• DOI: 10.1353/esc.1979.0049
  • Corpus ID: 166622096

Jane Eyre: The Development of a Female Consciousness

  • Published 3 April 2019
  • History, Linguistics
  • ESC: English Studies in Canada

3 Citations

The image in the mirror-a feminist study on the autobiographical elements in jane eyre, jane eyre and the orphan's ‘mother’, “in a state between”: a reading of liminality in jane eyre, one reference, the appropriate form; an essay on the novel, related papers.

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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.

Charlotte Bronte

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.

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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.

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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.

jane eyre research paper

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.

jane eyre research paper

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 .

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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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Jane Eyre Characters with Analysis

August 25, 2024

This article will provide a comprehensive list of characters in Charlotte Bront ë ’s Jane Eyre . Though Jane and Mr. Rochester are the two gothic spires of this text, there is a whole host of characters who populate the manors and moors. If you need it, here’s a summary of the text to help you out as well as the 7 Best Quotes in Jane Eyre with Analysis . 

While you can certainly use Project Gutenberg’s searchable Jane Eyre , I continue to recommend the Oxford World Classics text for its helpful endnotes and footnotes. 

Major Characters in Jane Eyre with Analysis

Jane eyre .

As the protagonist and narrator, Jane’s interior life is the whole point of the novel. Remember – Jane Eyre is an “autobiography” written from a future where Jane and Mr. Rochester are happily married (with at least one son). That is not to say that the events of the novel are unimportant. However, far more important is how Jane understands these events as shaping her present self. Indeed, Jane Eyre was revolutionary precisely because of this focus on the private, emotional development of its main character. (The literary critic Daniel Burt calls Charlotte Bront ë “ the first historian of private consciousness. ”)  

We first meet Jane, she is ten years old girl and in the care (if it can be called that) of her aunt, Mrs. Reed. We find out later that Jane’s father was a poor clergyman who married a woman from a wealthy family. Jane’s maternal grandfather was so irritated with his daughter’s choice of husband that he cut them off financially. When Jane’s mother and father both catch typhus and die, Jane is left in the care of Mr. Reed, her mother’s brother (who dies soon after). 

Jane Eyre Characters (Continued)

Though Mrs. Reed has three children – Eliza, John, and Georgiana – they shun their cousin Jane. Of the three, the fourteen-year-old John is particularly cruel. When Jane stands up for herself against John’s bullying, Mrs. Reed throws Jane in the “red-room.” Jane thinks she sees a ghost and is terrified. She begs to be released, but Mrs. Reed pushes her back into the room, where Jane subsequently faints. 

In response to her “disobedience,” Mrs. Reed sends Jane off to Lowood academy, where Jane will spend the next eight years – six as a student and two as a teacher. Eventually, Jane bores of Lowood and advertises her services as a governess. Within a few weeks, Jane is off to Thornfield Hall to take care of Adele, a young French girl in the care of Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester. 

When Jane finally meets her boss, Mr. Rochester, she is (justifiably) wary. He seems an angry, tempestuous man. ( Their subsequent romance has not aged well. ) Though it takes time, Jane eventually confesses her love to Mr. Rochester, who reciprocates. Things go pear-shaped when they try to marry. [Spoiler alert!] Unbeknownst to Jane, Mr. Rochester is already married to Bertha Mason, an insane woman that he keeps imprisoned in on the third floor of Thornfield Hall. 

Such is Mr. Rochester’s passion for Jane that he suggests that they move to France and live as husband and wife away from the prying, prudish eyes of English high society. Though Jane is tempted, she refuses to be led astray by her feelings for Mr. Rochester. She has no intention of being a rich man’s mistress. In an impressive act of will, Jane leaves Thornfield without telling anyone.

