The novel

[Newcomer]

I am a novice to the writings of the Brontes. I have come to Jane Eyre via the dramatization by Diederick Santer with Ruth Wilson as Jane Eyre. Perhaps not the best way to be get the flavor of the novel but sufficient inducement to read the original as I found the dramatization confusing at parts and stylistically, visually, too Gothic. The dramatization is characterized as 'gothic novel about the passionate courtship between a governess and her tortured employer' and Wikipedia characterizes the novel as:' a classic romance novel -- and is one of the most famous British novels of all time.' As I have some problems with such definitions, I would like to discuss the novel with those who have been fortunate enough to be exposed to literature in college courses or even better have done a study on their own.
I will apologize in advance for the length of my posts. It has not been easy to grasp what Charlotte composed. Perhaps someone can do better.

[ennison]

Is it the term 'Gothic' or the term 'Romance' that causes you to stumble. There are posts on both topics in the forums.

[Newcomer]

Thank you for your reply. I'll attempt to clarify my impressions of the novel if such are understood to be open to correction.
My quibble with such terms is incidental to the novel. I quibble because they may limit the reader to the scope of the composition, if you give them substance beyond recognition as commercial speak.
I would not characterize Jane Eyre as a Gothic novel if one refers to such examples as A. Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho or J. Austen's Northanger Abbey to name but two extremes. While Jane Eyre has elements of the Gothic novel, such as the Red Room, the mad woman and the supernatural communication between Jane and Mr. Rochester, it's theme is not the development of psychological terror but rather the evolution of character past the conventions of the day. Charlotte Brontë paints on a broader canvas than the classification of Gothic novel would suggest. I would suggest that the theme is even more complex than that of the Romantic novel but this is a separate subject.

[ennison]

Well in the early 19th century the Gothic novel was very popular amongst literate young women of a certain type. The features of Gothic literature found their way into the writing of those who were not strictly speaking Gothic, were not 'sensationalist'. So wroters like the Brontes used the Gothic for their own more serious purposes. Other writers parodied it to poke fun at the ideas, and at the readers - Austen etc.
A similar trend can be seen with science-fiction in the 20th century. Its heyday was in the forties to sixties and it tended to be a niche market. However it has gone beyond that narrow focus and has influenced mainstream writers in a whole variety of ways.

[Newcomer]

I agree that the novel appealed to a certain segment of the Victorian young women and this is confirmed by the second printing very soon after the publication. However I do not have any idea how the readership declined in the next two generations. Perhaps there is a superficial similarity in that now the novel is enshrined as a classic but read almost solely by young English majors, also a small segment of the educated females. This begs the question: is it's place solely in the Feminine, not to be confused with Feminist, literature or does it have a broader if historic significance. An interesting question for me.
Perhaps a partial answer lies if one can achieve an emotional understanding of the mind of the reader contemporary to the novel. This not only of the leisure of the upper middle class as well as the position of women vs. the privileged one of men. This difficulty applies to the works of J. Austen which are thematically much more compact than of Charlotte Bronte but especially to the Biblical allusions in Jane Eyre. For instance in the characterization of Rochester when he uses the allusion to Achan's transgression and in Jane's mind the similarity to hers transgression the will of God.
Who among the contemporary readers knows such Biblical references which were quite readily at hand for the Victorian reader? Is it because we lack the emotional response to such allusions that the character of Richardson comes across as not fully developed?
A more complex allusion is in chapter 13, Rochester’s comment in examining Jane’s pictures: ”Where did you see Latmos? For that is Latmos.” Charlotte here used symbolism to foreshadow the developing love of Jane for Rochester. In the Greek legend of Latmos, the goddess Selene, fell in love with Endymion, a mortal and asked Zeus to grant him eternal life so he would never leave her. Selene was a goddess of the moon, of silvery light, a daughter of Hyperion and Theia. In the Roman era, Selene evolved into Diana and Charlotte used this name for one of the found cousins in the second part of the novel. The connection with the moon is reinforced where Jane, in a moment of extreme stress, appeals to Mother, identified with the silvery light of the moon.
Charlotte has embedded mythological references that for the knowledgeable Victorian reader, immeasurably enriched the reading of the novel.

[ennison]

These are very interesting points and I'm sure that there are some Bronte fans out there and some with a wide grasp of mid-Victorian literature who could give you very interesting answers. I'm not sure if one can account simply for the vagaries of fashion in literature any more than in clothes. I feel without being in any way sure that as the century wore on a more serious climate of opinion would draw literate young women (and men) towards more serious literature. Gothic influence survives today of course.
I'm not sure the allusions are necessarily 'arcane'. Quite a few readers still will be aware of the references to fundamental texts. Probably fewer as time goes on. Most of the more intelligent comments on Austen and on Romance as a serious fictional genre seem to come from women. Lots of reasons for that perhaps. Someone said it was to do with the width of the brush employed by a writer: fine brush equals intimate detail thus more favoured by women; broad brush produces sweeping social generalisations and action thus more favoured by men. For my own reading that doesnt quite fit but I'm too independent for that anyway! or too dashed crotchety

[Newcomer]

I wrote as much for my own clarification as to invite comment. You wrote “Most of the more intelligent comments on Austen and on Romance as a serious fictional genre seem to come from women.”, where are they? Just shy or moved on to Harlequin romances? I am more pessimistic than you “the century wore on a more serious climate of opinion would draw literate young women (and men) towards more serious literature.”, we are living in the visual age and our enjoyment comes from predigested dramatizations of the classics.
I am as guilty as the rest since I would not have read Jane Eyre had I not seen and been dissatisfied with the recent dramatization. However I am puzzled with comments from readers on the forum that analysis diminishes one's enjoyment. It would seem to enrich it as in reading the biography of the Bronte sisters gives greater appreciation of the first half of the book.

[Newcomer]

