Central Purpose

[deliaaa]

I was wondering what others has to say about the central purpose in Jane Eyre

[kiki1982]

Coming of age, for everyone I guess.

[MsSilentia]

I know this is a very late answer but I will give it anyway.

I do not know if that is the main theme but if you look at the time and social standards, combine that with what Brontë is actually writing and the fact that Jane Eyre was supposed to be morally dangerous – Gaskell would not let her own daughter read it before she was eighteen – then I see an obvious tendency.

Jane is living as a dependent in a wealthy house. She is supposed to be humble and as long as she stays humble she is habitually abused. When she rebels she is cruelly punished but it also gives one or maybe two changes. The temporary result is that Johns has to stop abusing her since Mrs. Reed will not support him anymore. She wishes him to keep away from Jane and that means to leave her alone. The long-term result is that she is sent to school.

At school, in spite of the hardship in the beginning, she is actually learning to become a person and not just a victim. She has the chance to have an education and she takes it.

She stays there to have her education and then for two years as a teacher. She is calm and content. Then, when Miss Temples leaves, she gets tired of the school. But she has no means to get away from it. There is none to help her. That is, according to expected standards for a female, she is stuck and should just go on there. But she finds a way out by her own means when she advertizes and finds a new place. Again a self-ascertained active action gives the positive change.

At Thornfield she comes to know the master and since she dares to challenge him she will fascinate him. That is dangerous. As a governess she ought to be careful with her employer. But she finds a soul-mate in him, due to a quite cheeky attitude. Once more a positive change as the reward for not being shy and docile.

When her aunt sends for her, Rochester does not want her to go. However, she does what she feels is the right thing and is rewarded, both in seeing that her haughty cousins cannot humiliate her anymore and to see that Mrs. Reed is nothing more than a pitiable old lady. More than that she learns about her uncle.

When Rochester courts Blanche Ingram, she will not act and he says he will find her a new position before the marriage. I felt that to be the most unequal scene between them in the whole book. He can send her away to Ireland to get her out of the way and she is supposed to just be thankful and docile! Then she rebels once more. Believing she has nothing to put against it she will still not let it happen without a protest. And when she thus makes herself a person and not an object he proposes.
Remember his comment: “You glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you mutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal. Janet, by-the-bye, it was you who made me the offer.”
And her cool answer: “Of course I did.”

Then she will soon understand what it means to be dressed, fed and boarded by Rochester. To keep some of her self-worth she writes to her uncle and thus escapes the false marriage.

Rochester still wants her to stay with him and she has a hard time to stand up for herself. She has nothing to fall back upon and the prospects are frightful. She could go the easy way since she has not much of options but instead she runs away, a decision which almost kills her. But, by Providence, she runs into her cousins. Once more a positive change due to her own act of self-worth.

Later she also gets the inheritance due to the letter to her uncle.

Then StJohn wants her to marry him and go to India. She nearly gives in to that and her review on that afterward says that she was a weak fool to even consider it. But in the end she will not subdue but runs back to Thornfield, against caution, against gratitude, against Christian standards, and against common moral. And she is once more rewarded by Providence.

Every time she thus makes an active self-assured action, defying common ideas of what a well-bread lady should do, she experiences a positive change. As a theme it is not brilliant or complicated but it is obviously rebellious.