She makes it as far as “Whitcross.” After paying for her travel, Jane has no money – she then accidentally forgets her suitcase in the coach. Penniless and possessionless, Jane begs for food and sleeps outside. After three days of this, near death, she knocks on the door of a house and is taken in by Mary, Diana, and St. John Rivers. Through a series of unlikely events, Jane 1) inherits a fortune, 2) finds out that Mary, Diana, and St. John are her cousins, and 3) decides to split her inheritance equally with them. ( I’ve written a chapter-by-chapter summary here. )

Her financial future secured, Jane turns her eyes to the future. St. John has taken a shine to Jane and proposes marriage (and a missionary existence in India). Though Jane is enamored with St. John’s intellect and Christian faith, she refuses to marry someone she doesn’t love . Like her rejection of Mr. Rochester earlier in the novel, Jane manages to resist the seductive allure of giving her existence over to another’s will.

Having rejected St. John, Jane turns her thoughts back to Mr. Rochester (it’s been a year since she left him). She returns to Thornfield to find it burned to the ground. When Jane asks around, she finds out that Bertha Mason set the house on fire and subsequently killed herself. Mr. Rochester managed to save all the servants but was blinded and maimed in the fire. Jane goes to him immediately, rekindles their romance, and marries him within the month. 

At the end of the book, Jane reflects on her path and feels that her success is a result of her having stayed true to her own inner compass instead of submitting to the will of others. 

Mr. Rochester 

Mr. Edward Faifax Rochester is Jane’s boss (suitor, and (eventually) husband). Much has been made of Mr. Rochester’s brooding, Gothic vibes, but his main narrative purpose is to prompt Jane to trust herself. Remember, Mr. Rochester asks Jane to marry him under very false pretenses. It’s not until Jane is kneeling at the altar with him that she finds out that Mr. Rochester has been married for fifteen years to a crazy lady he keeps on the third floor of his mansion. 

Mr. Rochester’s subsequent proposal – that they move to southern France and live as man and wife – is tempting. While Jane loves Mr. Rochester, her Christian faith will not let her live as a man’s mistress, crazy wife or not. The intensity of Jane’s feelings for Mr. Rochester makes her decision to leave him more poignant. 

Jane’s rejection of Mr. Rochester also allows for him to become a better (more Christian) person. His eventual blinding and maiming strip him of his arrogance and haughtiness. By the time Jane returns, he is a humble, middle-aged man, finally ready for the love of a nineteen-year-old girl.  

St. John Rivers 

Like Mr. Rochester, St. John exists as a sort of test for Jane’s self-determination. The brother of Maria and Diana, St. John is driven to be a missionary. He proposes marriage to Jane because he sees in her a worthy helpmeet for his missionary life. (While he not-so-secretly burns for the wealthy Rosamund Oliver, he knows that missionary life would be a poor fit for her.) 

Jane is very nearly convinced by St. John’s religious fervor. Though he is presumptuous and aloof, she understands the allure of giving over her will to such a force. If she were to marry St. John, Jane would cease to suffer from the burden of self-determination. Ultimately, Jane cannot betray her belief in the value of romantic love. She rejects St. John’s conventional understanding of Christian duty in favor of finding her own way in the world. On the last page of the book, we find out that St. John is ailing in India and will soon die. 

Bertha Mason

Though she doesn’t speak a single line in the text, there’s no doubt that Bertha Mason is a major character in Jane Eyre . Like her mother before her, Bertha suffers from “congenital madness.” Mr. Rochester implies that his marriage to Bertha was rushed by both families. The Rochesters wanted the Masons’ wealth and the Masons wanted someone to take Bertha off their hands. 

We find out that the strange laughter Jane hears from the servants’ quarters is Bertha (though Mr. Rochester blames Grace Poole). Though Grace is supposed to keep watch over her, Bertha escapes whenever Grace hits the gin too hard. On one occasion, she tries to burn Mr. Rochester in his bed. In another, she sneaks into Jane’s room and tears Jane’s bridal veil in half.

Mrs. Reed takes Jane in when her parents die of typhus. Though she is Jane’s aunt, there is no love lost between the two. Indeed, the only reason that Mrs. Reed bothers with Jane is because she promised her late husband that she would take care of her. Mrs. Reed is consistently unkind to Jane and keeps her away from her own children, John, Eliza, and Georgiana. 