Jane Eyre is sometimes categorized as a Romantic novel but the category is even more misleading than the arguments for the Gothic novel. The Gothic novel began with The Castle of Otranto (1764), peaked with Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) and can be argued, ended with Dracula by Bram Stoker in 1897. The reign of Queen Victoria (1837—1901) encompasses the Victorian literature category while the Romantic novel is equated with Romanticism, the literary movement is somewhat imprecisely dated 1798 to 1832 in England. Therefore it can be shown by whatever themes one emphasizes that Charlotte was influenced by all these categories in the creation of Jane Eyre. But even a casual reader will note the themes of Romance and Religion in the character of Jane Eyre.
The Romantic genre as defined by a principal character, a heroine, focuses on romantic love and has an emotionally satisfying ending. A somewhat trite formula if adhered mechanically however it is in the mix how the chef prepares the bouillabaisse. Forgiver the French simile, it's but a nod to Adele in the novel.
Romance or specifically, love in Jane Eyre is a very complex emotion and is intertwined with Religion, specifically moral choice. and lies at the crux of Jane's evolving character. Both are so complex and intertwined that I can but treat them separately. It is simplistic to characterize the evolution of Jane's love by this single word, as it's connotation changes so drastically with the growth of Jane's character as sketched by Charlotte . In chapter 4, defying Mrs. Reed, Jane a child, speaks prophetically:“You think I have no feelings, and I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I can not live so; and you have no pity.”
In the hungry and cold halls of Lowood Jane finds a soul mate who's bearing under punishment for a minor transgression makes a lasting impression. “The punishment seemed to me in a high degree ignominious, especially for so great a girl – she looked thirteen or upwards. I expected she would show signs of great distress and shame; but to my surprise she neither wept nor blushed; composed, though grave, she stood, the central mark of all eyes. “How can she bear it so quietly – so firmly?” I asked of myself. “where I in her place, it seems to me I should wish the earth to open and swallow me up.” Jane can pour her heart out to Helen Burns and a love of a peer begins but is quenched by what Jane feels is an unjust and senseless death. “ - I must embrace her before she died, - I must give her one last kiss, exchange with her one last word.” At dawn Miss Temple “found me laid in the little crib; my face against Helen Burn's shoulder, my arms round her neck. I was asleep, and Helen was – dead.” Tragedy stalks Jane's search for love.
The first part of the novel has the most naturalistic and vivid writing because it is based on Charlotte's experience of the deaths of her sisters in a religious school. It is impossible to understand Jane when she meets Rochester and the enfolding character of a young woman without the initial chapters where the character is formed.
In what I view as the second part of the novel Jane asks “Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain and little. I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! -- I have as much soul as you and fully as much heart”. Note the similarity to Jane's, at 8 years old, reproach to Mrs. Reed. The need to love has not diminished in the 10 years that Jane has grown into a young woman. But romantic love in Jane is embryonic. When she believes that he will marry Miss Ingram, Jane sees “the necessity of departure, and it is like looking on the necessity of death.” When Rochester assures her “ I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry.”. Jane's reaction is “I was silent: I thought he mocked me.”” When the proposal is repeated, Jane “Still I did not answer, and still writhed myself from his grasp: for I was still incredulous.” “”Do you doubt me Jane?””. “”Entirely.””
For Jane the acme of Romantic love is the continuous interchange of the roles of the lover and of the beloved. Emotionally she can not accept the equality that she desires. The love that she has been seeking, what appears to be in her grasp, Jane is unable to embrace. Nothing in her experience has prepared her for this. The storm that rages that night and splits the great horse-chestnut is a metaphor for the storm that rages inside Jane. When the wedding is aborted and throughout the explanations of Rochester's conduct and subsequent sexual wanderings, Jane is strangely passive. She understands but is emotionally disengaged. She resolves her dilemma by ascertaining a moral precept, not an emotional conviction, “I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principals received by me when I was sane, not mad as I am now … They have a worth - so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now it is because I am insane - quite insane: with my veins running fire and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs.”
Romantic love remains an unresolved conflict in Jane. The cry “ You think ... I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I can not live so.”, is not answered. She has not entangled the Gordian not and has to seek an answer somewhere else.
With the death of her uncle Jane comes into her inheritance, not the twenty thousand but her kin and a home, Moor house. Jane reapplies to St. John's admonition of her newly gotten fortune, that she “neglected essentials to pursue trifles”, she replies “It may be of no moment to you; you have sisters, and don't care for a cousin; but I had nobody; now three relations”. Jane can indulge herself in the love of kin and home, she refurbishes the cottage and surrounds herself with the newly found kindred. “As our mutual happiness (i.e., Diana's, Mary's, and mine) settled into a quieter character and we resumed our usual habits and studies” However St. John's loveless proposal induces emotional turmoil indicating that her discovery of love is not at an end.
Similarly to the unearthly aid when Jane leaves Thornfield, Jane's dilemma is resolved by the voice in the night calling, “Jane, Jane, Jane”, “And it was the voice of a human being – a known, loved, well-remembered voice – that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.” and without hesitation she replies “”I am coming!” I cried. “Wait for me! Oh, I will come!””.
The epiphany is not by reasoned but an emotional transmutation. The previous moral dilemma, withers. Her response is emotional and it is very important to realize that at this moment she does not know of the fire at Thornfield and Bertha's death; that Rochester is free to marry. That that impediment no longer signifies.
Compare chapter 27's “”I must leave Adele and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole life: I must begin a new existence amongst strange faces and strange scenes.” and closes with “”Farewell!” was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added, “Farewell, for ever!”. How far is the above from chapter's 37's ““And this her voice.” I added. “She is all here;her heart, too. God bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again.”” To Rochester doubt that she was not corporal and like his previous mirages she wold leave him, Jane replies “Which I will newer will, sir, from this day.”.
The journey of discovery, from the child's insistence of the right to love, to that of the young girl's love of a companion, to the awakening romantic love of a young woman, to the discovery of love for kin and home, is complete. Jane has found a selfless love without conflict , not thought but discovered through emotional experience.

[Newcomer]

The conclusion of Jane Eyre must have been very troublesome for the Victorian reader. While enclosing love in the custom of a family and a repentant Rochester, Charlotte finishes the sketch of Jane's character with themes that would have belonged in a novel by Thomas Hardy or D.H. Lawrence., and were an anathema to the majority of Victorians.
Before she flees Thornfield and utters these word “Mr. Rochester, I will not be yours”, we have a glimse into Jane's mind in the following: to Rochester's question “What do you anticipate of me?” Jane answers “For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now – but when you get used to me, you will perhaps like me again, - like me, I say, not love me. I suppose your love will effervesce in six months, or less. I have observed in books written by men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband's ardour extends.”
A year latter Jane responds to Rochester seeking assurance that she was not an illusion - “and felt that she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me.”
“Which I newer will, sir from this day.”
And to Rochester's - “but you cannot always be my nurse, Janet: you are young – you must marry one day.”
“I don't care about being married.”
Is this an affirmation of a Platonic love? How to reconcile the explicit sensuality in “I sought a seat for him in a hidden and lovely spot: a dry stump of a tree; nor did I refuse to let him, when seated, place me on his knee: why should I, when both he and I were happier near than apart?” When Rochester from jealousy asks “Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee, when I have given you notice quit?”
“Because I am comfortable there.”
Not only is there's humor in Charlotte's description but an explicit indication of a profound change in Jane's character. Jane is at ease with both the spiritual and physical parts of love. Her love has matured and feels no contradictions.
Charlotte ends Jane Eyre not with thoughts of love of Jane or Rochester, the heroine and hero of the novel but of the secondary male character St. John. Not with a meditation on the happiness of marriage as required by the Romantic novel's emotionally satisfying ending but on death of a religious fanatic. Consequently if one accepts the definition of the Romantic novel then Jane Eyre does not fit. We are left with the Victorian novel, with contradictions in the novel that reflected the unsettling changes in a social order evolving from an agricultural to industrial society.
The aborted wedding at Thornfield permitted Charlotte to avoid the discussion of sexuality which was integral to the planed honeymoon. She begins the ultimate chapter with “Reader I married him.” and a few pages further “I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth.” A page latter, when discussing the partially restored sight of her husband, Charlotte writes “When his first-born was put into his arms he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as once were – large brilliant and black.” Again Charlotte avoids the subject of sexuality. This is quite in line with the repressive sexual values of a small but morally influential Victorian class.

[ennison]

May I copy this and keep it, there are a number of ideas I'd like to think over in there.

[Newcomer]

Of course!
I am pleased that you found it interesting. Please use it anyway you like.

[ennison]

Thank you. I find reading off a screen for long hard on my eyes. I've saved it into Word and printed it off.
As a digressive by the way, are you aware of the novel 'Wide Sargasso Sea' which, if you haven't read, I'm sure you would find of interest.

[rintrah]

This is a fascinating discussion. Forgive the intrusion, but a point of clarification:

Although Jane Eyre can be described (a moot point here) as a romance novel, this is no way infers that it is romantic, that is, a product of English Romanticism. You are right that the period can be defined roughly 1798 to 1832, and it may be an interesting study to investigate how the concerns of Romanticism may have informed the 1840's composition of Jane Eyre. However, the English Romantics were not primarily concerned with romantic love, and so it may be less confusing not to attempt a bridge between two literatry genres that don't really mix.

However, much has been written about the tension that exists in the novel between realism and romance, and the oscilliation between the genres. Robyn R. Warhol's 1996 article 'Double Gender, Double Genre in Jane Eyre and Villette' in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 Vol. 36, No. 4, Nineteenth Century. (Autumn, 1996), pp. 857-875 explores the binary nature of the novel, and in it she argues that there is a mode of interpretation which can unravel the opposing forces within the novel; 'narratological analysis is a means of making visible women authors' activism in exposing and complication oppressive binary categories within culture.'

Other studies have explored the powerful erotic suggestions and the female will in Jane Eyre. Here are a couple of suggested articles.

