She says “at the end we are steeped through and through with the genius, the vehemence, the indignation od Charlotte Bronte.” For her C.Bronte is a genius-like author. ! For much of the 20th century JE and Wuthering Heights don’t belong in the literary canon. This changes in the 1970s! → ideological turn of the 1970s = it means that now what critics look for in a text is not just the formal aspects, but the political issues, social concerns, that ca be revealed by the analysis of a literary text. The political vision of texts is important. ! Some of the works that helped with the re-consideration of Jane Eyre:! • S.M.Gilbert and S. Gubar “the madwoman in the attic” (1979): the title refers to Bertha (who was mad). Bertha and the gothic aspects (which we also find in Jane’s childhood) weren’t considered artistic, but now they have a central role. Gothic is now recognised as a special narrative mode because it is able to give voice to the sense of oppression and satisfaction with received power. This narrative mode highlights the situation of women who are trapped in the role of “angel of the house” by the social conventions.! • E.Showalter, “A Literature of their Own” (1977): she writes a new history of literature focusing on female authors who were neglected by the literature canon (authors like virginia woolf and Charlotte Bronte) ! • Jean Rhys, “Wide Sargasso Sea” (1966): we find the voice of Bertha. The narrative is focus on the condition of oppression, suffered by women.!

JANE EYRE AND ITS CONTEXT! It was published in 1847, so fully into the victorian age. It’s important because Jane Eyre was published two years before Dickens’s Copperfield. Both the novels are Bildugs Roman = they are about a young person, who isn’t wealthy and the life of the protagonist isn’t at first easy, but at the end they reach success, it’s a worldly success (mondano).! For the authors of the BildungsRoman, the protagonists are similar to them: for Dickens, Copperfield was similar to him. They both had to overcome a number of obstacles, social and economical obstacles ( ex. Dickens’s father was arrest4ed and he had to work in a factory). ! For Jane Eyre we have a completely different scenario. We can recognise the initials of Jane Eyre in Currer Bell, however we can find autobiographical references in the novel. Ex → Helen refers to Charlotte’s sister Mariah who died young. Also Charlotte Bronte had been a governess, like Jane, both spoke french. A governess is considered a social figure, in between servants and middle class. The governess doesn’t belong to the working class, it’s na example of the low middle class → because the salary was very low and moreover they had to live like servants. This was perceived as a condition of remarkable economic and social dependence → they didn’t have their own place, has limited free time.! We have autobiographical references but at the same time there still are differences between Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte. Jane is a threatening character for Charlotte’s social prestige, while Copperfield wasn’t (also because Dickens is a male character).! Copperfield will reach happiness in marriage, but the main point of his success isn’t represented by romance, but by the fact that he becomes a successful business man. Jane doesn’t reach success in her professional life, she does get rich but because she receives some mysterious kind of inheritance from a relative, and only after that she goes back to mr Rochester → this is linked to women condition, it was hard for a woman to gain independence from their work. They were allowed to work but they couldn’t reach economic independence → so for Jane her main success is her marriage.!

Another difference is in the narrative technique:! DC is an autobiography because Dickens tells his own story.! In both the novels we find an autodiagetic narrator (=union of narrator voice and narrated characters)! In Copperfield we fin a realist narrative mode, but he also introduced a lot of gothic features (not many in Copperfield since it’s an autobigraphy)! In JE we have an introduction of the gothic features, used to give voice to the oppression of women within the victorian social and politica condition So the gothic is used to express what the realist narrative isn’t able to express alone. ! REALISM AND GOTHIC! • Definition of the kind of gothic given by the scholar Robyn Warhol (1996) → “Double gender, double genre in Jane Eyre” “gothic and realism are not so much in competition as in continuous oscillation with one another, serving to double each other at crucial moments of both narratives” =gothic and realism serve to double each other in crucial moments! The realistic narrative gives a rational explanations of every event of the story, while the gothic narrative instead presents a lot of irrational elements that can not be explained.! • Robert Heilman (1958) “Charlotte Bronte’s new gothic”! = she uses a new kind of gothic.! Accord to him , gothic in the 19th century become mixed with others languages, especially the language of folklore, of fairytales and romances.! New gothic in Jane Eyre Settings:! Traditional gothic: castle, mountains etc.. that were placed far away, outside of England, in exotic places! JE: in England, there is no longer the distance, the remote seclusion. The countryside in England is invested with a kind of myth of old-fashioned values, connected to the rural society. The readers find gothic i the mist unlikely places !

