essay on jane eyre

Essays About Jane Eyre: Top 5 Examples and Prompts

Writing essays about Jane Eyre? Take a look at our essay examples about Jane Eyre and be inspired by our additional prompts.

Jane Eyre is widely considered a classic novel that poignantly exposed the struggles of Victorian women through a story of love and emancipation. Jane Eyre is a Victorian novel written by Charlotte Brontë and published in 1847. Many aspects of the novel are said to derive from the personal story and experiences of the author herself. 

Brontë published this masterpiece with the gender-neutral pen-name Currer Bell to evade criticisms as the rebelliousness of Jane Eyre was defiant of the accepted social mores of its period. While it stirred controversy in its time, the heroine of the novel, with her grit to conquer adversities, break the rules and achieve her desires, offers many lessons that inspire many to this day. 

Read on and see our top essay examples and writing prompts to help with your essays about Jane Eyre.

1. Jane Eyre And The Right To Pester by Olivia Ward Jackson

2. jane eyre: content warnings are as old as the novel itself by jo waugh, 3. the tension between reason and passion in jane eyre by nicholas johnson, 4. reading jane eyre: can we truly understand charlotte brontë or her heroine today by sam jordison, 5. christianity as a form of empowerment in charlotte bronte’s jane eyre by noam barsheshat , 1. summary and personal reflection, 2. pervasive imageries, 3. jane eyre in the perspective of feminism, 4. best jane eyre film adaptations, 5. how is jane eyre’s life story similar to brontë’s, 6. what are the primary themes in jane eyre, 7. describe the characters, 8. how did jane eyre find her “true home” , 9. jane eyre as a bildungsroman, 10. jane eyre and economic independence, top 5 essay examples.

“Indeed, parallels can be drawn between Jane Eyre and those trapped in a professional hierarchy today. In rejecting an unwanted pass from a superior employee, far worse than damaging a fragile male ego, a woman could offset a chain of consequences which could threaten her entire career.”

The essay pays attention to the similarities between the class conflicts during Jane’s time and the hierarchies in the modern workplace. Finally, as feminists today argue over what practices and behavior would qualify as sexual misconduct, the essay turns the spotlight to Jane, with her determination to stand up against those who pester her, as a possible model.

“Why was the novel considered inappropriate for young girls, in particular? Many Victorians considered it “coarse and immoral”…The novel’s addictiveness might also have been an issue.”

The essay takes off from a university’s warnings against reading Jane Eyre and fellow Victorian novel Great Expectations, citing the “distressing” passages in the novels. The essay collates and presents the commentaries of people in shock with the warning. However, the piece also shows that such cautionary measures were not exactly new and, in fact, the first reaction when the book came to light.

“​​At the end of many trials Charlotte permits Jane to return at last to her lover…. They feel no passion or intrigue..  Instead of fire and ice, Charlotte gives us warm slush. Perhaps she never resolved the tension between reason and passion for herself, and so was unable to write convincingly about it.”

Johnson dives deep into how Brontë juxtaposed reason and passion in her novel’s imageries, metaphors, and even characters. In his conclusion, Johnson finds the resolution to the tension between passion and reason unsatisfactory, surmising that this weak ending conveys how Brontë never resolved this conflict in her own life.

“It’s easy to think we are more sophisticated because we now know more about – say – the early history of Christianity. Or because Brontë is, of course, ignorant of modern feminist theory, or poststructuralism. We can bring readings to her work that she couldn’t begin to imagine. But she could easily turn the tables on us…”

The essays reflect on how one from modern society could fully comprehend Brontë through the protagonist of her masterpiece. Jordison emphasizes the seeming impossibility of this pursuit given Brontë’s complex genius and world. Yet, we may still bask in the joy of finding an intimate connection with the author 200 years after Jane Eyre’s publication. 

“Through her conflicts with various men―specifically, Mr. Brocklehurst, Mr. Rochester and St. John Rivers―Jane’s spiritual identity empowers her and supports her independence.”

This critical essay points out how Jane Eyre reconciled feminism and Christianity, highlighting the latter as a vehicle that empowered Jane’s transformation. Despite Jane’s determined spirit to find true love, she reflects her spiritual view of Christianity to prevent falling into an illegitimate love affair, preserving her well-being and self-empowerment. 

10 Best Prompts on Essays About Jane Eyre

Check out our list of the best prompts that could get you started in your essay about Jane Eyre:

Provide a concise summary of the life of the young, orphaned Jane Eyre. First, cite the significant challenges that have enabled Jane’s transformation into a strong and independent woman. Next, provide a personal reflection on the story and how you identify with Jane Eyre. Then, explain which of her struggles and experiences you relate with or find most inspiring. 

From the chestnut and the red room to the ice and fire contrasts, investigate what these imageries signify. Then, elaborate on how these imageries impact Brontë’s storytelling and contribute to the desired effect for her writing style. 

Jane Eyre is highly regarded as one of the first feminist novels. It is a critical work that broadened Victorian women’s horizons by introducing the possibilities of emancipation. Write about how Brontë portrayed Jane Eyre as a feminist if you do not find that the novel advances feminist ideologies, write an argumentative essay and present the two sides of the coin. 

It is estimated that over 16 film adaptations have been made of the book Jane Eyre. Watch at least one of these movie versions and write an analysis on how much it has preserved the book’s key elements and scenes. Then, also offer insights on how the movie adaptation could have improved production, cinematography, cast, and adherence to the book plot, among other factors. 

Draw out the many parallels between the lives of Jane Eyre and her maker Charlotte Brontë. Suppose you’re interested in knowing more about Brontë to identify better and analyze their shared experiences and traits. In that case, The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell is highly recommended. 

Some of the themes very apparent in the novel are gender discrimination and class conflict. First, point out how Brontë emphasizes these themes. Then, dive deep into other possible themes and cite scenes where you find them echoing the most. 

Describe the characters in the novel, from their roles to their traits and physical appearances. Cite their significant roles and contributions to Jane’s transformation. You may also add a personal touch by focusing on characters with whom you relate or identify with the most,

While Jane grew up in Gateshead with the Reed family to whom she is related by blood, the despicable treatment she received in the place only motivated her to take on a journey to find her true home. First, map out Jane’s search for love and family. Then, explain how finding her “true home” empowered her. 

A bildungsroman roman is a literary genre that focuses on a protagonist’s mental, spiritual, and moral maturation. Discuss the criteria of a bildungsroman novel and identify which parts of Jane Eyre fulfill these criteria.

You may also compare Jane Eyre against heroes of other bildungsroman novels like Pip in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Lay down their similarities and key differences.

In the latter part of the novel, Jane gains greater economic independence thanks to the substantial wealth she inherited. But before this discovery of inheritance, Jane had struggled with economic stability. So, first, tackle how finances affected Jane’s life decisions and how they empowered her to see herself as an equal to Rochester. Then, write about how women today perceive economic security as a source of self-empowerment. 

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers . 

If you’re still stuck, check out our general resource of essay writing topics .

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A Summary and Analysis of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Here’s a seemingly uncontroversial statement: in 1847, a novel called Jane Eyre was published; the author was Charlotte Brontë. One of the most famous things about Jane Eyre is that the male love interest, Mr Rochester, has locked his first wife, Bertha Mason, in the attic of his house.

Whilst this statement is fine as far as it goes, there are several things we might question about it. But we’ll come to those in our textual analysis of the novel. First, let’s briefly summarise the plot of Jane Eyre , which is now regarded as one of the great Victorian novels: not bad for an author whose school report had once said that she ‘writes indifferently’ and ‘knows nothing of grammar, geography, history, or accomplishments’.

Jane Eyre : plot summary

Jane Eyre is perhaps the original ‘plain Jane’: ordinary-looking rather than beautiful, and a penniless orphan, she lacks the two things, beauty and wealth, which would greatly improve her marriage prospects in adulthood. Her uncle, Mr Reed, had taken her in when her parents died, but upon his death she fell under the care of Mrs Reed, who disliked Jane and treated her differently from her own children.

After Jane strikes out at her step-brother, John Reed, when he bullies her, she is locked in the ‘red room’ of the house, in which her uncle died. She is then sent away to Lowood, an orphan asylum run by a strict Calvinist clergyman named Mr Brocklehurst. There, Jane makes friends with Helen Burns, but Helen dies of typhus soon after. Conditions at the school subsequently improve and Jane stays on as one of the teachers, but when the teacher who had shown her kindness, Miss Temple, leaves the school, Jane decides to apply to become a governess.

