Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre

Biographical Background

• Born in 1816, the third daughter of the Rev. Patrick Bronte and his wife Maria.

• Brother Patrick Branwell was born in 1817

• Her sisters Emily and Anne were born in 1818 and 1820.

• In 1820, the Bronte family moved to Haworth.

Clergy Daughters School

• In 1824 the Bronte girls were enrolled at Clergy Daughter’s Bridge at Cowan Bridge.

• In 1825, Maria and Elizabeth, the two eldest daugthers, became ill, left the school, and died.

• Charlotte and Emily were brought home.

Roe Head

• In 1831 Charlotte became a pupil at the school at Roe Head, but left school the following year to teach her sisters at home.

• She returned to Roe Head School in 1835 as a governess.

• She left Roe Head in 1838 to become a governess to a family.

Brussels

• The three sisters decided toopen their own school.

• In 1842 Charolotte and Emily went to Brussels to ocomplete their studies.

• After a trip home to Haworth, Charlotte returned alone to Brussels where she remained until 1844.

• She became infatuated with a married school headmaster.

Bronte Sisters’ Publications• Upon her return home from

Brussels, Charlotte discovered Emily’s poems. They decided to publish a selection of the poems of all three sisters. In 1846, they published Poems, written under the pseudonymns of Currer, Ellis and Acton Belle.

• Charlotte completed The Professor which was rejected for publication.

• In 1847, Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s Agnes Grey were published under the Bell pseudonyms.

London

• In 1848, Charlotte and Ann visited their publishers in London and revealed their true identities.

• In 1849, Charlotte visited London and began to move in literary circles. She met Elizabeth Gaskell and Thackery. Gaskell published The Life of Charlotte Bronte in 1857. Bronte dedicated Jane Eyre to Thackery.

• In 1848, her brother Patrick and her sisters Emily and Anne died.

Marriage

• The Rev. A.B. Nicholls, curate of Haworth, proposed marriage to Charlotte in 1852. Her father opposed the marriage, and in 1854 they were married.

Illness and Death

• In 1854 Charlotte, expecting a child, caught pneumonia.

• She died on March 31, 1855.

Jane Eyre• Themes

– Love vs. Autonomy- The quest to be loved and the search for identity

– Religion – Throughout the novel Jane struggles to find the right balance between moral duty and earthly pleasure

– Social Class – Jane Eyre is critical of Victorian England’s strict social hierarchy. Bronte explores this theme through Jane’s position as a governess.

– Gender Relations – Jane struggles to achieve equality and overcome oppression.

Motifs

• Fire and ice – Fire represents Jane’s passions; ice represents the oppressive forces trying to extinguish Jane’s vitality.

• Substitute mothers – Jane encounters a series of nurturing and strong women on whom she can model herself – Bessie– Miss Temple– Helen Burns– The moon– Diana and Mary Rivers

Symbols

• Bertha Mason – a manifestation of Jane’s subconscious feelings

• The Red Room – a symbol of what Jane must overcome in her struggles to find freedom, happiness and a sense of belonging

Conclusion

• Jane becolmes an independt woman in a world of inevitable struggle.

• The conclusion of the novel chronicles the totality of Jane’s triumph over all that threatened her will: society, St. John, Rochester, and religion.

• At the end of the novel, Jane is a fully realized psychological entity.

Jane Eyre and the Fairy-Tale Plot

Cinderella--Poor girl with heart of gold oppressed by wicked stepmother and stepsisters gets her chance to meet a Prince and prove her superiority, but not without serious obstacles along the way.

Beauty and the Beast?

Jane Eyre and the Fairy-Tale Plot

Bluebeard

“I lingered in the long passage to which this [staircase from attic] led, separating the front and back rooms of the third story: narrow, low, and dim, with only one little window at the far end, and looking, with its two rows of small black doors all shut, like a corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle” (91 Norton)

Scene from Bela Bartok’s opera: Bluebeard’s Castle

Jane as Otherworldly Sprite

• Mrs. Reed (22)

• Rochester (104, passim)

Titania’s Awakening by Charles Sims

“Poor Orphan Child”

Jane Eyre and the Romance/Marriage Plot

“Once upon a time, the end, the rightful end, of women in novel was social—successful courtship, marriage—or judgmental of her sexual and social failure—death.” Rachel DuPlessis