Horror:! Traditional: use of irrational elements like ghosts etc! JE: the irrational elements still exist but they didn’t come from the outside, they come from the mind. It is a new kind of horror, a psychological horror. It’s also in this period that scientists started to study the mind, which was perceived as something mysterious. ! ➤What kind of ghosts do we find in JE? Bertha. Her laugher is presented as something supernatural. Here the gothic is dismissed bu the realism when Jane is told that this laughters of one of the servants. Also Bertha is described as a vampire, a ghost etc. Also all the gothic and mysterious moments come from Bertha ( she sets the fire….). ! The most important gothic sections that we find are the ones connected to Bertha and to Jane’s childhood. ! In the 2nd chapter we find little Jane who is frightened by a light that she thinks is a ghost. This light in reality comes from Jane’s mind and from her excessive mental work. ! Characters:! traditional: we have established characters: the villan, the hero etc..! JE: we have unconventional characters. Mr Rochester is an unconventional hero → he’s not beautiful, he uses a violent language while talking to Jane. He’s a strange mixture of villan and hero, he’s a byronic character. ! Jane’s unconventionality as a heroine, becomes strikingly. She is not beautiful, she describes herself as “plane”. ! What is unconventional is also the relationship between hero and villan. In traditional gothic the hero is imprisoned by the villan, while in Jane Eyre there are a lot of prisons.! There are also a lot of episodes where the heroine rescues the hero. Ex = when Bertha sets fire on Mr Rochester’s bedroom, Jane saves him. Bertha also arms only male characters, she never arms Jane ( she only destroyed her wedding vale ). ! At the end of the novel, when Jane comes back to Mr Rochester, she rescues him. He lost everything, he’s blind and she comes and rescues him.! When she is indoor Jane accepts imprisonment, while when she is outdoor she feels free. The first proposal, happens outdoor. In the

courtship chapter, there is a struggle fro power between Jane and Mr Rochester → we have social disparity: she is a governess and Rochester is her master, she doesn’t know that he is already married. ! → at the end of the novel the situation is different: he needs Jane’s support and also her money. The gender dynamic and the power dynamic has changed. ! There are also women villains:! Jane feels this strong sense of injustice, the only hierarchy that she accepts moral hierarchy. So with Mrs Reed she feels that she is morally superior, so she feels the right to stand up to her. ! These women villains are:! - the stepmother Mrs Reed: who mistreats her! - Bertha: is presented by Rochester as “moral evil”. The relationship between Bertha and Jane is complicated (they are often described as polar opposites): from the one hand we have Jane, a fine civilised woman, while Betha is described as a beast, who doesn’t even speak, isn’t able to stand up. But they have a relation based not only on the concept of alterity, but on the concept of the double= between the 2 there is a relation of identity, sameness → Little Jane is a sort of double for Bertha → In Jane’s childhood we have a sort of imagery that e fin in the chapter that describe Bertha. Ex. the red imagery (the red room, Jane’s anger described as embers. for Bertha the red appears (with the fire, she id described as a vampire … ) ! Red represents the need of rebellion, the passion.! When she grows up Jane, unlike Bertha, learns how to train her mind, how to prevent emotions from overtaking control of her actions. ! In Jane Eyre we have a domestic gothic: the real imprisonment for characters doesn’t come from the villains, instead it comes from society. Jane isn’t imprisoned by the evil stepmother, she is imprisoned by her condition of outcast. → The real imprisonment comes from patriarchal society !