Jane is offered the post of governess at Thornfield Hall, owned by Mr Edward Rochester, who is away on business. Mrs Fairfax, the housekeeper, introduces Jane to the young girl she will be teaching and looking after, who is a ward in Mr Rochester’s care. Mr Rochester returns and Jane is attracted to this brooding, haunted, Byronic figure. One night, she sees smoke coming out of his bedroom and rescues him from being burnt to death. He tells her that Grace Poole, a sewing-woman who lives in the house, was probably responsible for the fire.

When Mr Rochester brings home the beautiful Blanche Ingram, Jane realises she has been deluding herself with thoughts that he might love her, plain governess that she is. A man named Mr Mason from the West Indies arrives at Thornfield Hall and is attacked while in the upper portions of the house; once again, Jane assumes that Grace Poole was responsible. Mr Rochester announces to Jane that he plans to marry Blanche Ingram.

Jane is summoned by Mrs Reed, who is dying. Mrs Reed confesses to Jane that another of her uncles, Mr Eyre, had written to her because he wanted to make Jane his heiress. Mrs Reed had lied to him, writing back that his niece was dead. And then, when Jane returns to Thornfield, she discovers that Mr Rochester isn’t going to marry Blanche but wants her to be his wife instead. Jane accepts, but she also writes to her uncle to tell him that she is alive, in the hope that she will receive her inheritance and, with it, some financial independence.

Before the wedding, a mysterious woman enters Jane’s bedroom and tears her bridal veil in two. Then, on the day of their wedding, the ceremony is interrupted by Mr Mason, who declares that Rochester is already married, and his wife is concealed within Thornfield Hall.

Jane discovers that Rochester had married this woman, Bertha Mason, while out in Jamaica, under pressure from her family to do so. There’s a history of insanity in the family, and it was Bertha who set fire to Rochester’s bed and tore Jane’s bridal veil. Grace Poole is the one who keeps watch over Bertha, not the one responsible for these crimes.

Jane doesn’t want to be Rochester’s mistress, so she leaves Thornfield Hall and falls into poverty, almost starving to death until she is taken in by a clergyman named St John Rivers and befriended by his sisters, who live on the brink of poverty.

Although Jane conceals her true identity, St John discovers the truth after reading in the papers that her wealthy uncle has died, leaving her his fortune. By (rather far-fetched) coincidence, it turns out that St John Rivers’ sisters are Jane’s cousins, and Jane promises to share her inheritance with them.

St John wishes to travel to India as a Christian missionary, but before he leaves he proposes marriage to Jane, not out of love for her but because he wants to enlist her to his cause. In a romantic plot line that mirrors Rochester’s wooing of her, St John gradually wears her down until she is on the verge of accepting his offer. But then, from outside, she hears a voice calling her name: it’s Mr Rochester.

Jane returns to Thornfield Hall to discover that Rochester has been living as a recluse since the revelations came out on their wedding day. Bertha set fire to the house, destroying it, and fatally falling from the roof in the process. Rochester went to live at another house, having become blind in the fire.

Jane marries Rochester and nurses him back to health. He partially recovers his sight and Jane gives birth to their first child. Jane hears from St John Rivers in India, where he is pursuing his Christian mission with zeal.

Jane Eyre : analysis

Jane Eyre is, like Wuthering Heights , a novel which bears the influence of Gothic fiction: the haunted castle has become a country house, the ghost has become the (still very much alive) madwoman, Rochester’s first wife; and, in true Gothic fashion, there is a secret that threatens to destroy the house and its inhabitants if (or when) it comes to light. Brontë fuses these Gothic elements with the genres of romance and melodrama, with Jane’s two suitors representing erotic love and Christian fervour respectively.

As Gilbert Phelps observes in his analysis of Jane Eyre in Introduction to Fifty British Novels, 1600-1900 (Reader’s Guides) , the fire at Thornfield is symbolic, mirroring Jane’s own act of purgation as she rejects relationships founded on both the body and the soul at the expense of the other, until she and Rochester are ready to be together.

Curiously, the namesake of Edward Rochester, the Earl of Rochester, was one of the most erotic poets in English literature (we have gathered some of his most famous poems together here ). Lord Rochester was a kind of Byronic hero before Byron himself even existed, with his work dominated by the physical and sensuous side of love and relationships. St John Rivers, by contrast, has a name derived (in rather heavy-handed fashion, it must be said) from the Christian Evangelist, so we can never forget what he represents.

Jane’s journey of self-knowledge and experience leads her to understand that she must reject both extremes: to be Rochester’s mistress is to privilege the physical at the expense of the spiritual (because their union is unlawful in the eyes of God), but to marry St John when he does not love her nor she him would be a betrayal of the physical and romantic love that Jane realises is equally important.

But in terms of its central romantic plot between the plain, poor orphan girl and the rich, noble male protagonist, Jane Eyre owes something to the fairy tales of Cinderella , Snow White , Beauty and the Beast , and, in a more sinister turn, Bluebeard , with his castle concealing his (dead) wives. Brontë weaves together these various influences into a largely successful whole, even if the plot hinges (as noted above) on some pretty wild coincidences.

In his study of plot, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories , Christopher Booker goes so far as to categorise Jane Eyre as a ‘rags to riches’ story, comparing it with the tale of Aladdin . Both are poor children who attain a romantic partner above their social station, only for the presence of some other (Bertha Rochester; the sorcerer in the Aladdin story) to bring their plans crashing down. They must then rebuild everything until they can legitimately attain the life they want.

To conclude this analysis, let’s return to where we started, with those opening statements about Jane Eyre . Of course we know the author of the novel now as Charlotte Brontë, but that wasn’t the name that appeared on the title-page of the first edition in 1847.

There, the book was credited to Currer Bell, the androgynous pseudonym chosen by Brontë, much as her sisters Anne and Emily published as Acton and Ellis Bell respectively.

The novel soon won her the respect of a number of high-profile literary figures, including her hero William Makepeace Thackeray, who was reportedly so moved by Jane Eyre that he broke down in tears in front of his butler. Brontë would dedicate the second edition of the book to the Vanity Fair author and later met Thackeray (in 1849).

To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful voyage I had with such a monster in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield, and saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room, of whose secret inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild beast’s den – a goblin’s cell.

‘That third-storey room’, not ‘that attic’. And Jane makes it clear that the attic of the house is above the third storey of the house: ‘Mrs. Fairfax stayed behind a moment to fasten the trap-door; I, by dint of groping, found the outlet from the attic, and proceeded to descend the narrow garret staircase. I lingered in the long passage to which this led, separating the front and back rooms of the third storey ’ (emphases added).

2 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre”

I love this book, despite the totally bonkers plot!

So glad it’s cleared up Rochester did not lock his wife in the attic. It should be mentioned how horrible insane asylums were at that time, so Rochester should get credit for saving Bertha from that fate. However, the bigamy stunt is definitely inexcusable.

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Charlotte Brontë

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Jane Eyre: Introduction

Jane eyre: plot summary, jane eyre: detailed summary & analysis, jane eyre: themes, jane eyre: quotes, jane eyre: characters, jane eyre: symbols, jane eyre: literary devices, jane eyre: quizzes, jane eyre: theme wheel, brief biography of charlotte brontë.

Historical Context of Jane Eyre

Other books related to jane eyre.

• Full Title: Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
• When Written: 1847
• Literary Period: Victorian
• Genre: Victorian novel. Jane Eyre combines Gothic mystery, a romantic marriage plot, and a coming-of-age story.
• Setting: Northern England in the early 1800s.
• Climax: Jane telepathically hears Rochester's voice calling out to her.
• Point of View: First person. Jane recounts her story ten years after its ending.

Extra Credit for Jane Eyre

Bells and Brontës: The Brontës became a literary powerhouse when Charlotte, Emily, and Anne all wrote successful first novels. Each sister published under a masculine-sounding pseudonym based on their initials. Charlotte Brontë became "Currer Bell"; Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights (1845-46) as "Ellis Bell", and Anne Brontë published Agnes Gray (1847) as "Acton Bell." Women could enter the marketplace as writers and novelists, but many writers, including the Brontës and Mary Anne Evans ("George Eliot"), used male pseudonyms to keep from being dismissed as unimportant.

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Essays on Jane Eyre

Prompt examples for jane eyre essays, jane's journey to independence.

Trace Jane Eyre's journey to independence and self-discovery throughout the novel. How does she evolve as a character, and what challenges and obstacles does she overcome on her path to finding her own voice and identity?