'A Patriarch of One's Own: Jane Eyre and Romantic Love' by Jean Wyatt in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature Vol. 4, No. 2 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 199-216

'Girl Talk: "Jane Eyre" and the Romance of Women's Narration' by Carla Kaplan in NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction Vol. 30, No. 1 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 5-31

[Newcomer]

Thank you rintrah,
The references are much appreciated. I hope to get access and expand my understanding of the novel. As to the distinction of romance vs Romanticism, I quite agree, just that to dwell in the essay was not a priority. I hope I did not add to the confusion.

[Newcomer]

Jane nearly looses her self in her struggle with romantic love. The strength of self is very evident from the earliest pages of Jane Eyre. Thus the question arises why does Jean go to pieces when the self is so strong? Is the dilemma for the young woman just an unresolvable conflict between love and Victorian morality?
In the very first chapter we come to the example: John Reed “bullied and punished me;.... every nerve I had feared him, every morsel of flesh on my bones shrank when he came near.” When John flung the book at her and falling against a door she cuts her head. Jean's cry of ““Wicked and cruel boy”I said ”you are like a murderer” This causes “He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing.” In fury she gets the better of him. ”I was conscious that a moment's mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties and like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.”
When Rochester attempts to show his love in the conventional way by bestowing the Thornfield jewels on Jane, she objects: “Oh, sir! - never mind jewels! I don't like to hear them spoken of. Jewels for Jane Eyre sound unnatural and stage; I would rather not have them.”
“I ask only this: don't send for the jewels and don't crown me with roses: you might as well put a border of gold lace round that plain pocket-handkerchief you have there.”
When he insists that she have six new dresses, she accepts two. He insists that he choose the colors and settles on “a rich silk of the most brilliant amethyst dye and a superb pink satin”. From the language it is apparent that Jane admires the silks, yet with infinite patience she persuades him, on a sober black satin and a pearl-grey silk. Jane has a strong self-image of her own worth and is not easily mailable.
Rochester has to accept this image: “I might as well 'gild refined gold'. I know it”
Charlotte grew up in a parsonage where her religious beliefs were formed. She composed Jane Eyre under the influence religious beliefs as much as under an exploration of emotions as a basis for love and there was a critical intelligence that mediated between the two.
The 18th. century, Age Of Reason, was succeed by the dislocations of traditional values of class, family and faith. It may help in understanding this turmoil that only 10 years after the publication of Jane Eyre, On the Origin of Species was published in 1859. A cataclysmic dislocation of faith that even 150 years has not found a salve. In religion the Anglican dogma was being challenged by Evangelism. It's popularity was based on the premise that salvation was to be found in direct emotional experience while at the same time maintaining, that the Bible was literally true, and a civic morality that repressed all sexual feelings especially in women. An austere Calvinism prevailed in the north of England, and very probably among a minority of Catholics an otherworldly faith of divine forgiveness, contended as explanations for good and evil.
Given the examples and biblical references cited in emotional crisis in Jane Eyre, Charlotte's religious foundations were deep if at the same time tempered by intellectual skepticism and above all the observed hypocrisy in conduct. Mr. Brocklehurst, is described as “the black marble clergyman”. When asked by Rochester whether the girls at Lowood worshiped their director, Jane replied ““I disliked Mr. Brocklehurst; and I was not alone in the feeing. He is a harsh man; at once pompous and meddling: he cut off our hair”, “He starved us””. Brocklehurst's Evangelical God is of the Old Testament, jealous and vengeful. The young Jane had to hear scripture readings for eight years but these injunction had to contend with Jane's ingrained search for love. A more profound influence was Helen Burn's faith in the God of New Testament, a God of love and forgiveness. But the young Jane questions: “Where is God? What is God?” .... You are sure, then Helen, that there is such a place as heaven, and our souls can get to it we die?” Nor can she reconcile herself to Helen's “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that despitefully use you.”
Young Jane answers “Then I should love Mrs. Reed, which I can not do; I should bless her son John, which is impossible.” An ingrained stubbornness. Jane's experience of good and evil is at odds with such a doctrinaire morality. Yet the injunctions of the Old and of the New Testaments leave a mark on young Jane that only at the end of the novel is she able to resolve.
For the young woman in the turmoil of romantic love, the dilemma is phrased in religious idiom. “Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshiped"
“My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world; almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature: of whom made an idol.”
As the nuptials turn into an exposition of a tragedy, Charlotte poetically phrases the melancholy state as “Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman – almost a bride – was a cold, solitary girl again:”
In despair the wandering mind seek help “remembrance of God;it begot a muttered prayer: these words went up and down in my rayless mind”
“Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.”
“ The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, “the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.”” The language is explicitly religious, biblical, but there is no answer to Jane's appeal.
“”Farewell” was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added,”Farewell, for ever!”” The afore sought help comes, note the gender: “She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart -
"My daughter, flee temptation."
"Mother, I will."
Not the God of Abraham but she, the Mother, answers Jean's cry. Charlotte does a somersault in religious imagery. This totally unexpected yet it is not accidental as Morton parish episode shows where Jane discovers her cousins. Charlotte choses names for the two sisters as Diana and Mary: names of goddesses from pagan and Christian mythology. I suspect that to a careful Victorian reader this was more unsettling than the implied sensuality in the reunion of Jane and Rochester.
Charlotte begins the last chapter with “I married him”. Note the verb used, it is active, not passive. A Victorian woman would have said – I was married. This simple, direct statement is an indication of a profound change in Jane's mind. It is confirmed by the style of language Charlotte uses in the last chapter. The turmoil of the romantic love, alternating between passion and despair and using religious analogies and metaphors of violent nature to describe Jane's feelings, is replaced by a prosaic chronology. The dichotomy between lover and beloved has vanished. Had Charlotte chosen to describe the nuptial bed, no more apt sentence of Jane's feelings could be had than “Because I am comfortable there.” Jane has transcended the limits of the Victorian society. She has become a post Victorian woman.
The astonishing fact is that Jane, the fictional woman, transcends the author. Charlotte was and died bound by Victorian morality. She married without love, was tormented by doubt as to her talent, lack of beauty, and very probably in a God that had taken her sisters and brother before their time. What was the burning ember in Charlotte's imagination that allowed this transcendental leap?

[jeff66]

What was the burning ember in Charlotte's imagination that allowed this transcendental leap?

I happened to read Jane Eyre a few months ago, and I almost find myself "obsessed" by this novel . For sure it will become one of my favorite books and I am still trying to understand what made me like it so much.
In France , the most commonly known Bronte's works is rather Wuthering Heights by E. Bronte which I decided to read also after having finished Jane Eyre . It is apparently also considered as more brilliant on a writing point of view . Personally, I found that Wuthering Heights is more original than Jane Eyre . Characters are stranger , more scary , the bizarre atmosphere is so unique and the relationships between Heathcliff and his "victims" are depicted in such a terrifying way that it might have struck imagination more than enough. In its construction also , I found Wuthering Heigts very modern and successfull . The "flashbacks" , the narration by the 2 witnesses ( Mrs Dean being also an important acting character of the story ) , the mixture and similarity in names , all of this add to the feeling of strangeness , confusion that I believe that author had wanted to create . By the way , the "anti-chronological" narration and the mixture in names made me think that maybe E. Bronte had inspired in a certain way the Faulkner's novel "The sound and the fury" .
Thus , in spite of all of this , I enjoyed more reading Jane Eyre than Wuthering Heights.
I have been fascinated by the character of Jane . Of course , a story of quest for social ascension and search for love is not that uncommon , especially in the 19th century european novels , but to me , the talent of C. Bronte was to transmit to the readers in her writing and style the strenghth of will of her heroin . Everything seems against her ( her unloving adopting family , her poverty , her sexe , her interrogations on the religion , the "betrayal" of Mr Rochester ) and yet she goes forward .
But more than C. Bronte's gifts to deal with the events that Jane goes through to reach her goals ( some I found almost perfect like all the Lowood pasage or some of the seducing scenes at Thornfield , some others seemed sometimes like thrown out from a fairytale - Jane's arrival at Moor House or the disclosure of her parental links with the Saint George family ) , or to end the novel with the "happy ending "of her love affair , I think I have even more been fascinated by the capacity of C. Bronte to render ,through the novel, of Jane's success to assert , to herself and to others , her free mind . And this success is the result of Jane 's own personal perseverance , intelligence and goodness in spite of multiple obstacles. In a way , the story of Jane to me is a story of a successfull personal (r)evolution.
But , in the end , as a reader , if I have to admit that the novel has to end , and the happy ending is , in a sense , a nice way to end it as we have been brought by C Bronte , to love Jane , I have doubts that - if we suppose that Jane can represent in a way some of C. Bronte features - the passionate nature of the young Jane - ( the one who tells to her aunt " I am not deceitful , If I were , I should say I loved you,but I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed ") is as calmed as we could read in the last chapter thanks to her marriage with Mr Rochester.
If Jane Eyre ends happily and apeased , I think that's because C. Bronte has been happy in writing her novel .

