Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte [Archive] - Literature Network Forums

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08-23-2007, 03:46 AM

"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte (a Yorkshire girl!) is one of my all time favourite love story and it is different from the rest because their love is not based on looks but a mutual yearning of their soul. They do indeed in the beginning of the book admit to each other that they do not find each other attractive.

Unlike Jane Austen's "Emma", who is self-righteously brilliant, witty and beautiful and also can be sometimes "wittily" cruel to others, Jane Eyre has certain vulnerability and a deep sense of compassion, which touches the core of our own soul. Jane Eyre's suffering does not change her but makes her into a strong and a compassionate person. We identify with her because we can relate to her. She knows herself but also has self-doubt but she triumphs in her self-dignity. Even when she is about to lose everything she stands firm and does not become an emotional wreck. In one of the poignant moments in the book, she brings to the surface the turmoil of her soul when she learns that Mr. Rochester, the man she loves is to marry someone else, with tears running down her cheeks she tells him:

"Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you?
Do you think I am an automaton?
A machine without feelings?
And can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips,
And my drop of living water dashed from my cup?
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and simple,
I am soulless and heartless?
You think wrong!
I have as much soul as you,
And full as much heart!
And if God had gifted me with some beauty
And much wealth, I should have
Made it as hard for you to leave me,
As it is now for me to leave you..."

I think it is the most heart-wrenching words ever written in the name of love...a love that stands beyond physical beauty, wealth and power. A love that does not make a slave of each other's lust but makes each other grow not in each others shadow but in bright sunshine of their souls...

rima

03-29-2010, 02:39 PM

Charlotte Bronte

It is in vain to say human beings
ought to be satisfied with tranquility:
they must have action; and they will make it
if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to
a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in
silent revolt against their lot….
Women are supposed to be very calm generally:
but women feel just as men feel;
they need exercise for their faculties,
and a field for their efforts,
as much as their brothers do;
they suffer from too rigid a restraint,
too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer;
and it is narrow-minded in their more privilege
fellow-creatures to say that they ought
to confine themselves to making puddings….
knitting stockings….playing on the piano….
It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them
if they seek to do more or learn more than
custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.-Ch. 12

http://slavicavista.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/jane_eyre1.jpg

As i begin writing of this review, my first view and impressions go to Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and a typical England workhouse attended by poor and miserable orphans,where uproar and laugh of children play in a sad surrounding, that they even were not fully aware of.Such emotions admonish me to the saga of Charlotte Bronte and her work,though she grew up in a family environment, nourished by father and mother ,which after mother’s death followed by help of the aunt/sister of her mother/.Charlotte was a child of Dickens’ milieu,curious and smart,passionate of life and rich in feelings ,which could only be seen associated with twirl of madness,strangeness and passion beyond apprehension of average minds.Being born in mark of these previsions,Charlotte followed that lane to know the challenging call of love with a married man and experience destiny predicted before her birth, which had to gain its expression in her works as well.

Some of that life juice she put into Jane Eyre ,much loved novel by all generations that survived its time and longing to reach timeless.I felt stream of vibrations coming from Jane Eyre and all features she brings into life ,being so mindful and sensitive,with hidden torrent of strong emotions doomed to love in desperate circumstances and opposite to the time of their rising.As a governess with an appointment to Thornfield Manor,she lived her imagined landscape and a fairy tale house with ghosts,dwarfs,wizards and villa’s orb-all of which she dreamed in early childhood by fantasy of a lovely child arisen in whirl of mixed passions ,where God and Devil battled each other.She was lured by spice of ancient insoluble puzzles traveling during the centuries ,the vortex of which brought her to such a place to meet her love for the life:Edward Rochester.As in each true love they fell in love at first meeting,although as life dictates,it has realised much later.He found her in deep dedication to most serene feelings,loyalty, which seemed to him so bewitching since he was a squalid and crestfallen in own experienced strikes of life corresponding his age.That blind devotion he saw in her was the key for his love.What about her?Brave to go toward the face of destiny,she still wanted a port to embrace her great love with no waves and suspicious clearness;everything had to be pure and crystal clear,her emotions must meet only unconventional love.

Our desires are the ones,yet circles that take us and throw around, make a bit different tide of happening.After discovering madness of Rochester’s wife,Jane fled from him, only to come back ,by finding him in complicated condition after losing sight in rescue of own wife that killed in fire.

So, destiny is finally filled-something from reality,some from upgraded imagination ,with answered and partly unanswered expectations and loves,it came to the end.But, i am sure in one;Charlotte met true love in her real life which abundant feelings of,she transmitted in beautiful narrated story about Jane Eyre.Why am i so sure?Because i know taste of love with so strong emotions and passion,and know that such love has never been lost …never went in vain,tracks of brilliant filaments follow their path of love all along the eternity.

Resources

Short description/source Wikipedia

Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character, a small, plain-faced, intelligent and honest English orphan. The novel goes through five distinct stages: Jane’s childhood at Gateshead, where she is abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations; her time as the governess of Thornfield Manor, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family at Marsh’s End (or Moor House) and Morton, where her cold clergyman-cousin St John Rivers proposes to her; and her reunion with and marriage to her beloved Rochester at his house of Ferndean. Partly autobiographical, the novel abounds with social criticism and sinister gothic elements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Eyre

Biography/insert from online-literature/
Growing up in Victorian England, Charlotte and her sisters were inspired by the Romantic authors of the time including Sir Walter Scott, William Wordsworth and Lord George Gordon Byron. As sisters and authors, Charlotte, Emily and Anne gave each other moral support, shared creative ideas and proof-read one another’s work. As the oldest of the Bronte authors, Charlotte approached her writing career as a means to financial independence and to help support her siblings. She was born on 21 April 1816, at 74 Market Street in the village of Thornton near Bradford in Yorkshire County, England
http://www.online-literature.com/brontec/

Addition

One addition from me,that you will feel after reading my introduction-first quote written by Charlotte Bronte.Don't you see it is about an expressed revolt, a longing for more subtle and serious accepting of woman's soul.I couldn't be able to know and feel complete stand of women in her age,but i suppose there must be some truth in that and which inspired her to write Jane Eyre, by giving her a "demon" strenght;yes, it is one feature which is so dominant in her character-as it says:woman is able to do much more than society of her time was thinking of her.Charlotte has because of that given so much space to strenght of a woman in all beauty of love of one man.Like a punishment:look at what i can do!