The Role of Social Class

Analyze the role of social class in "Jane Eyre." How do class distinctions affect the characters' interactions and choices? Discuss the significance of Jane's lower social standing and her relationships with characters like Mr. Rochester and St. John Rivers.

Gothic Elements and Atmosphere

Examine the use of gothic elements and atmosphere in the novel. How does Charlotte Brontë create a sense of mystery and suspense in the story? Discuss the role of Thornfield Hall and the character of Bertha Mason in contributing to the gothic ambiance.

Feminism and Gender Roles

Discuss the feminist themes in "Jane Eyre." How does Jane challenge traditional gender roles and expectations? Explore her relationship with Mr. Rochester in the context of gender dynamics and power struggles.

Religion and Morality

Examine the themes of religion and morality in the novel, particularly in Jane's interactions with characters like Mr. Brocklehurst and St. John Rivers. How do these characters' beliefs and actions influence Jane's own moral development?

Romantic Love in the Novel

Analyze the portrayal of romantic love in "Jane Eyre." How does Jane's relationship with Mr. Rochester evolve, and what obstacles do they face? Discuss the idea of love as a source of strength and vulnerability in the novel.

Settings in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

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Jane Eyre: Complex Character in Development

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Jane Eyre as an Independent Woman in 19th Century

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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: Resolving The Issue of Equality and Women’s Role in Society Through Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory, Feminist Theory and Marxist Classism

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October 16, 1847, Charlotte Bronte

Novel, Victorian Literature

Jane Eyre, Edward Rochester, St. John Rivers, Mrs. Reed, Bessie Lee, Mr. Lloyd, Georgiana Reed, Eliza Reed, John Reed, Helen Burns, Mr. Brocklehurst, Maria Temple, Miss Scatcherd, Alice Fairfax, Bertha Mason, Grace Poole, Adèle Varens, Celine Varens, Sophie, Richard Mason, Mr. Briggs, Blanche Ingram, Diana Rivers, Mary Rivers, Rosamond Oliver, John Eyre, Uncle Reed

1. Beattie, V. (1996). The Mystery at Thornfield: Representations of Madness In" Jane Eyre". Studies in the Novel, 28(4), 493-505. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/29533162) 2. Bossche, C. R. V. (2005). What Did" Jane Eyre" Do? Ideology, Agency, Class and the Novel. Narrative, 13(1), 46-66. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236760140_What_Did_Jane_Eyre_Do_Ideology_Agency_Class_and_the_Novel) 3. Andersson, A. (2011). Identity and independence in Jane Eyre. (http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A463653&dswid=7105) 4. Griesinger, E. (2008). Charlotte Brontë's religion: faith, feminism, and Jane Eyre. Christianity & Literature, 58(1), 29-59. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014833310805800103) 5. Sternlieb, L. (1999). Jane Eyre:" Hazarding Confidences". Nineteenth-Century Literature, 53(4), 452-479. (https://online.ucpress.edu/ncl/article-abstract/53/4/452/66369/Jane-Eyre-Hazarding-Confidences) 6. Stoneman, P. (2017). Jane Eyre on Stage, 1848–1898: An Illustrated Edition of Eight Plays with Contextual Notes. Routledge. (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315251639/jane-eyre-stage-1848%E2%80%931898-patsy-stoneman) 7. Beaty, J. (1996). Misreading Jane Eyre: A Postformalist Paradigm. The Ohio State University Press. (https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/6286) 8. Bodenheimer, R. (1980). Jane Eyre in Search of Her Story. Papers on Language and Literature, 16(4), 387. (https://www.proquest.com/docview/1300110761?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true)

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Jane Eyre Essays

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;b;? Suffering is an essential element of childhood experiences; without it a child could not learn and grow' Does literature you study support this statement? ;/b; ;br; ;br;? Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it'. This literal and realistic statement...

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Jane Eyre, a novel about an English woman's struggles told through the writing of Charlotte Bronte, has filled its audience with thoughts of hope, love, and deception for many years. These thoughts surround people, not just women, everyday, as if an endless cycle from birth to death. As men and...

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Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre embraces many feminist views in opposition to the Victorian feminine ideal. Charlotte Bronte herself was among the first feminist writers of her time, and wrote this book in order to send the message of feminism to a Victorian-Age Society in which women were...

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In the novels Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, the theme of loss can be viewed as an umbrella that encompasses the absence of independence, society or community, love, and order in the lives of the two protagonists. They deal with their hardships in diverse ways...

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Jane Eyre is a feminist novel. A feminist is a person whose beliefs and behavior are based on feminism (belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes). Jane Eyre is clearly a critique of assumptions about both gender and social class. It contains a strong feminist stance; it...

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Sorry, but Jane Eyre Isn’t the Romance You Want It to Be

Charlotte Brontë, a woman whose life was steeped in stifled near-romance, refused to write love as ruly, predictable, or safe.

George Smith did not know it, but he was about to meet the world’s most famous author. It was 1848. Currer Bell, author of Jane Eyre , was the most sought-after—and most mysterious—writer in the world. Even Smith, who edited and published the book, had never met the enigmatic author, a first-time novelist who had nonetheless turned down his suggestions for revision, thanking him for the advice, then announcing the intention to ignore it.

Bell had been right, of course, and Smith wrong. The book, and Bell’s identity, was the talk of London. And now, a very small woman stood before Smith, clutching one of Bell’s letters in her hand. She was Currer Bell, she told him. She was the author of Jane Eyre .

If life were like literature, Smith would have fallen in love with her then and there. Passionate, deeply intelligent, outspoken, and charmingly unaffected—Charlotte Brontë was an arresting, complex woman. If he did not love her already, he could learn: They would soon strike up a lively and close correspondence that lasted years. And Charlotte was charmed by his good looks and his bright, open personality. But Jane Eyre ’s diminutive author was no romantic heroine, and real life is not a romance.

Jane Eyre is, though. Right? The answer to that question is up for debate.

It might seem like sacrilege to question the (small r) romanticism of Jane Eyre , a story that centers on the obsessive love of a teenage governess and her decades-older boss. Over the last 172 years, the book has become a touchstone for passionate love, that once-in-a-lifetime spark we are taught to long for. Even today, the book is the subject of swoony listsicles (“11 Romantic Quotes from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre ”) and essays that uphold it as “a romance novel for the modern, intelligent woman.”

But when it was published, the bestselling book incensed readers even as it seduced them. It was condemned as immoral, unfit for women’s eyes, all but fomenting revolution. And for modern scholars, its undercurrents of rage, motherlessness , colonialism , slavery , circus freakery , and even incest (!) are more compelling than its caresses.

“The early reviews of Jane Eyre strike us today as naive and misinformed,” writes Lisa Sternlieb. She lists off common critiques of the book as anti-Christian and deeply hypocritical, including one that said that “never was there a greater hater than Charlotte Brontë.” “Yet I would argue that these reviewers hit on an element of truth in the novel,” Sternlieb muses.

Hatred. Insurrection. Patriarchy. Not exactly romantic themes. Readers have always picked up on the tension between the book’s revolutionary subtexts and its uneasy relationship with love. To twenty-first-century eyes, it shows a woman who fights for, yet abdicates to, love. To nineteenth-century eyes, it showed a woman who should abdicate to, yet fights for, love. In either century, readers demand that Jane Eyre should do cultural labor that it steadfastly resists. Its author resists our attempts at that labor, too. For Charlotte Brontë, a woman whose life was steeped in stifled near-romance, refused to write love as ruly, predictable, or safe.

Charlotte’s life was not that of her heroine, and Jane Eyre is no autobiography. But by the time her most famous book was published, Charlotte was 31 years old, and an expert in the strangling, diminishing kind of romance she bequeathed her heroine.

It wasn’t always that way. As a child, she seemed marked for love. It was part and parcel of the fantasy world that enveloped her everyday life: a fictitious kingdom called Angria, which she wrote into being with her younger brother, Branwell . In what amounted to a competitive literary apprenticeship, they wove their fantasy land into a place of lewd thrills. Angria seethed with war, rape, rebellion, kidnapping, and revenge. It was a hotbed of the kind of love that could build a kingdom, then tear it to shreds.

That vision of love was so intense that it permeated into real life. When she was 23, Charlotte turned down a proposal from her best friend’s brother. “I had not, and never could have that intense attachment which would make me willing to die for him,” she wrote , “and if I ever marry it must be in that light of adoration that I will regard my husband.” Besides, she wrote, her suitor would think her a “wild, romantic enthusiast indeed” if he ever really got to know her.