Childhood There’s a big section fo the novel that is completely devoted to Jane’s childhood → representation of Jane’s imagination! Children imagination is something that we assume it is important but it is not the case. → before the 19th century childhood isn’t exist, it was invented in the 19th century. In the 19th a new perception of childhood develops.! Before, childhood was not considered as a special prior in one’s life. From the perspective of literature, child characters become predominant when more attention toward childhood is given. This new perception of childhood was born during romanticism, thanks to Russeau’s books→ he stated that children are closer to nature, unlike adults, so they should spend their time outside. The romantic. ! “the child is the father of the man” → if the poet wants to create poetry, he has to go back to his childhood. The child imagination is he most precious type of imagination that we can find. ! With Jane Eyre we are no tin the romantic age, but the victorian inherit the romantic theory of childhood but they change it. ! Jane’s immaginativo as a child is important, but it also need to be monitored, because it can easily be mislead by adult characters. (infact she is accused of being a liar)! She used reading as a source of inspiration! • Bewick’s The History of British Birds: ! • Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels → she used this book to escape from reality, to express her desire to travel! slide! This affects her way she looks at reality. Example: this is how she reacts to the abuse of the cousin! “wicked and cruel boy! You are like a murderer- you are like a slave-driver-you are like the Roman Emperors!”! I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, & C! slide!

Jane as a child: the child’s “special ways”: chapter 4! compared to Wordsworth’s “we are seven” ! This is how she reacts toward Mr Brocklehurst “No sight so sad as that of a naughty child”, he began, “especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where! This is the romantic side of Jane’s childhood! CONTROLLING THE CHILD’S MIND! In the romantic period, there are aspects related to the child’s imagination, considered something important, with a creative divine power. Being close to nature, the child can experience genuine, authentic creation with his imagination. This has to be kept pure and not polluted by adultness.! The child is closer to nature, and like the poet is able to create something genuine.! To some extent Charlotte shares this view, but she is also victorian, which means that she is convinced that having talent is not enough, they have to work hard in order to be successful.! She is both romantic and Victorian in the description of childhood, highlighting the importance of child’s imagination. In the Victorian age the imagination could be misunderstood by adults.! Example: in the chapter where there is a disease, Jane is one of the few children that don’t die! Example of the adults not understanding the child’s imagination. Chapter 4: My Brocklehurst offers Jane a coercionary tale ( racconti moraleggianti. A child protagonist misbehaving and being punished for this )! “Here is a book entitled the Child’s Guide; read it with prayer, especially the part containing an account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G, a naughty child addicted to falsehood and deceit” →Jane behaviour is misunderstood as a sense of falsehood and so Mr Brocklehurst wants to educate her with this coercionary tale. He doesn’t want her to use her fantasy and imagination. Imagination is

considered as a tender to alter reality, to lie. In that episode, when she is in Loward, mr Brocklehurst gives a speech to the teachers (la fa mettere in un angolo con la scritta bugiarda) c! “Teachers, you must watch her: keep your eyes on her movements, with well her words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save her soul” → teachers must observe Jane’s behaviour. This is similar to the behaviour in the asylums, where people with mental illness are constantly controlled. ! So the idea in the childhood chapters, is that imagination si compared to insanity. The chapter where this subtext is highlighted is the chapter of the red room. Chapter 2! The red room represents the first prison in which Jane is locked. This room is a room that she hates, is where her uncle died. When she misbehaves she has to stay there. And in this room she has ghostly appearances, but in reality the real ghosts that she sees are the ghosts produced by her mind activity. ! There are 2 ghostly episodes:! 1. when she doesn’t see herself in the mirror! 2. when she sees the lights ! Episode 1:! “ all looked colder and darker in that ...