Question... from Jane Eyre

I was asked a question today that I can't answer. Who will help? Why, in Jane Eyre, does Charlotte Bronte sometimes refer to places with dash abbreviations. I'm not presently reading the book and don't have specific examples at hand. An example would look like this: -shire for Yorkshire or maybe -ham for Birmingham.

I can't imagine that writers of the day were allowed to absentmindely or lazily use abbreviations in this way. So why? Is this reflective of a social or literary convention of the time?

Thank you to all who may respond.

Will

I guess she didn't want to give the place a fictional name, and I'm sure I've seen similar abbreviations in other books of that time. I don't care. It doesn't affect the reality of the story in any way. :)

One reason is that probably a writer could not know very well a town and could not make research but didn't want to give details that could be proven false. The same goes for dates too.

Sometimes it also happens that he/she wants to disguise a place (for example Lowood was a fictional name for a school that existed and despite that, people understood which institution Bronte described and she was threatened with lawsuit).

And finally another reason for this is because the writer didn't really want to specify it. It is to show that it really doesn't matter. The story would be the same anyway and even better readers can create in their minds an image of their own. It is also done to enhance generalization. In Jane Eyre you will find a place in -shire which could mean it could happen in any place of England. Even in your neighbouring area! Who is to say otherwise?

Hugo does that too and it is something that is really mostly in older books.

Older books tend to make averything 'true' waht happens in it or readers at least believed that something like that happened (remember Robinson Crusoe caused a riot because Defoe publically said it was a fake story,the first in its kind that was plainly aove board fiction.). So, in order to spare the people they were talking of or the places where they let things happen, scrutiny writers just put down the first letter or like Charlotte put -shire (very common on England, countie with -shire at the end...).

So they could not be accused of saying things that were not true, whether they based it on something or not.

Your story also becomes more universal. If it has happened in a certain place at a certain time, it becomes very much determined. You are telling X's story. If you put it 'fifteen years back' and in '-shire', it becomes a lot more universal and your story is not about this Jane and this Rochester, but about any person. About 'the human', so to say.

Of course, the moors being there, it is clear that the country or county in which the story plays, is based on Yorkshire, but then again, she never named it and for all you know it might just not be. Millcote does not exist, so it is a quintessential little market town... Which one? No-one knows because it is not mentioned what saint the church was dedicated to or which saint the chapel in Hay was dedicated to. It is not mentioned what the moors are called. Whitcross does not exist. So the chapel is any chapel, near any estate, near any market town, in any county named -shire, provided it is 100 miles from Gateshead. in county Durham. And it is 10 years ago that that happened. Somewhere in the distant past...

Brontë didn't give the specific names of the places because she wanted the novel to be fiction. As it was, Cowan Bridge school was easily recognized and their was plenty of sharp feelings over the references to how dreadfully the children were treated. Her own sisters went home to die.