Jane Eyre may have a wild, romantic streak, but its heroine’s love counters everything readers have been taught to desire. Neglected in childhood and traumatized at a school where she is humiliated and starved, Jane arrives at Thornfield ready to love. At first, it seems she’ll get her chance: There are romantic promises, forbidden glances, anguished prayers. But though her story delivers sexual tension and an agony of will-they-or-won’t-they that lasts into its final pages, nothing about Jane’s love is what you’d expect. Brontë drapes her book in the trappings of romance, then snatches them away, subverting our fantasies at every turn.

“Like so many other (yes) romance writers,” writes the literary critic Sandra M. Gilbert, “Charlotte Brontë created a heroine who wants to learn what love is and how to find it, just as she herself did. Unlike most of her predecessors, though, Brontë was unusually explicit in placing that protagonist amid dysfunctional families, perverse partnerships, and abusive caretakers.”

Chief among Brontë’s baits-and-switches is her hero, a brooding man readers—and Jane—are all too ready to adore. Edward Fairfax Rochester is boorish and brutal. He engages his 18-year-old employee in work talk that is the 19th-century version of #METOO employment investigation fodder. He’d fit right in with the modern “seduction community,” conducting a master class in negging as he reminds Jane of her inferiority, then compliments her wit. In one particularly repulsive episode, he messes with her mind by disguising himself as a Roma fortune teller.

Affection-starved Jane only realizes her “master” loves her after he pushes her toward an appalling apex of emotional cruelty. He intends to marry her rival, he implies. Then he changes his mind. Finally, after all but forcing her to accept his abrupt proposal, he takes her in his arms.

But Rochester’s momentary tenderness is just that—momentary. While he’s been playing dress-up and making out with a teenager beneath a tree in his Gothic garden, he’s been guilty of unforgivable cruelty, holding his first wife captive for her “intemperance” and, Brontë implies, her race. The wedding is called off, so Rochester makes one last bid for Jane’s love, begging her to stay and live with him as his bigamous mistress. It is too much to bear.

The same year she turned down her first marriage proposal, Charlotte turned away from the illicit fantasies of Angria. Both she and Branwell were in their twenties now, and they had lingered together in their imaginary world for too long.

“I have now written a great many books,” she wrote . “I long to quit for a while that burning clime where we have sojourned too long… The mind would cease from excitement & turn now to a cooler region, where the dawn breaks gray and sober & the coming day for a time at least is subdued in clouds.”

Something else threw cold water on her passions: A letter she received from Britain’s poet laureate, Robert Southey, in 1837. Charlotte had sent the poet a poem of her own, asking whether it was worth pursuing her literary ambitions. But Southey didn’t encourage her. Instead, he warned her against what he called “a distempered state of mind” that would render the mundane life of a woman intolerable. “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life,” he wrote, “and it ought not to be.” Charlotte wrote back, assuring him she’d try to write as little as possible.

A few years later, burned out on governessing and with no hopes of marriage, she continued her search for cooler climes. This time, she went to Belgium. As an adult student at a girls’ school in Brussels, Charlotte planned to acquire the “finish,” and the fluency in French, that would qualify her to run her own school in England. What she really wanted, though, was a change of scenery, an antidote to her restlessness.

She learned more than one language there. Constantin Héger, the married headmaster of the school, befriended her. He encouraged her to write, to speak her mind. For a woman who had been told there was no place for women in writing—by Britain’s most respected poet, no less—his argumentative, constructive criticisms in the margins of her essays must have had the effect of a powerful aphrodisiac. Soon she came home again, this time fleeing her obsession with Héger.

In 1913, Héger’s children published four letters from Charlotte to Héger that they had discovered among their mother’s things. Three of the four had been torn into pieces and discarded, then retrieved and carefully stitched together with paper and thread by his wife, Zoë Héger. She likely saved the letters as potential evidence; they might prove useful if Charlotte made trouble for the school. Instead, they are testimony of Charlotte’s agony.

“Day and night, I find neither rest nor peace,” she wrote . “Monsieur, the poor do not need a great deal to live on. They ask only the crumbs of bread which fall from the rich men’s table.” Charlotte was ready to take whatever crumbs he had left to give.

The author may have been hungry for crumbs, but Jane Eyre is not. When she finds out her soon-to-be-husband isn’t free to marry, she faces down his betrayal with shocked strength. When Rochester steamily suggests she move with him to France, where no one knows or cares that he’s already married, she refuses. Not that it’s not tempting. But the offer is a “silken snare,” a luxurious trap.

“While he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him,” says Jane:

They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. “Oh, comply!” it said. “Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?” Still indomitable was the reply—“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

Maybe Charlotte’s refusal to let her heroine sin with Rochester was a rebuke to herself. Or it may have been a reminder to move forward. Jane presses on, running away from sin and toward herself. If she cannot be on equal footing with her partner, she will not have him at all.

In this sense, Jane’s flight is as much from inequality as it is from sin. Even before he copped to his attic-bound madwoman of a wife, Rochester made it clear that he wanted to own Jane. As his wife, she would have been his concubine: a petted plaything, but not an equal. Jane’s furious opposition to that—her insistence on meeting him on equal footing—riled Jane Eyre ’s critics and appalled readers.

For the literary critic Nancy Pell, Jane’s refusal of Rochester is part of a deep-rooted critique of social and economic institutions that echoes throughout the novel. By the time she falls in love, Jane knows she can fend for herself. “Knowing that she can earn thirty pounds a year as a governess,” Pell writes , “Jane rejects being hired as a mistress or bought as a slave. Once again she resolves to keep in good health and not die.”

She does more than refuse to die; she thrives. Jane escapes Thornfield and befriends the Rivers sisters and their intolerable brother, St. John, a Calvinist minister who gives her a job as a teacher in an obscure village. Coincidence then teaches her that not only are the Rivers siblings her cousins, she is an heiress. She shares the wealth, enjoying the money that has raised her out of obscurity.

Jane has one more obstacle to overcome: St. John’s insistence that she marry him and become a missionary in India. St. John is arguably even more sadistic than Rochester. He expects Jane to follow him to the ends of the earth, and to do so with a cold substitute for love.

“God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife,” he tells her. “It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary’s wife you must—shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you—not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service.”

His words could be construed as a kind of reassurance: Marital rape, he suggests, won’t be part of his bargain. But his words crack like a whip. They are the words of a man who has judged a woman’s body and found it lacking. St. John would never make out with Jane beneath a tree. If she left him, he wouldn’t beg for her to stay. He wouldn’t take her as his mistress or take her to France. The principled minister finds no pleasure in his future wife.

Certainly, Charlotte had stopped thinking of herself as a wife by the time she wrote Jane Eyre . She was too busy watching other people’s children, tending her half-blind father, and sewing shirts for her drug-addicted brother. When they were not governessing or teaching, all of the Brontë women labored alongside their servants, peeling potatoes and baking bread, tending to the endless toil of daughters, sisters. But not wives.

“I’m certainly doomed to be an old maid,” she wrote . “I can’t expect another chance—never mind I made up my mind to that fate ever since I was twelve years old.”

Spinsterdom did have its uses: It allowed Charlotte to write. Without a husband to attend to, Charlotte could spend the hours between her father’s bedtime and her own with her pen. It could be a lonely bargain, but it was one that allowed her to create Jane Eyre .

St. John’s tempting bargain—Jane Eyre’s second proposal of marriage—is the last thing that stands between her and happiness. Equipped with new knowledge and a new dismissal of the skim-milk version of love he offers, she decides that sin on her own terms is preferable to virtue on St. John’s. Turning down her cousin and returning to a man who, for all she knows, is still married, is helped along when she hears Rochester calling her name. “But indeed, Jane doesn’t merely ‘think’ of Mr. Rochester,” notes Gilbert. “Rather, in a moment of mystically orgasmic passion she virtually brings him into being.”

Jane, bolstered by her own financial security and her refusal to be diminished by a man who sees her only as a source of labor, is in a different position than she was when she left Rochester for the first time. She is ready for his call. She is ready to go to him on her own terms.

That return has vexed readers for 172 years. Jane’s seeming surrender—her willingness to re-enter a dysfunctional, if not abusive, relationship—infuriates scholars, too, especially those immersed in feminist theory.