Please forgive the english approximations and errors -

[Newcomer]

I happened to read Jane Eyre a few months ago, and I almost find myself "obsessed" by this novel . For sure it will become one of my favorite books and I am still trying to understand what made me like it so much.....

Very interesting reading your comments. No need to apologize for 'the english approximations', as your thoughts are first rate. It is easy to fall into the trap of tunnel vision when discussing a particular author/novel. You have provided a fresh breeze in contrasting Jane Eyre with Wuthering Heights. Charlotte and Emily were very different personalities and at first glance, I would have expected that Charlotte would have composed Wuthering Heights and Emily Jane Eyre since Charlotte was the more adventurous, intellectual and Emily the more retrospective and shy. So much for assumptions.
You seem to have grasped the uniqueness of both novels and have redirected my consideration of the question posed in “What was the burning ember in Charlotte's imagination that allowed this transcendental leap?” Much thanks.
I agree that Jane Eyre is the more 'primitive' novel and Wuthering Heights the more unique, a prognostication of the physiological novel. But to consider Jane Eyre just a novel is to misread it. It is a poem in prose. An emotional outpouring of Charlotte when she was under stress of her father's possible total blindness and the consequence of loosing the security of their home. All the pain of the death of her sisters, her own experiences of the boarding school, her emotional and intellectual aspirations, poured out in the composition of Jane Eyre. It was very quickly written and it is this 'primitive' quality, the honesty, that has captures the imagination of readers. When Charlotte attempted to follow up with Villete and the rewriting of the Professor, she did not succeed in captivating the imagination as with Jane Eyre. Here the intellect was more dominant and her attempts to broaden her vision produced a commentary, not a unique work of art.
What inspired Emily to composes Wuthering Heights will remain a mystery. There is insufficient biographical data to support speculation. She wrote the novel in secret and even Charlotte with whom she shared her thoughts was surprised by it. Surprised is an understatement.
Charlotte's defense against the contemporary criticism that the book was amoral, is apply commented by Phillip Drew in, Charlotte Bronte as a Critic of Wuthering Heights and I can but touch on a few salient points. She apologizes ironically for the readers who were offended by words such as “damn”, “devil”, and “hell” written out in full. Making an interesting comment that Emily being ”herself a native and nursling of the moors” made Wuthering Heights, “rustic all through. It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as the root of heath.” She makes a point to explain 'how Emily became obsessed with the “more tragic and terrible traits” of Yorkshire life.' Charlotte's comment on Catherine “Nor is even the first heroine of the name destitute of certain strange beauty in her fierceness, or of honesty in the midst of perverted passion and passionate perversity.“ But of Heathciff she is censorious, “Heathcliff, may be summed up by the beginning of its first sentence: “Heathcliff, indeed stands unredeemed; never once sweving in his arrow-straight course to perdition.””
Charlotte admired Thackeray not Turner who was her contemporary and the last chapter is in the spirit of Thackeray. After the implied critique of society in the thirty seven chapters, after the iconoclastic “Reader, I married him.”, Charlotte ends Eyre with a whimper. Jane is reconciled with Victorian values, makes an abasement of a genuflection to orthodoxy in religion, marries-off Diana and Mary, grant St. John a happy death.
Your observation “If Jane Eyre ends happily and appeased , I think that's because C. Bronte has been happy in writing her novel .”, seems to me to be inconsistent with the sweep of the novel. It is inconsistent with the intellectual and emotional freedom that Jane has (r)evolved into.(nice point)
I would like to hear your thoughts on Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina as contrasted with Jane Eyre. The two are not that far removed chronologically but worlds apart in stylistic and awarenessof the world.

[ksotikoula]

Hi there! Sorry to enter this conversation so late but “better late than ever”.
About the question:

“Is it the term 'Gothic' or the term 'Romance' that causes you to stumble.”
I consider Jane Eyre principally as a bildungsroman, a novel of development, of coming of age. Romance and Gothic aspects are there to highlight the heroine’s developing character. As you said: It is impossible to understand Jane when she meets Rochester and the enfolding character of a young woman without the initial chapters where the character is formed.


“I agree that the novel appealed to a certain segment of the Victorian young women and this is confirmed by the second printing very soon after the publication. However I do not have any idea how the readership declined in the next two generations.”

“Jane Eyre” had three editions the year it was published and another 2 until Charlotte’s death. After the publication of “The life of Charlotte Bronte” another one was sold out. So, if we consider the limited audience that bought books and knew how to read, then perhaps every house had already a copy of it.
Another explanation could be found in Lucasta Miller’s “The Bronte Myth” which presents how the popularity of the Brontes has fluctuated through the centuries and how the perception of their personalities have changed together with the perception of their works. In the beginning of the 1900’s she says that there had been a decrease in the popularity of the novel (in favor of Wuthering heights) because Charlotte Bronte was considered too Victorian by then. She shows how Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography had first presented Charlotte as a saint tied to her duties and grief (capable of being compared with Jean de Arc), then the presentation of Charlotte’s personality passed to the hands of feminists who continued to make her appear as a victim of patriarchy and then the Freudian’s came to diagnose her (without much examination of the real facts) as a masochistic personality [we are talking about the same woman that in Shirley questioned the tradition that wanted unmarried women to serve the needs of others and insinuated that it only helped some people to exploit their services]. It took the second wave of feminism in the 1970 with their review to scatter many of these misconstructions people had about Jane Eyre and her author. Lucasta Miller claims that for some time it was difficult for readers to accept Jane, as both a moral and a subversive person, so they had to split her image into a calm, self-denying female (i.e. Joan Fontaine’s Jane) or an utterly rebellious and immoral one.


“Is it's place solely in the Feminine, not to be confused with Feminist, literature?”
Nice question. I was always surprised to find that Jane Eyre had been more favorably accepted by male reviewers (Thackeray, Lockheart, Smith, Williams, Lewes) and that the female one’s were more aggressive to it (i.e Elizabeth Rigby). Lyndall Gordon in her book “Charlotte Bronte: a passionate life” claims that women authors were reluctant towards Charlotte, not because they could not recognize her talent, but because they where themselves treading on a sensitive area, trying to prove that they could be authors without denying their duties as women. Charlotte was projecting her ideas too strongly through her books. That is why they accepted more easily her low public profile of a shy, provincial woman, a clergyman’s daughter, which was far from her “home-character”, as Charlotte herself knew. But to return to the question I find that today there are not many men who would admit they would read, let alone like Jane Eyre (correct me if I am mistaken on that). And I wonder why? What has changed? Do we think so much that books that involve romance are strictly a feminine subject?



