Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte's
Uploaded by skiedit1 on Dec 06, 2007
The Rocky Road to Happiness
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre captures the reader’s attention from start to finish because it appeals to our need to cheer for the underdog while prolonging the suspense of whether there really will be a happy ending for Jane, the title character. As each page is turned, the reader becomes more sympathetic with Jane’s unfortunate life and reads on, hoping against all hope, that something wonderful will happen that will finally give Jane happiness and security. Unfortunately, as each phase of her life unfolds, the reader fights back a despair that there ever will be a happily ever after for Jane. It is not until the last few chapters that we finally see Jane happy and at peace.
“Jane Eyre was, and remains, an extraordinary phenomenon: a totally assured, provocative, and compelling piece of realist fiction” (Sanders 419). A large part of Jane Eyre’s intensity comes from Charlotte Bronte’s use of her past experiences to create a fictional character that has the reader sympathizing with and cheering on throughout the book:
It was conceived as a whole and perfectly fused experience and invention: her childhood suffering at Cowan Bridge and the death of her sisters, her ordeals as a governess, and the testing experience of love, all found their place in it. Nothing that had deeply affected Charlotte was absent from the emotional content of Jane Eyre (Gerin 332-333).
While it is ultimately a romance novel, requiring an emphasis on love and marriage, it also stresses the importance of independence as one of Jane’s dominating qualities (Sanders 420). “In a sense, Jane Eyre is the first modern novel, the first to envelop the life of a plain, ordinary woman with romance” (Sampson 639). It is also credited as being the first novel that allows the female character freedom to “feel and to speak as she feels” (Sampson 639).
Jane’s life is shared with the reader beginning when Jane is a young girl, allowing us to understand how Jane is shaped and develops into the young woman she becomes because of the circumstances she encounters (Clarke 1).
It is not hard to immediately feel sympathy for the poor orphan who is frequently maligned and constantly reminded while living at Gateshead Hall that she is dependent upon her aunt, Mrs. Reed. As her cousin, John, tells her “you are a dependent…you have...