The book is a “patriarchal love fantasy,” writes the literary scholar Jean Wyatt in an essay tellingly named “A Patriarch of One’s Own.” For Wyatt, Jane Eyre is an expression of “defiant autonomy” that nonetheless gives in to a damaging fusion with a damaging man. Jane’s eventual marriage to her “strong oak of a man” dupes readers, Wyatt suggests:

The apparently revolutionary nature of Jane’s egalitarian marriage allows an old fantasy to get by the ideological censors of her readers, so that we all, feminists and Harlequin romance readers alike, can enjoy the unending story of having one’s patriarch all to oneself forever.

It makes for an “excruciating ending,” writes the sociologist Bonnie Zare. The completion of Jane and Rochester’s love trajectory, she writes, is painful:

For after being taken advantage of by Rochester’s abusive tricks, Jane is supposed to attain ultimate fulfillment in a subservient relationship with a husband whose devotion seems to spring mostly from his new state of physical vulnerability.

In his new wife, Zare implies, Rochester has gained an all-too-willing caretaker.

But is Jane really doomed to a life of subservience? Not exactly, says Pell. “‘An independent woman now,’ Jane reappears at Thornfield,” she writes. “She has refused to be Rochester’s mistress or St. John’s mistress of Indian schools; now she is her own mistress and her proposal to Rochester is striking… Even their marriage can hardly be considered typically Victorian. Jane possesses a great deal of money in her own right, and although Rochester is far from the helpless wreck he is sometimes taken to be, he is dependent upon Jane ‘to be helped—to be led’ until he regains his sight.”

Gilbert, too, rejects the premise that Jane Eyre demeans herself by returning to Rochester. “In a proud denial of St. John’s insulting insistence that she is ‘formed for labor, not for love,’ she chooses—and wins—a destiny of love’s labors,” she writes. “There can be no question… that what Jane calls the ‘pleasure in my services’ both she and Rochester experience in their utopian woodland is a pleasure in physical as well as spiritual intimacy, erotic as well as intellectual communion.”

In the 1840s, Jane’s love for herself was so subversive it bordered on revolution. In 2019, her love of Rochester is so shocking it borders on treason. In any era, its relationship to the love it explores is uneasy, volatile. Nearly two centuries after it was published, Jane Eyre confounds every expectation.

After they met in person, Charlotte and her editor began a correspondence that can only be described as stimulating. She already knew that Smith loved her writing—when she sent him the draft of Jane Eyre , it captivated him so much that he read it through in one sitting, neglecting visitors and appointments as he rushed through the story.

It almost seemed possible that their friendship was something deeper. When Charlotte visited London, Smith begged her to stay at his house. He treated her to every amusement the city could afford. They traveled together, through London and even to Scotland, often chaperoned by his mother or sister. They even went to a phrenologist together, delighting in her anonymity and the practitioner’s pronouncement that Charlotte’s head was “very remarkable.” She wrote him into one of her books as a handsome, good-natured love interest. When they were apart, they wrote long, chatty letters, dissecting the literary news of the day.

Though only Charlotte’s half of the correspondence survived, it is honest and remarkably open. At times it is sparkling and witty. It verges on flirty, and then it falls apart.

It’s not clear how Charlotte reacted in private when George Smith told her he was engaged to be married, but her choked response was not flirty or chatty or fun:

My dear Sir In great happiness, as in great grief—words of sympathy should be few. Accept my meed of congratulation—and believe me Sincerely yours C. Brontë

Twenty-eight words, each smarting with disappointment.

A few months earlier, something strange had happened to Charlotte Brontë: She had become an object of unrequited love. The admirer in question was Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate. It was surreal to be the one pined for, the one whose crumbs were gladly gathered. When he declared himself, she told her father, who exploded. “If I had loved Mr. N—and had heard such epithets applied to him as were used,” she told a friend, “it would have transported me past my patience.”

But she did not love him, yet. It took years of moping and quiet persuasion—and perhaps Smith’s marriage—for her to decide to marry Nicholls, a man she had previously scorned as stupid and unromantic. Finally, she agreed, though she had deep reservations. During a pre-nuptial conversation with two of her friends, the kind of conversation in which virgin women asked more experienced friends about their marital obligations, Charlotte confided that she worried about what marriage might cost her. “I cannot conceal from myself that he is not intellectual,” she said .

Marriage did exact a price. Though Charlotte Nicholls loved her husband, he constricted her. He was horrified by the personal issues she discussed in her longstanding correspondence with Ellen Nussey, a friend since childhood.

“Arthur complains that you do not distinctly promise to burn my letters as you receive them,” she wrote in 1854, four months after her wedding. “He says you must give a plain pledge to that effect—or he will read every line I write and elect himself censor of our correspondence.”

Nussey agreed, grudgingly. Then she disobeyed him. We owe her much of what we know of Charlotte Brontë.

“Faultless he is not,” Charlotte wrote wryly, “but as you well know—I did not expect perfection.” She loved her husband, loved the settled life they led together. But later, she admitted that she had stopped writing: “My own life is more occupied than it used to be: I have not so much time for thinking.”

Did Charlotte kill herself by handing over her intellectual and physical well-being? Perhaps. She died soon after, likely from dehydration following severe morning sickness. But her nine months of marriage to Arthur Bell Nicholls were among the happiest of her life.

“There was but little feminine charm about her, and of this fact she herself was uneasily and perpetually conscious,” George Smith wrote decades later. “I believe that she would have given all her genius and fame to have been beautiful. Perhaps few women ever existed more anxious to be pretty than she, or more angrily conscious of the circumstance that she was not pretty.”

Those lines jump out from an otherwise respectful, even loving, memoir of his time with Charlotte Brontë. Smith certainly wasn’t the first person to notice that Charlotte’s nose and mouth were large, that she was missing teeth and so nearsighted she crouched over books and papers. But his assessment—his assumption that Brontë’s unease in public was due to discomfort with her physical appearance instead of, say, being unused to city life or worried about being recognized by readers or fearful of meeting her critics in person—is disappointing.

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In the end, even George Smith, who had had direct access to so many of Charlotte’s thoughts and feelings, and whom she admired so much, felt the need to snipe about her appearance instead of assessing her legacy or engaging with her body of work. Even those who cared most about Charlotte Brontë underestimated her, even after they knew she had made a deliberate choice to write a disquieting story about a plain woman in love.

“I will prove to you that you are wrong,” she reportedly told her sisters during a debate on how to write heroines. “I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself, who shall be as interesting as any of yours.”

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Themes and Analysis

By charlotte brontë.

‘Jane Eyre’ represents the typical contemporary feminist woman who loves herself and searches for respect from others. Some of the well-thought-out themes she personifies anchor around self-love, romantic love, spirituality, independence, and social class.

About the Book

Article written by Victor Onuorah

Degree in Journalism from University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Among other themes, religion also comes up top as a major influencing factor that goes on to shape the protagonist in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘ Jane Eyre ,’ and the lessons learned to stay with her for the rest of her life – often serving as a curb to her immoderations and moral excesses.

Jane Eyre Themes

Spirituality.

Spirituality makes a major part of Charlotte Brontë’s ‘ Jane Eyre ’ – and goes on to have a massive influence on several of the book’s characters , especially on Jane, the protagonist. Because the book’s time setting is centered around Victorian English society , from the early 1800s, Christianity became the prevalent religion that had the most influence on the people. 

Jane certainly has a few people in her life – like Helen and St. John Rivers- that help sharpen her spirituality and build a moral life. Although, like these characters whose views are extreme, she finds a middle ground that works well with her personality.

Independence and Self Love

Charlotte Brontë succeeded in building Jane into a strong, independent woman who develops a sort of iron-clad mentality on her selfhood and integrity. She discovers the kind of woman she wants to be from early on, and It’s not life, and actions are dictated by men or society. She works towards this goal without compromises, even though she has no close family, home, or social security to make the decision easier. 

Social Class

Social class is another such theme dealt with heavily by Charlotte Brontë in her book, ‘ Jane Eyre ,’ and readers get to see this being called into action throughout the book. As is normal with the class system, the people at the low end of the class tend to suffer the most, and Jane finds herself in this position – having lost her parents at a tender age and left to stay with her mean aunt who, despite her affluent status, is unable to lift Jane the social ladder instead causes more troubles for her by horribly treating her.