“The epiphany is not by reasoned but an emotional transmutation. The previous moral dilemma, withers. Her response is emotional and it is very important to realize that at this moment she does not know of the fire at Thornfield and Bertha's death; that Rochester is free to marry. That that impediment no longer signifies.”
Leslie Stephens (Virginia Woolf’s father) had put the question regarding Jane Eyre: “What if she had returned to Thornfield only to find that nothing had changed?” What would she do? For me Jane leaves him the first time because she could not face herself, if she stayed. She doesn’t care about society or religion so much. She was always able to defy them before, but only when she was sure that she was right. But now she isn’t so sure. Her character and morals are black and white at this stage of her life – no grey areas there like Rochester’s. Meeting St John teaches her that principles without love are empty and can not fill a life. An honorable man, almost a saint, manages to make a far more hideous proposal than Rochester’s. Sally Shuttleworth who is quite hostile to St John Rivers claims that he is a repressed man that wouldn’t want to consummate a relationship with Rosamond, whom he loves, because she would have power over him and so he chooses Jane for whom he doesn’t feel any passion. In this way she acts “as an agent of purification” for him as well as Rochester who can not “blight her” but she “can refresh” him. She goes on saying that St John offers Jane “a form of legalized prostitution”. (Well if she was to end up “a fallen woman”, in that sense it would better be with Rochester :). I don’t fully support her reading, but it is an interesting option not so very untruthful). So, I was always preoccupied when Jane returned to Thornfield by her words:
" Could I but see him!--but a moment! Surely, in that case, I should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell--I am not certain. And if I did--what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I rave: perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the tideless sea of the south." She reiterates Rochester’s words about no one being hurt by her staying with him and previously she has not felt ashamed about thinking him despite St John’s words about that “lawless and unconsecrated” interest of hers because “it would not be wicked” to love him. So I always though she was going to stay this time. But then what is all that fuss about her being a moral example and why I as a reader (who consider myself ethical) would not judge her negatively for this? Joyce Carol Oates helped me to find the answer:
“That young Jane Eyre supplants the formerly exotic Bertha (the Creole heiress whom Rochester recklessly married in his youth) is not, given the terms of the novel's logic, a matter of moral ambiguity: for in her deranged and diseased state Bertha is no longer a human woman but sheer appetite, and therefore beyond the range of Jane's (and presumably the reader's) sympathy”. Learning also that Rochester’s divorce was probable due to her adultery, but improbable because of her madness (and lack of moral responsibility for her actions) made me see the dissolve of that marriage as a glitch. Jane is not to be judged morally after all.
But Charlotte could not write this as clearly and make her heroine infamous. So she resolved to tragedy. They both committed errors Rochester arrogance and lies and adultery, Jane idolization of him and being forgetful in her bliss of the real God and they are punished first by separation and then by disability.
[By the way I object to those that term Charlotte Bronte sadistic in her behaviour to Rochester and talk about his castration. The punishment she used was a biblical one – she didn’t invent it. Jane says: “you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand:”]
Yes the ending must have been troublesome for the Victorian Reader.

I will come back to discuss more goodbye for now!

[Peripatetics]

Unfortunately neither jeff66 nor Newcomer has replied to what I find very interesting ideas in ksotikoula's 27 Feb note. The Forum discussions are like that, the tread breaks when you become captivated.
All four quotes/comments, deserve a thoughtful reply, but I can't do it therefore I'll restrict myself to the fourth. The idea that “The epiphany is not by reasoned but an emotional transmutation. “ and Leslie Stephens comment - “What if she had returned to Thornfield only to find that nothing had changed?” My comments are not to be construed as criticism of the novel, but only idle speculation.
When Jane says: “It was MY time to assume ascendency. MY powers were in play and in force.”, it can be interpreted in different ways due to the bias of the reader. However it is unquestioned that at this moment there occurs a profound change in Jane, a transmutation as Newcomer put it. The Jane of chapter 27 - “ I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad--as I am now.” or the young Jane who in chapter 3 makes the extraordinary admission: “I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.”, has come to the realization that individual not societal values have precedence. Therefore when Charlotte has Jane returns to the burnout Thornfield, I'll argue that Charlotte does not develop the Jane of “It was MY time to assume ascendency.”. That Leslie Stephens question has meaning beyond that of the dramatic structure of the novel, that in a way the Charlotte trows a bone to the Victorian reader by marrying the domesticated Rochester and miraculously having him recovering his sight.
Here I disagree with ksotikoula's reading - “The punishment she used was a biblical one – she didn’t invent it. Jane says: “you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand:”. In this context, what can - “Jane is not to be judged morally after all.“ mean?
The Biblical quote is in chapter 27, where Jane is under moral stress of leaving Rochester. The passage is an illustration of Jane's state of mind and whether interpreted as of religious belief or of a societal stricture, it is fundamentally moral. It is complex and only in chapter 35, after the years of exile, with ' My ascendency', does Jane's values shift from societal to personal. Only then can we say - Jane is not to be judged morally after all.“ If we read the passage as referring to Rochester's punishment, then Jane is not aware of Thornfield's destruction till chapter 36 - “I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened ruin.”
I'll suggest that Jane's - “It was MY time to assume ascendency.”, is the probable reading that “Jane is not to be judged morally after all.” That after this statement Charlotte implied a transformed Jane and unfortunately she did not develop the new character.

It was left to the reclusive Emily, to shatter the convention of the romantic novel and explore the threshold of love that Charlotte approached but would not cross.

BTW. “ I find that today there are not many men who would admit they would read, let alone like Jane Eyre (correct me if I am mistaken on that).” Well perhaps not mistaken but jeff66, Newcomer, ennison and myself should count for someone! You are corrected.
And “I will come back to discuss more goodbye for now!”, please do!

[ksotikoula]

“Again Charlotte avoids the subject of sexuality. This is quite in line with the repressive sexual values of a small but morally influential Victorian class”
I am not sure it is due to convention only that she “avoids” the subject of sexuality. I am not sure she avoids it at all. She pretty much deals with it through all of the book. She didn’t need to go further. Sexuality is there for three reasons in my opinion:
1) It was an essential part to Jane’s development. Since she was studying the spiritual, physical, moral, sentimental growth of a girl turning into a woman, how could her sexual awakening be missing, especially when she gets involved in a such complicated love story.
2) She meant to create a heroine that would be able to feel intense passion and be able to separate love from friendship, affection from lust etc. This would also make her moral dilemma more difficult. It is passion vs reason, passion vs morality, passion vs independence.
3) It was a very sensible choice given the age difference between the two heroes. It wouldn’t be nice to see Jane and Rochester as a father-daughter relationship. She makes it so clear there is physical attraction that when Rochester says he should have for her now only fatherly feelings we automatically reply “No, way!”. Someone has mentioned in another forum that he thought a little abnormal the way Emma and Mr Knightley become a couple when we know he was playing her on his knees when she was little girl and he wondered when his feelings towards her changed. There is not such awkwardness here.
So (although it would be pleasant ;)) we don’t really need her to tell as anything more than her being “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh”. Let alone that Charlotte had no such experience. It is amazing enough that she wrote as much out of fantasies.