Jane Eyre and the Bildung Plot

• a.k.a. Quest Plot • Bildungsroman: growing up story; a novel dealing

with the growth and education of the protagonist• Typically a male hero, on a journey toward self-

realization/independence• Often orphaned or presented with other

challenges• e.g., Dickens’ Great Expectations, David Copperfield

Marriage Plot vs. Bildung PlotContradictory contemporary views:

19th c. women’s fiction typically ends in the female protagonist’s setting aside the bildung plot by either getting married or dying. (Rachel DuPlessis)

19th c. women’s fiction often shows that through marriage, women and men develop individually by merging of female and male spheres and gender roles. (Chris R. Vanden Bossche)

Pride & Prejudice, Emma, Little Women, Wuthering Heights, Return of the Native, Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss, etc. (2 heroines already married, die anyway: Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary)

Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot

• “Dark Romanticism”• Mystery • Haunted castle or house• Dreaming and nightmares• Doppelgänger or alter ego• Physical imprisonment • Psychological entrapment and helplessness• Involvement of the supernatural• Psychology of horror and/or terror

Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare, 1781

Mystery

Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot

The Byronic Hero

A.K.A. Villain-Hero: Aristocratic, charming, moody, solitary, secretive, intelligent, cynical, and emotionally wounded. Irresistable to women--relationships destructive.

Lord Byron by Richard Westall, 1813 Byron in Albanian attire by Thomas Phillips

Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot

Byronic heroes of Brontë sisters

Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot

The Distressed Heroine

“Female Gothic”

Female protagonist is pursued and persecuted by a villainous patriarchal figure in unfamiliar settings and terrifying landscape.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

Lady Macbeth by Henry Fuseli 1784

Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot

Architecture of the Mind

Gothic heroines explore their unknown inner selves as they wander through the mysterious house

North Lees Hall, c. 1590

Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot

The Tragedy of the Brontës

• Branwell--addiction to alcohol and opium

• 1848: Family caught cold/flu leading to 3 deaths– Branwell and Emily in 1848; Anne in 1849.

• 1854: Charlotte married Rev. A.B. Nicholls and died same year (pregnant)

Acknowledgements• Bossche, Chris R. Vanden. “Moving Out: Adolescence.” In A Companion toVictorian Literature and Culture. Ed.

Herbert Tucker. Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 1999. (82-96)

• DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Writing Beyond the Ending:Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers. Blomington: Indiana UP, 1985.

• Gaskell, Elizabeth. Life of Charlotte Bronte, London: Smith, Elder, 1857.

• Glossary of Gothic Terms at Georgia Southern University’s Department of English and Philosophy:

http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/~dougt/goth.html

• Hall, Renee. "The DNA of Fairy Tales: Their Origin and Meaning"

http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/general/ge-rhall.htm

Images:

• Angria map and woodcut showing school:

http://www.beepworld.de/members8/desireebouvier/emilybronte.htm

• Bewick’s birds: http://www.sharecom.ca/bewick/vignettes/vignettes.html

• Albanian Byron by Thomas Phillips, 1835: http://englishhistory.net/byron/life.html

• Charlotte Brontë, from the portrait by George Richmond. BBC Hulton Picture Library. Chalk: http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/victorian/topic_2/illustrations/imbronte.htm

• Emily Bronte by Branwell Bronte: http://chnm.gmu.edu/ematters/issue8/lathbury/lathbury_body.htm

• Henry Fuseli paintings: www.artchive.com

Acknowledgements, cont.

• Jane Eyre, 1996 film stills: http://www.angelfire.com/nc/janeeyre/moviepics.html

and http://www.math.utah.edu/~gold/gainsbourg.html

• Lord Byron at age 25 (1813 portrait by Richard Westall): http://www.csulb.edu/~csnider/brontes.html

• North Lees Hall, photo: http://www.lovetripper.com/issues/issue-35/jane-eyre.html

• Portrait by Branwell Brontë of his sisters, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte (c. 1834):

http://www.csulb.edu/~csnider/brontes.html

• Titania’s Awakening by Charles Sims (1873-1928) http://www.modjourn.brown.edu/mjp/Image/Sims/Sims.htm

Charlotte Brontë’s

Jane Eyre