Key Moments in Jane Eyre

• At Gateshead, ten years old, Jane endures the most horrible treatment living with Mrs. Reed, a wealthy but cruel widow and mother of three, and also Jane’s aunt. 
• Aside from putting up with her mean aunt, Jane also has to manage her mean cousins – especially John Reed, who often bullies her at the slightest chance. 
• Jane soon gets into trouble with Mrs. Reed for challenging John and is put into a chamber called the ‘red room,’ the same place where Mrs. Reed’s husband and Jane’s uncle had spent his final hours.
• Jane is traumatized by a possible ghostly presence and reacts to it by crying and fainting. 
• After her release, she is tended to by two persons, Bessie – a servant who is the only one in the house that feeds and truly cares for her; and Mr. Lloyd, a pharmacist who has come to treat her. 
• After examining Jane and feeling pity for her, Mr. Lloyd advises Mrs. Reed that allowing Jane to go to a distant school may be the only way to get rid of her troubles. 
• Jane is sent to a highly disciplinary Lowood School where she meets some nice people, but also deplorable ones. One of the latter is her headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst, who is later fired for his hypocrisy, extravagance, and poor management skill. 
• At Lowood, Jane also meets the kind and virtuous Helen Burn – who sadly dies prematurely, and a caring mother figure-like Miss Temple – who replaces Mr. Brocklehurst.
• Jane stays at Lowood for eight years and leaves afterward – seeking new experiences from the outer world. She finds a job as a home tutor at Thornfield, where she attends to the young and vibrant Adéle, an illegitimate stepdaughter of the shrewd and aggressive Mr. Rochester, Jane’s boss and owner of the Thornfield mansion. 
• Shortly after, Jane begins falling for her boss, and one time saves him from a fire set by Mr. Rochester’s mentally sick wife, Bertha Mason, although Jane doesn’t know about this as housekeeper Grace Poole takes the blame instead. 
• Mr. Rochester, who secretly now has feelings for Jane, intends to make her jealous and brings home Blanche Ingram, a beautiful woman, as his mistress. Jane is devastated by this and doesn’t say anything. 
• Suddenly and unexpectedly, Mr. Rochester proposes to Jane. Astonished and dumbfounded, Jane accepts, but the wedding is not about to stand Richard Mason, Mr. Rochester’s in-law, flies into town with a lawyer to disrupt the marriage. 
• Jane learns that Mr. Rochester has a living wife after he takes them to the attic where she’s kept. This is too much for Jane to handle, so she leaves Thornfield. 
• Depressed and without any clear destination, Jane wanders the street for three days – sleeping outside and begging for bread. 
• On the third day, and to Jane’s luck, a clergyman, St. John Rivers, and his two sisters find Jane around their residence, the Moor House, and bring her in. He helps Jane secure a teaching job in Morton and helps Jane claim an inheritance of 20,000 pounds left by her John Eyre, which Jane knows nothing about.
• St. John also tells Jane that John Eyre was also their uncle – this makes Jane and the Rivers siblings cousins. 
• St. John plans a missionary trip to India and asks Jane to marry and accompany him. Jane wants to travel but doesn’t love him enough to marry him. She continues to ponder about it until one, and in what feels like a dream, Mr. Rochester calls out to her to come home to him. 
• She leaves for Thornfield the next morning only to find the house is burnt to ashes by Bertha – who died in the fire, leaving Mr. Rochester with an arm and blind after he managed to rescue the servants. 
• Jane locates Mr. Rochester at his new home in Ferndean and marries him.
• After one decade of marriage, the couple stays very happy with their children. Jane shares that her husband regained half of his sight early enough to see his first son being born.

Style and Tone 

In the story of ‘ Jane Eyre ,’ Charlotte Brontë utilizes a descriptive first-person perspective – allowing her protagonist, Jane, to share her deeply touching story with her readers for a chance to fully understand her plight and the pains she passed through on her way to becoming an independent, well-respected wife and society woman. 

Charlotte’s tone for ‘ Jane Eyre ’ is warm and welcoming , thanks to the personality of the book’s protagonist. However, the book is by designation a gothic romance and so is characteristically imbued with plot mysteriousness, occasional dread, and horror.

Figurative Languages

Charlotte Brontë brings to play a wide range of figurative languages in her masterwork, ‘ Jane Eyre ,’ and except for a good few, quotes therein are typically stretchered using sentence joiners like commas, semicolons et cetera. For the figurative language, readers should expect to find a bulk of metaphors, similes, and personification being used throughout the pages of the book. 

Analysis of Symbols in Jane Eyre  

Fire is portrayed on several occasions in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘ Jane Eyre ,’ and outside of its literal meaning, concerning Jane, it’s a clear motif for her drive, delicateness, and passion towards achieving her goals.

Ice and Chills

These hold a motif of loneliness, personal pains, and suffering Jane faces at different points in her life – from Gateshead, under her cruel aunt and her children – to Lowood school, then to sleeping three days in the streets. Ice and chills are a representation of the harsh conditions Jane faces throughout the book.

The Red-Room 

Restrictive, repressive, and scary, the red room symbolizes how society represses Jane’s shine and ability to become an independent, self-sustaining woman of her time, seeing as that is nearly impossible for any woman to achieve in such a society. 

What is a frontal theme in ‘ Jane Eyre ’?

Search for one’s voice, freedom and independence prove a prevalent theme in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘ Jane Eyre ,’ however, there are also the themes of love, religion and spirituality, and social class. 

What does the red room signify in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘ Jane Eyre ’?

One important sign of the red room is its restrictive and scary nature, and this is similar to the limitations and challenges Jane would later face in the outer society.

In Charlotte Brontë’s ‘ Jane Eyre ,’ how does Jane become the woman she always wanted to be?

Jane becomes the best version of herself because she sets a goal for herself, follows through on it, and in the end, becomes an independent woman with her voice and obtains respect and equality for her gender. 

About Victor Onuorah

Victor is as much a prolific writer as he is an avid reader. With a degree in Journalism, he goes around scouring literary storehouses and archives; picking up, dusting the dirt off, and leaving clean even the most crooked pieces of literature all with the skill of analysis.

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81 Jane Eyre Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best jane eyre topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 most interesting jane eyre topics to write about, 👍 good research topics about jane eyre, ❓ jane eyre essay questions.