The astonishing fact is that Jane, the fictional woman, transcends the author. Charlotte was and died bound by Victorian morality. She married without love, was tormented by doubt as to her talent, lack of beauty, and very probably in a God that had taken her sisters and brother before their time. What was the burning ember in Charlotte's imagination that allowed this transcendental leap?
It is not so very astonishing. Charlotte had to live in the real world with its limitations but even so, she was less conventional than you think. She was no orphan (as all her heroines are) and many times had to consider her family’s fame beyond her personal one. Jane Eyre is an envision of a new kind of woman who defies and rejects the femininity standards of Victorian era. Charlotte herself was in search of new ones. She had rejected for a long time of her life marriage (which was very different than the usual feminine attitude then), she preferred to earn her living instead and she was appalled by a fellow-teacher in Brussels who send letters through her father and brother to various gentlemen because she didn’t want to end up “a sister of mercy”. Charlotte admitted she didn’t want to become a sister of mercy either, but wouldn’t degrade herself as much as seeking any husband. She had rejected also religious life, she wrote to Ellen Nussey that she longs for a holiness she will never, never attain. She continued to believe in her talent although everybody tried to dissuade her from it (Southey, Heger, the societal attitudes in general) and that says much. She shocked Victorian readers with the presentation that there is such a thing as female desire and that it doesn’t make a woman immoral and in Villette she showed that a woman can have feelings for more than one man, writing to her objecting editor that she knows that the romance writing would suggest than a heroine should fall and stay in love till the end with a superb hero, but this is not so in real life. It is against realism and probability.
Her life was tightly attached to her art or differently she also lived through her art.
So in her books we have that search for in-betweens, in which she puts her heroines. In Jane Eyre we have Eliza the nun and Georgiana the husband-seeking, both of which Jane rejects (notice how she clings more to Rochester after seeing those two alternatives). In Shirley the heroine comments that men (even the smartest) don’t see women correctly: their idea of a woman is an angel or a demon. In Villette, Lucy Snowe rejects both the luxurious mistress (that the Cleopatra picture implies) and the life of women in 4 pictures which she thinks hypocritical and flat. All this says that there are not only the opposites that exist. People’s character can be more complex and exist in a continuum.
About her marriage, when a female friend told her that she was glad that finally she found someone “to care for and make happy”, she answered that also “to be the first object with any one” is really great thing (a totally un-Victorian attitude-she was married because she was for the first time really loved by that someone, not because it was her female duty to care for others) and she then confessed that she was worried about her husband not being intellectual, because he could not follow her intellectually and also that although she really estimated his constancy and devotion she thought that such a character “would be far be less amusing and interesting, than a more impulsive and fickle one: It might be dull!” (this surprising observation confirms that wild side her heroines have, that she shared with, and it is also tragic in the fact that she was planning to live a whole life with him instead of the brief, but happy, as it proved, 9 months). I believe she couldn’t be the creator of those heroines had she not be so very original herself, no matter if she could not freely express that or did not find soon enough a Rochester to love and accept her for what she was . He too is the envisage of a more liberal and original man than her contemporaries. Not everyone would tolerate Jane’s rebelliousness and tart language. St John criticizes for being “violent, unfeminine, and untrue”. Rochester is never shocked for any supposing lack of respect.


When Charlotte attempted to follow up with Villette and the rewriting of the Professor, she did not succeed in captivating the imagination as with Jane Eyre. Here the intellect was more dominant and her attempts to broaden her vision produced a commentary, not a unique work of art.
It is my belief that Charlotte Bronte did not want to capture again that kind of imagination. Even in Jane Eyre part of that imagination was forced. She writes in the preface of the Professor that she wanted to turn into realism but “I find that publishers in general scarcely approved of this system, but would have liked something more imaginative and poetical--something more consonant with a highly wrought fancy, with a taste for pathos, with sentiments more tender, elevated, unworldly”. She was advised to write a novel that could be published in three volumes and present more interest. Charlotte at that time of her life, disillusioned by Heger’s rejection of her love, her brother’s failure and lapse into drugs and alcoholism, her father’s blindness, her failure of her plans of opening a school, needed perhaps to write something more realistic. However, she followed their suggestions. Perhaps they came after the Lowood section and that is why the plot becomes wild? Anyway she resisted changing the first part of her book because “Truth has a charm of its own”. After having written her best seller, she again tries to publish “The Professor” and argues with her editor that it contains much more depth and realism than many parts of Jane Eyre. She also, on the occasion of Villette, writes to Mr Williams that she didn’t mean her to mount on the same pedestal some injudicious readers have put Jane Eyre. So, without saying that she did not like Jane Eyre or that it was not a book that she got involved into sentimentally, I believe she never would consider it as representative of her work or opinions. A lot of things did happen to make Charlotte a different, far unhappier person after Jane Eyre. And it is always difficult to write happy a ending when yourself is so unhappy. Someone says that even Jane Eyre gets “a mutilated happiness”, while the ending in Shirley is even more false. In Villette (where her father insisted on a happy ending) she couldn’t lie, so she left ambiguous. Villette in my opinion is a novel everyone should read in order to say that he understands Charlotte Bronte. And it is really considered her masterpiece by academics. But it is also true that had that last book of hers had a more vivid story it could win more easily the hearts of the public. Her “Emma” was highly promising (to the point that a friend of mine after reading it cried out “Oh, why did she have to die?”, which was close to my reaction too), but…she did die.


Charlotte ends Eyre with a whimper. Jane is reconciled with Victorian values, makes an abasement of a genuflection to orthodoxy in religion, marries-off Diana and Mary, grant St. John a happy death… It is inconsistent with the intellectual and emotional freedom that Jane has (r)evolved into.(nice point)

This is harshly expressed! Lol! I partly agree. Jane is very strong in the end and could continue her life with or without Rochester. But as a friend of mine has put it Rochester and children is the icing of her cake. Some say why make such an independent woman only to marry her at the end. I believe loneliness is a high price for independence to pay and Jane knows that. I confess I would be really sad if those two didn’t reunite after all this love and suffering. And it is a great truth that after loving Jane as a character so much, neither Charlotte, nor we could accept an unhappy ending as Jeff66 correctly states.
Of course we could be sparred the spiritual calling (which really bothers me and would have preferred her to turn back simply because, as she had already stated to St John, she was worried about him), I could do without Rochester’s punishment too, but Charlotte Bronte could not make her beloved heroine appear immoral. So she resolved to divine intervention and tragedy.


“The punishment she used was a biblical one – she didn’t invent it. Jane says: “you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand:”. In this context, what can - “Jane is not to be judged morally after all.“ mean?”
I don’t know. Lol! I never connected those two together. It is quite the opposite. I was referring to the laws of tragedy that Charlotte chose to follow in the end (see the last 2 lines of my above comment). In a tragedy it is true that the heroes get to be judged ethically. And it was exactly because of the quite conventional ending, where the good ones are rewarded and the sinful rightfully punished, that Jane Eyre gave the impression of a moral example - which is however at odds with my perception of her as returning to stay with Rochester with or without Bertha and made me believed that I was reading too much into it, me being a product of a different century and ethics. I can not believe either that she created that entire St John episode for nothing. It is her final lesson and her biggest foe. She just doesn’t make clear Jane’s gain out of it. But surely she is an entirely different woman when she returns. It is so annoying to see comments like “Does Jane triumph due to divine intervention after all?”. Certainly not, she is “an independent woman” now that owes no justifications of her acts (like in the scene where she sits on his knees just because they both felt better this way, if that is a sufficient excuse for Victorians) but she gets to be saved from condemnation anyway.


BTW. “ I find that today there are not many men who would admit they would read, let alone like Jane Eyre (correct me if I am mistaken on that).” Well perhaps not mistaken but jeff66, Newcomer, ennison and myself should count for someone! You are corrected.
Of course you count for someone and I am glad to be found mistaken! But I was referring to the general reading population. I fear you are worthy and brave exceptions:). It would be interesting to hear the reason for which you like this novel nevertheless.


The Forum discussions are like that, the tread breaks when you become captivated.
The good thing is the conversation stays and anyone can add at a different time.

[Peripatetics]

I am not sure it is due to convention only that she “avoids” the subject of sexuality. I am not sure she avoids it at all. She pretty much deals with it through all of the book. She didn’t need to go further.

Newcomer - “Again Charlotte avoids the subject of sexuality. This is quite in line with the repressive sexual values of a small but morally influential Victorian class”.