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: The Novel Reading Analysis If the formalist theory is applied to Jane Eyre, the main point of such analysis would be the form of the novel, its structure, and the imagery.
• Jane Eyre: Novel vs. Film Bronte’s original story narrates Jane’s story as an orphan who finds joy at the end of the story but Stevenson’s film tells the story of Jane as a person who went through a lot of […] We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Significance of Jane’s and Antoinette’s Dreams in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea The dream is a premonition of danger that is ahead; although she dreams after fighting with her friend Tia, it also represents her conscience because her friend despises her during the ordeal. However, the dream […]
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre appears to have great self esteem even though she is an orphan and has a lot of negative energy and criticism around her in the shape of her aunt and cousins.
• Compare the Relationship of Mothers and Daughters in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea The two works by the authors are related in that one work is the rewrite of another or almost the duplicate of another and therefore almost all the themes are the same in both books […]
• A Hint of Things to Come: Summary and Analysis of Chapter 25 of Jane Eyre With the help of such walk, the author underlines that something mysterious and unknown to Jane is waiting for her and she has to find more powers to discover the truth.
• Social Inequality in “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte At the same time Jane Eyre symbolizes the struggle of the social classes in 19th century England. The story traced the development of the ten year old child as a hapless prey in an oppressive […]
• Narcissism: Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester This paper will explore the notion of narcissism and use examples from Bronte’s s novel to prove that Mr. Rochester consistently behaves in a way that forces the reader to question the moral integrity of […]
• Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” and Rhys’ “Wide Sargasso Sea” Her immediate kin regarded her more as a burden and made her do all the hard work and she lived in a constant environment of scorn and hatred.
• Jane Eyre and Daisy Miller: Two Women Ahead of Their Time and Their Men Jane tells her story as explicitly as she can and yet much of the substance of that story is given in the descriptive passages where she uses natural symbolism to convey the mysteries of her […]
• Home Theme in the “Jane Eyre” Film by Fukunaga While Jane is looking for a building full of people who support her to call it her home, her real home is a person she loves.
• Charlotte Bronte’s Portrayal of Childhood in “Jane Eyre”
• The Maturation of a Girl Into a Woman in “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
• Passion vs. Reason in “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
• The Theme of Gender and Marriage in “Jane Eyre”
• Critique of the Behaviour and Values of the 18th Century in “Jane Eyre”
• The Significance of Class Relations in “Jane Eyre”
• The Portrayal of Females in “Jane Eyre” and “The Handmaid’s Tale”
• An Analysis on the Portrayal of Males in “Jane Eyre”
• Crucial Ideas in the Novel “Wide Sargasso Sea” and “Jane Eyre”
• Identity and Independence of Jane Eyre in Charlotte Bronte’s Novel
• The Representation of Social Class and Feminism in “Jane Eyre”
• The Lack of Laughter in Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”
• Psychological, Emotional and Physical Horror in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Jane Eyre”
• Female Mental Illness in “Jane Eyre” and Great Expectations
• A Religious Approach of Evangelical Christianity in “Jane Eyre”
• The Evolution of the Main Character in “Jane Eyre”
• Comparing and Contrasting Jane Eyre’s Mental State From Text to Adaptation
• Challenges Faced and Solved in “Jane Eyre”
• Jane Eyre’s Passion, Sexuality, and Desire in Charlotte Bronte’s Novel
• The Presentation of Women in Society in “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca”
• The Symbolism of Fire and Ice in “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
• Jane Eyre and Religions Teachings of Forgiveness
• A Feminist Approach to “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
• Struggling for Self Realization in “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
• The Evolution of Rochester’s Character in “Jane Eyre”
• Resolving the Issue of Equality Through Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory in “Jane Eyre”
• Importance of Setting in “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
• Women History of Empowerment in “Jane Eyre”
• Sadness, Hope, and Tension in “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
• Analysis of Jane and Rochester’s Relationship in Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”
• The Significance of the Character of Jane Eyre
• Individual vs Society in Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”
• A Critique of the Social Hierarchies of Victorian England in “Jane Eyre”
• Jane Eyre as an Independent Woman in 19th Century
• Imperialism and Colonialism in the Novel “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
• Escaping the Society of Patriarchy in Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”
• Rebellion Against Conformity in “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
• Emotions Over Rationality in Final Chapter of “Jane Eyre”
• Progression of Female Characters From Jane Eyre to Hermione Granger
• Moral Identity of an Orphan in “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
• How Does Charlotte Bronte Convey Childhood and School Experience in “Jane Eyre”?
• How Are Women Presented in “Jane Eyre”?
• What Makes Jane Eyre an Unusual Woman for Her Time?
• How Does Charlotte Bronte Use the Different Houses in “Jane Eyre”?
• How Does Bronte Convey Jane Eyre’s State?
• How Does Charlotte Bronte Develop the Gothic Features of “Jane Eyre”?
• How Much Sympathy Does the Reader Feel for Jane Eyre at Different Stages in the Story?
• What Are the Main Moral Messages of “Jane Eyre”?
• To What Extent Is Charlotte Bronte Reflecting Victorian Morality in “Jane Eyre”?
• How Does Bronte Create Tension and Suspense in “Jane Eyre”?
• How Does Bronte Show the Reader Jane’s Resilience in “Jane Eyre”?
• How Does Charlotte Bronte Use Setting and Weather in “Jane Eyre”?
• How Effectively Does Charlotte Bronte Convey the Child’s Viewpoint in “Jane Eyre”?
• How Does Post-colonialism Help Interpret and Evaluate “Jane Eyre”?
• How Does Bronte’s Characterisation of Jane Eyre?
• How Narrative Techniques Are Employed Within “Jane Eyre”?
• How Many Chapters Are in “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte?
• What Is Jane Eyre’s Occupation?
• How Is Lowood Different From What Jane Had Anticipated in “Jane Eyre”?
• In Jane Eyre, What Does Jane Tell St. John and His Sisters of Her Past in “Jane Eyre”?
• What Is the Basic Storyline of “Jane Eyre”?
• In What Ways Might “Jane Eyre” Be Considered a Feminist Novel?
• How Does Charlotte Bronte Present Jane Eyre’s Oppression and Her Ability to Overcome It?
• How Does Thornfield Project That Good Things Will Happen to Jane Eyre?
• How Does Charlotte Bronte Use Language Detail and Setting in “Jane Eyre”?
• How Do “Jane Eyre” Subvert Gender Stereotypes?
• How Does Charlotte Bronte Develop the Adult Jane Eyre Through the Child’s Presentation?
• How Does Charlotte Bronte Portray John Reed, Mrs. Reed, and Mr. Brocklehurst in “Jane Eyre”?
• How Did Jane Eyre and Shirley Valentine Achieve Independence?
• How Does Religion Affect the Novel “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte?
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Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre is a novel by Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Jane Eyre b...

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Jane Eyre Essays

Reflection versus conversation anonymous college.

Reflection versus Conversation

The 19th and 20th centuries introduced readers to a variety of prominent authors who are still read today. Two of these prominent and well-read authors from each period include Charlotte Brontë and Jean Rhys...

The Homosocial Network: Miss Temple's Virtues and Significance Anonymous College

If Charlotte Brontë’s character of Miss Temple in Jane Eyre could be distilled down to one word, perhaps it would be “perfect.” At a cursory glance, Miss Temple seemingly represents a paragon of conventional, Victorian femininity. Brontë...

A Comparison of Ishiguro's and Bronte's Novel Openings and the Effect of these Choices in Establishing Contact with the Reader Anonymous 12th Grade

The openings of Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Brontë's Jane Eyre are both centered around introducing the main characters, Stevens and Jane, respectively. Through the first-person narration, their personalities, settings and situations are...

How Eliza Reed Contributes to Jane Eyre's Critique of Organized Religion Puja Harikumar College

When discussing Jane Eyre, the critical conversation tends to largely ignore the character of Eliza Reed, the title characters cousin. At best, she is often analyzed in terms of her role as a foil to her sister. However, while her contrast to...

Jane Eyre and Mary Garth: The Similarities In Which Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot Establish Their Respective Heroines as Truly Groundbreaking Puja Harikumar College

When comparing Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre to fellow Victorian novelist, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, one might feel inclined to draw similarities between the title character of the former, to Dorothea Brooke. However, the Middlemarch character...

Marxist Feminism in Victorian Times: How Anti-Capitalist Ideology Makes Jane Eyre and Vivie Warren Such Poignant Female Heroines in Literature Puja Harikumar College

Nobody with any literary merit would deny that the title character of Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre and Vivie Warren of George Bernard Shaw’s play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession are groundbreaking feminist characters of Victorian Literature....

Women in Literature: Examining Oppression Versus Independence in Henry V and Jane Eyre Kathern Armstrong

"In many different societies, women, like colonised subjects, have been relegated to the position of 'Other,' 'colonised' by various forms of patriarchal domination. They thus share with colonised races and cultures an intimate experience of the...

Jane Eyre: The Independent and Successful Woman Of the Nineteenth Century Rebecca Kivak

Imagine a girl growing up around the turn of the nineteenth century. An orphan, she has no family or friends, no wealth or position. Misunderstood and mistreated by the relatives she does have, she is sent away to a school where the cycle of...

Mystery and Suspense George Fleischer

What means does Charlotte Bronte employ to create mystery and suspense in Jane Eyre?

Mystery and suspense in Bronte's novel Jane Eyre provides a crucial element to the reader's interpretation of the novel, allowing Bronte to subtly aid the reader...

In Search of Permanence Anonymous

In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, the setting is used as a tool to reflect the hardships its protagonist, Jane Eyre, experiences. The locations Jane resides in play an integral part in determining what actions she is to take next. Her transient...

Jane's Art and Story Gregg Bernhardt

"Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting." --Jane Eyre (9)

There is something extraordinary and spiritual about Jane Eyre's artwork. In...

Beauty and the Representation of Authenticity: Women in Jane Eyre Alison Anne Kuhns

In the novel Jane Eyre, author Charlotte Bronte places great importance on the appearance of her characters, repeatedly evaluating their attractiveness through narrative descriptions and dialogue. Her heroine, Jane, is mentioned countless times as...

In Defense of an Ending: St. John and the Role of Destiny in Jane Eyre Anonymous

"Reader, I married him," proclaims Jane in the first line of Bronte's famous conclusion to her masterpiece, Jane Eyre (552). The reader, in turn, responds to this powerful line by preparing for what will surely be a satisfying ending: the...

A Life On a Page Alison Anne Kuhns

Subjective novelists tend to use personal attitudes to shape their characters. Whether it be an interjection of opinion here, or an allusion to personal experience there, the beauty of a story lies in the clever disclosure of the author's...

Jane Eyre's Flight From Flight Emily Flynn

"There was an unspeakable charm in being told what to do, and having everything decided for her"

--George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

The feminist literary critics, Gilbert and Gubar, claim, in their famous essay on Jane Eyre in The Madwoman in the...