It is always hazardous to assume that one knows what someone meant when the lines are taken out of context. Especially when one can't approach the elegance of style of the original. However a writer and especially a woman writer, is more than cognizant of the values of the society in which he/she writes and violates the unwritten rules only for a serious purpose. I do not think that Charlotte was a rebel or even a social critic like Dickens. Her admiration was for Thackeray not for Dickens style, much less for Fielding's – Tom Jones lavishness sexuality. Tess of the d'Urbervilles(1891) and Jude the Obscure(1895), “met with even stronger negative outcries from the Victorian public for its frank treatment of sex”, and Hardy was a Victorian. Therefore I think that Newcomer has a point when he says:“Again Charlotte avoids the subject of sexuality. “
Charlotte circles around passion but never deeply describes it. And her passion has the denotation of emotional, abstract as contrasted to sexual and physical. The contrast between the two sisters, in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights could not be greater. It seems to me that your “Let alone that Charlotte had no such experience. It is amazing enough that she wrote as much out of fantasies.”, is acute in that for Charlotte sexuality had a different meaning than in Tess of the Ubervilles or D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow. That said, I do not consider it a shortcoming of Charlotte's, only a stylistic point. Different but the same as Austen's conscious decision to limit the scope of her subject matter. I interpreted Newcomer's phrase as an observation and not as criticism.

It is my belief that Charlotte Bronte did not want to capture again that kind of imagination. Even in Jane Eyre part of that imagination was forced
Here we are in deep waters. You may be right in that Charlotte did not want to recapture the kind of imagination of Jane Eyre in Villette or in Shirley. She said as much in that she wished for a subject matter of greater scope like Thackeray's. However that is begging the question – Jane Eyre is a great novel because she pours out her heart in prose that borders on poetry. Villette and Shirley are intellectual exercises lacking the immediacy of Jane Eyre. Authors are not the best judges of their own work. It has been my experience in watching video adaptations of Jane Eyre, no matter how accurate the settings or the costumes or how impressive the cinematography of landscape, I'm left dissatisfied because the lines of the actors have been changed and the unique prose of Charlotte's has been lost. Jane Eyre may be but a romance but the language of Charlotte makes it unique. She does not repeat the miracle in Villette or in Shirley.
Love stories keep on repeating in literature of all societies through out history. There is something ingrained in the human psyche that touches a chord that resonates in telling the story of love between a woman and a man. With curiosity, it is what makes us human. Love as expressed in companionship, in sexuality, in faithfulness to a mate, in defense of siblings, is not exclusively human. In some respects animals do it better. What is unique is our ability through language to examine, comment and deepen the experience. Language makes us human and love as expressed through the use of prose and poetry a most precious and continuous fascination. It transcends the psyche boundaries and in the philosophical/religious realm, is identified with the greatest good.

I hope to have answered your question-”It would be interesting to hear the reason for which you like this novel nevertheless.”
So nevertheless – if I'm starving, I reread Jane Eyre, if I wish to share a meal, as with friends, I read Austen.


Of course you count for someone and I am glad to be found mistaken! But I was referring to the general reading population. I fear you are worthy and brave exceptions.
I newer realized that smiley could be used as a symbol for sarcasm. Very refreshing.
However my original intent was to point out how few women there are in the Forum who can discuss the novel as contrasted to girls who gush.
I think that I was defending the weaker sex.

[Peripatetics]

”It would be interesting to hear the reason for which you like this novel nevertheless.” άλλη προσπάθεια:

Yesterday on a crowded platform waiting for the commute, I saw something unexpected. Two elderly people with their backs toward me were conversing. The man, the shorter of the two, wore a cap and a shapeless gray overcoat, only his hands were bare in the chilly wind of February. The woman whose head was an inch or two taller had a full head of graying blond hair. She wore a coat of multicolored autumn leaves, brown knee high boots. Unexpectedly her hands were bare.
(With a small mental smile I remarked that in humans the birds plumage was reversed.)
Then she turned, put her arms around his scarf wrapped neck and drew him closer to her. Not an embrace, as they continued their conversation, and on her face was a soft smile. Apparently the conversation was not just of exchange of information but on some intimate subject, an exchange of affection. She dropped her arms and turned to face in the same direction as him and I could no longer see her face. Of the two winter dressed figures I could see only their bare hands. Their hands were clasped and the man's fingers were slowly moving, caressing her stationary ones.

It reminded me of the emotions from a segment in Jane Eyre
“nor did I refuse to let him, when seated, place me on his knee.”
but when in a moment of pique he tells her - "Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you can leave me. How often am I to say the same thing? Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee, when I have given you notice to quit?"
And Jane replies "Because I am comfortable there."
Charlotte has captured the openness, the vulnerability of people in love.

ksotikoula Έχω απαντήσει στην ερώτησή σας;

[ksotikoula]

I do not think that Charlotte was a rebel or even a social critic like Dickens. Her admiration was for Thackeray not for Dickens style, much less for Fielding's – Tom Jones lavishness sexuality.

I agree. She has commended that she considered Fielding a dangerous influence having always in her mind Branwell’s decline. She was afraid of extreme passion and she criticizes it in both Villette (with Rachel’s, the actress’ performance) and Jane Eyre (which is a search for balance). I believe Jane is punished in the novel for her extreme passion for Rochester with a temporary loss of sense of identity when their marriage is dissolved. She momentarily can not define herself, the Jane of yesterday, today and its effect on tomorrow. She puts on her yesterday’s dress not only to end that masquerade of a marriage, but also to familiarize herself again with her position, to find a piece of herself. And that loss is so frightening. A friend of mine (aged 17) said that she would be afraid to fall in love with Rochester and I remembered having the same feeling at 15 when I first read the book and kind of still feel it. I have discovered that there is nothing very threatening about him, but what we mostly fear is to surrender completely to a passion like Jane’s, because it could lead to the loss of self. It is the absolute way in which she loves him that is kind of unsettling. I have not read any Fielding to compare.

About social criticism she was honest with her publishers that she was not up to it for several reasons. She lived in an isolated village where it was difficult to make research and she believed she should live first some situations to fairly describe them. She admired the work of Harriet Beetcher Stowe but could never have deal with a subject as sensitive as slavery. She would like to write something about “the position of the woman” but admitted that so much “cant” had been said about it that she was afraid to touch the subject (she kind of approached it with Shirley, which she considered a failure). Her field was subjective experience not the social scope, no matter if with her description of the sufferings and the preoccupations of her heroines she touched and puzzled a wider audience. As we sonorously wrote in school’s compositions: the person is the molecule of society. :lol:


Tess of the d'Urbervilles(1891) and Jude the Obscure(1895), “met with even stronger negative outcries from the Victorian public for its frank treatment of sex”, and Hardy was a Victorian.

I am sorry to say that I have read only “Far from the madding crowd” and “A pair of blue eyes” by Hardy, whom I really liked for his sensitivity to the female sex, his lack of false sentimentalism, the easy narration and his wonderful line of Bathesda’s that it is difficult for her to express her female feelings in a language mostly developed by men to express their own (I believe this is called structural feminism but not completely sure). So, although I intend to read more of him, I have no clue of his “frank treatment of sex”. You can enlighten me if you wish.

However I turn back to this: it is easy for us to judge things like this because being free to have our sexual experiences we have a more demystified view of sex than Charlotte could have and that is why I think she was quite brave even to depict and express female desire if not sexuality. I wonder that she didn’t ever connect it with guilt (something the era cultivated in women), that she considered it natural and was never really convinced for the opposite despite oppositions. Because there were oppositions: not so overt perhaps because morally she didn’t cross the line. It is kind of funny that Victorians were too prude even to properly accuse a work like Jane Eyre. No one says it was its passion that was unsettling to them but they just termed it coarse. The review that more clearly dared to render this issue was this:
“Jane Eyre is, indeed, one of the coarsest books which we ever perused. It is not that the professed sentiments of the writer are absolutely wrong or forbidding, or that the odd sort of religious notions which she puts forth are much worse than is usual in popular tales. It is rather that there is a tendency to relapse into that class of ideas, expressions, and circumstances, which is most connected with the grosser and more animal portion of our nature; and that the detestable morality of the most prominent character in the story is accompanied with every sort of palliation short of unblushing justification (1848).”

To this and all her reviews Charlotte seems to answer with her letter to Martineu:
“I know what love is as I understand it; and if man or woman should be ashamed of feeling such love, then there is nothing right, noble, truthful, unselfish in this earth, as I comprehend rectitude, nobleness, fidelity, truth, and dissinterestedness.” Which shows that she was a s confident of her opinion and feelings as for her whole perception of the world.


The contrast between the two sisters, in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights could not be greater.

As far as sexuality goes? I don’t quite understand. Emily presents a second generation and sends the reader wondering whose child is Cathy, whether Heathcliff is an illegitimate child of Mr Earnshaw’s and therefore half-brother to Cathy and many reviewers consider Wuthering surprisingly sexless. I myself can not feel them exactly as a love couple, there is not for me that sexual tension that I feel between Jane and Rochester. Cathy seems to me so confused about her sexuality. I don’t know how else to express her idea that the two men would tolerate one another. And I don’t think she meant to have sexual relationships with both. Someone in a site wrote that maybe it is due to her being confused and the fact that can not accept her sexuality that make her appear as a child’s and not woman’s ghost.

I would also like to ask you in what sense is Jane Eyre more primitive than Wuthering Heights? The second is more violent and kind of lawless.


It seems to me that your “Let alone that Charlotte had no such experience. It is amazing enough that she wrote as much out of fantasies.”, is acute in that for Charlotte sexuality had a different meaning than in Tess of the Ubervilles or D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow.

What different meaning did sexuality had for Hardy and Lawrence (I have read only Lady Chatterley’s lover)? Sometimes I am afraid that the sense of sexuality is not the same for both sexes. I find Jane Eyre one of the sexiest (although I don’t like this term) books I have read, much more that Lady Chatterley, which is so explicit, but never actually had that turning on effect, never made me crave to see the couple together. The writer of that article seems to have the same opinion: http://unpretentiouslitcrit.blogspot.com/2007/02/dh-lawrence-and-charlotte-bronte.html

Charlotte Bronte’s sexuality writing is of a very different kind. I have half prepared a topic about how she managed (the mechanisms she used) to write such a passionate book “with unmistakable palpable sexual tension”, as reviewers put it, in the heart of Victorian era without anyone being in position to openly accuse her of something concrete, while her passion is clearly perceptible even today, when we have seen and read pretty much everything (I don’t know if anyone would be interested in a topic like this).

I am not sure if I feel her writing this way mostly because I am a woman (which reminds me of a guy in a forum that claimed that romances are something like female porn). In a way he was right in the fact that for women, what happens before, the building of the climax, the prolongation of satisfaction of desire is as important as the actual act. We kind of need more of the “story” (which could be also a reason why regular porn doesn’t appeal so much to our sex - intellectual stimulants vs visual). [I hope I won’t get reported for this :p].
So you have right that she handles that part of the emotional and abstract, but she was miles away (and more frank) in her treatment of passion and love and sexuality from Austen, who abstained altogether from referring to that private sentiments despite of her handling love stories. We don’t see much of the sexual physical attraction that Jane feels for Rochester in Austen’s novels.


Jane Eyre is a great novel because she pours out her heart in prose that borders on poetry. Villette and Shirley are intellectual exercises lacking the immediacy of Jane Eyre…. Jane Eyre may be but a romance but the language of Charlotte makes it unique. She does not repeat the miracle in Villette or in Shirley.

I disagree about Villette being an intellectual exercise.

In Shirley she was really detached on purpose and on the wonderful intention of not wanting to repeat herself and write another Jane Eyre. She shares some inner thoughts and there are some good lines in that novel, but we can not deeply be involved in it.

Villette is different. She has drawn from her most true feelings and thoughts, but it is partly that narrator of hers who is continually playing games with the reader and reveals herself to only those that are interested enough to continually weight her statements and confront her with her contradictions. That was necessary for Charlotte exactly because what she relates is her inner woes and pain and anxiety. And also we get to know Lucy as she learns herself through the tensions of her inner and outer life (like Charlotte’s double public-home identity and character). Lucy is not so brave or self-conscious as Jane. Charlotte was also treating her relationship there with her editor George Smith and gives a fuller portrait of Heger, so she could not speak so openly. She claimed that she didn’t like Lucy much herself which is not true. In some ways she is similar more to that heroin in the end of the book in the fact that she was a lonely woman that learned how to deal with her loneliness. And that is the theme of Villette. It is not a romance. Love has been there twice firstly to teach Lucy some vital lessons about herself (she suddenly doesn’t like to be a bright lady’s shadow after Graham and she learns of her passionate nature with Paul) and also love (with Paul) has empowered her. She stands on her own, not necessarily happy but a survivor.

With a theme like this and an on-purpose non-existent plot in order to understand the emptiness and loneliness of her life, it is not a surprising thing that Jane Eyre, that essence of love with the sense of everlasting happiness and that gripping plot, is a favourite. People don’t like sad and un-dramatic books. The fact that Charlotte did not just gave an intellectual exercise with Villette can be proved by its reception: Miss Martineau said it was “unbearably painful”, Thackeray termed it a plaguy book but very clever and Arnold Mathews termed it disagreeable, convulsive, oppressive and said that her mind is full of hunger, rebellion, rage. These may be thought negative reviews but they prove that they brought out strong feelings.


ksotikoula Έχω απαντήσει στην ερώτησή σας;
(translation: Ksotikoula have I answered your question?)

Μάλιστα, αγαπητέ μου κυριε! ;)
(translation: Indeed, my dear sir!)

[Peripatetics]

I would also like to ask you in what sense is Jane Eyre more primitive than Wuthering Heights? The second is more violent and kind of lawless.
I think that you were referring to Newcomer's reply to Jeff - It was very quickly written and it is this 'primitive' quality, the honesty, that has captures the imagination of readers. - I would not characterize the novel as 'primitive'. In my view, and it is arguable, the emotional tone is of an affirmation, almost against experience. Perhaps Newcomer had in mind a contrast to sophistication, as Wuthering heights stylistically and thematically is more modern, and Jane Eyre Victorian.


So you have right that she handles that part of the emotional and abstract, but she was miles away (and more frank) in her treatment of passion and love and sexuality from Austen, who abstained altogether from referring to that private sentiments despite of her handling love stories. We don’t see much of the sexual physical attraction that Jane feels for Rochester in Austen’s novels.

“We don’t see much of the sexual physical attraction .... in Austen’s novels”.
Quite to the point! Austen describes the observable, she does not indulge in speculation of the characters psychological motivation. This is a very conscious stylistic restrain. And the resulting prose has been favorably compared to Shakespeare's by such critics as H. Bloom.
I don't claim such discernment but Jane Austen gives me longer lasting pleasure than does Charlotte.
For example when Elinor learns that Edward is not married: “Elinor could sit it no longer. She almost ran out of the room; and, as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease.” There is no attempt to describe the inner mind, no elaboration of a momentous emotion, only a concise description of the observable.
Very unsatisfying for the woman brought up on Harlequin Romance. That is why Andrews 'sexes-up' the video adaptations and produces unease in Austen readers by the soft porn introductory scenes in Sense and Sensibility or laughter at Anne Elliot running in the streets of Portsmouth in Persuasion.



I disagree about Villette being an intellectual exercise.

I should qualify my comment about Villette since my impressions are 10 years old and probably my response has changed. On your recommendation I'll reread it.
Just so that we can discuss it!
Perhaps you will be interested in this short quote: “Villette is explored by Janice Carlisle as a study in problematic memory, resembling the quasi-autobiographical mode of Thackeray's Henry Esmond.”
(In case you wish to read the essay - Bloom's Modern Critical Views – the Brontes, ISBN 0-87754-687-8),