Standing Alone: Isolation and Narration in Villette and Jane Eyre Natasha Rosow

In Villette and Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë creates protagonists who are markedly strange and isolated people. Throughout both books, their awkwardness in society and difficulty communicating is a continuous concern. These women are also our...

Fire: Destruction and Creation Chloe Mead

Scorching flames, conflagration, burning. The imagery of fire has long been linked to power and passion. Fire can enact complete obliteration, and yet can also forge a new beginning where only scattered ashes of the past remain. The symbolic motif...

The Struggles of the Heroines in Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre Anonymous

Antoinette Cosway in Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre in Jane Eyre are both relatively isolated women struggling to survive in a male-dominated society. Although both women are striving to attain similar goals of happiness, equality, and a sense of...

Jane Eyre: An Uncommon Heroine Anonymous

"They are not fit to associate with me," says young Jane Eyre of her rude, spoiled cousins who consider themselves above her.(29) In this simple quote lies all the facets of the young Jane: she is angry, passionate, and subtly - but positively -...

Treatment of the Independant Female in The Portrait of a Lady and Jane Eyre Anonymous

Assignment: Discuss the treatment of female independence and the independent heroine in two Victorian novels.

Jane Eyre , by Charlotte Bronte, and The Portrait of a Lady , by Henry James, both utilise the Victorian convention of the orphaned heroine...

The Unenslaved Self: Feminist Enlightenment in Jane Eyre Anonymous

In Jane Eyre, each episode Charlotte Brontë tells of Jane's life recounts a new struggle, always featuring a man and his patriarchal institution: John Reed's Gateshead, Brocklehurst's Lowood, Rochester's Thornfield, and St. John's Moor House. In...

The Impossibility of Standing Alone: Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea" in the Context of Bronte's "Jane Eyre" Grant Mackenzie

Wide Sargasso Sea was published in 1965, and immediately caught the attention of critics. Its publication helped to save Jean Rhys from the obscurity into which she had fallen after her previous novels, published between the First and Second World...

A Psychoanalytic Criticism of Emma, Jane Eyre, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles Jenna Weiner

Although his methods have largely been discredited, Sigmund Freud's theories about the unconscious, the subconscious, and repression are extremely useful when applied to literary texts. None of the three novels discussed here - Jane Austen's Emma ,...

Class Structure and Morality in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre Jenna Weiner

At first glance, Jane Eyre might be seen as simply a skillfully written Gothic romance. A closer look reveals layers of gender criticism and feminism. Yet, one of the most interesting readings focuses on the layers of class and Marxist commentary...

• Jane Eyre: Examining Themes of Freedom and Oppression (Essay Sample)

Paper details

Themes of Freedom and Oppression in Jane Eyre

Introduction

In response to the Jane Eyre piece of literature, there are various forms put in place to create an insight on the major overview of the intention of the story. It is understood that there are words, statements, passages and phrases which are delving into the development of the clear intention of the author. However, from my understanding, I pick on the phrase set forth by Jane Eyre that ‘like any other rebel slave, she felt resolved in her desperation to go all lengths in which even the starkest punishment cannot quell the mood of a revolted slave’. In the response herein, there is an endeavor and a comprehensive analysis on the small excerpt highlighted above with the aim of refuting the claims that Jane Eyre is a perfect romance escaped.

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There is the element of slavery which makes the whole idea out of touch with the concept of love or romance as may be looked at from the analysis perspective. From the passage above, Jane was more inclined and dedicated as seeing into it that she moved out of the bondage which characterized her life. It is precise that Jane was in a bondage and was in her mission of breaking even and get off the shackles of slavery. Jane first strikes back at her young tormentor after which she verbally attack her aunt Reed (Mardorossian p.6). Even though there is conflict between Jane and some of the characters, it is not in the context of romance or love. Instead, contestation is crave for freedom in which the main character is committed to change the whole narrative. The center of conflict which brings about antagonism between these characters is off the grid of the romantic theme which might have taken the epicenter of discussion as insinuated in the better part of the text. From my understanding, I can assert that the protagonist and her supposedly antagonists are more embroiled in a conflict which is brought about by hatred and contempt from each other.

From the text above, there are historical connections and connotation both from political and social spheres. Specifically, there are point outs regarding slavery and the determination of the main character to break the chains on the same. From the text on the introduction paragraph, it is highlighted that Jane was more determined to see into it that she earned freedom. In connection to the political aspects of patriarchy and male imperialism, there is observed resemblance on the same. On a sympathetic balance, feminists from the United States have remarked that some of the authors are not showing the required justice to Jane in the story (Spivak p.244). The text has a historical significance especially on the political and social perspectives. The text represents the fight women undergo to ensure they turn tables of oppression. From the argument on the passage, the author asserts that Jane was determine as a slave in the verge of seeking for her freedom. Further, there are claims that Jane wanted to launch an all-out assault in changing the social and political narrative which raked her society. When freedom and oppression is highlighted in any story or literature, there is inevitability of attraction of political and social commentaries. The review of the story create the impression that there are limited connection of romance and the content of the passage above.

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Review: Alley Theatre's revamp of Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' is a breath of fresh air

I f you think the story of an orphaned and penniless governess, stranded in the middle of nowhere England, who has one trouble after another might make for a long and dreary evening, you would be totally wrong.

The Alley has totally upped its game with Elizabeth Williamson’s smart and poignant adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s classic 19th-century novel "Jane Eyre." With a deft combination of flashbacks, monologues and stirring scenes that include intense suffering, spooky surprises and romance, Eleanor Holdridge directs a stellar cast who handle multiple roles in a seamless fashion. And yes, even the costumes are wonderful — clever pieces that fit each dramatic moment with aplomb.

John Coyne's scenic design, Alberto Segarra's lighting design and Melanie Chen Cole's sound design work well together and all are transporting, whether Jane is sitting at a desk writing a letter, or cringing in a small bed as the audience sees, hears and wonders about the odd sounds and screams that defy explanation.

Brandon Weinbrenner’s casting is perfect. Houston favorites Susan Koozin and Todd Waite don’t have the leading roles, but they have multiple important ones, and their transformations are marvelous. Watching Koozin move from sweet Mrs. Fairfax to the mad woman in the attic is something to see. Ana Miramontes is convincing playing children (no mean feat!), and Melissa Pritchett, Joy Yvonne Jones and Gabriel Regojo ably round out the cast. The chemistry of all of actors seems effortless and allows viewers to concentrate on this long-ago world that still carries emotional resonance today.

And then there is the amazing accomplishment that this play achieves: the turning of a long, detailed and sometimes dry read, which may be cumbersome and dated to some contemporary readers, into a model of dramatic efficiency.

We care about these characters. We want to know or see what happens, even if we already know what is going to happen. Williamson’s adaptation is an object lesson in doing so: She chooses so carefully what to include that no one can miss how radical this novel was when Bronte wrote it. When Jane exclaims, “I wanted change!” we understand why, as her traumatic upbringing makes that completely understandable.

But what we also learn is that this is a character so low on the social ladder that her very desire for change is a revolutionary thought. Such governesses were not to even entertain such radical notions that “women feel the same as men do,” or that she is a person with thoughts and feelings who should be respected and considered. Bronte’s work broke the glass ceiling on the emotional temperature such women were allowed to have — and this play captures this subversive thread, even while Jane’s modesty and restraint is believably kept intact.

The play also infuses — in what is often considered to be a pretty joyless novel — a little levity and comic relief that makes the enigmatic Mr. Rochester an empathetic figure who is actually relatable (and even funny). Chris Hutchison is able to channel his talents into a role that fits him well, and let’s face it: If there is not a successful embodiment of Rochester on the stage, then everything else falls apart. Lucky for the audience, the show glimmers, no matter how intensely depressing the fog, moors and disappointments hanging around insist on being.

But here is the main thing: Melissa Molano, a fine actress who has excelled on many stages all over Houston, is superlative in the role of Jane Eyre. Molano finally has a role that allows her formidable talent to shine. She is not too mousy, never over the top. Her despair and passion is completely believable, her timing always right. Her expressions convey so much and every movement counts.

When she is speaking with passionate force, you listen. She is an actress who can make the unbelievable thought of a humble governess reaching some kind of happiness and equilibrium in a world that constantly pulls the rug out from underneath her completely believable and meaningful. And that is how you make a 19th-century novel that could buckle under the weight of despair something fresh, dramatic, relevant and inspiring on a 21st-century stage.