A few years after Mrs. Reed sends Jane to Lowood, one of Jane’s uncles comes searching for her. It turns out that this uncle has made a fortune and would like Jane to be his heir. In an act of particular spitefulness, Mrs. Reed tells him that Jane died at Lowood. We find out later that Mrs. Reed couldn’t bear the thought of Jane’s conditions improving.  After her son, John, dies (implied to be suicide), Mrs. Reed has a stroke from which she does not recover. 

Minor Characters in Jane Eyre with Analysis 

Helen burns.

When Jane arrives at Lowood, she befriends Helen Burns. While an excellent student, Helen is frequently punished by the teachers for being “slatternly.” Like many of the characters in Jane Eyre , Helen exists to highlight Jane’s unique refusal to conform. Helen accepts every punishment she receives without protest, believing that this world is merely preamble to the next. Helen dies of consumption soon after Jane’s arrival at Lowood. 

Mrs. Fairfax

Distantly related to Mr. Rochester, Mrs. Fairfax manages Thornfield Hall. It is she who hires Jane as governess. 

Blanche Ingram

Before Mr. Rochester can admit that he loves Jane, he courts Blanche Ingram to make Jane jealous. Because Jane finds Blanche so thoroughly boring, Mr. Rochester’s interest in her lowers Jane’s opinion of him. In a testament to her shallowness, Blanche’s interest in Mr. Rochester wanes when she comes to believe that his fortune is smaller than expected. 

Mary and Diana Rivers

Sisters of St. John, they welcome Jane into their home after she flees from Thornfield. When Jane discovers that they are her cousins, she shares her inheritance with them and invites them to return from London to live at their ancestral home. 

Rosamund Oliver

Rosamund is the wealthy woman who St. John is in love with. She also funds the school that Jane works at while in Morton. While Rosamund’s father makes it clear that he would accept St. John as a son-in-law, St. John refuses, knowing that Rosamund would never consent to being a missionary. 

Adèle Varens

Adèle is the ten-year-old French girl who Jane teaches at Thornfield. Though her paternity is unclear, Mr. Rochester might be her father. 

Celine Varens

The French opera dancer with whom Mr. Rochester has an affair, she claims that Adèle is Mr. Rochester’s daughter. Mr. Rochester ends his affair with Celine after he learns that she has been unfaithful and is only interested in his money. 

Georgiana, John, and Eliza Reed

After bullying Jane in the first four chapters of the text, we don’t hear much from Georgiana, John, and Eliza until Mrs. Reed has a stroke. When Jane returns to care for her aunt, we are reintroduced to her cousins. John has led a dissolute life and killed himself over gambling debts, Georgiana is a beautiful, if vapid, society lady, and Eliza has become a stern woman destined for the nunnery. 

Bessie 

One of Mrs. Reed’s servants, Bessie is one of the only people who is (sorta) kind to Jane during her childhood. Before Jane leaves for Thornfield, Bessie comes to visit Jane and tell her news of Mrs. Reed and her cousins. She later marries the Reeds’ coachman.

Mr. Lloyd is the apothecary who visits Jane after her fainting spell in the red-room. A kind man, he recommends to Mrs. Reed that Jane be sent to school. When the headmaster of Lowood (Mr. Brocklehurst) claims that Jane is a liar, it is Mr. Lloyd who attests to Jane’s good character. 

Miss Temple

Miss Temple is the only teacher at Lowood who is kind to Jane. When Miss Temple marries and leaves Lowood, Jane realizes she too wants to set out on adventures. 

Mr. Brocklehurst

As the headmaster of Lowood, Mr. Brocklehurst is responsible for the atrocious conditions at the school. A strict, tyrannical Christian, he keeps Jane and the other girls on the brink of starvation so that they can better focus on God. 

Grace Poole

Grace Poole is Bertha’s caretaker at Thornfield. Whenever something weird happens, Mr. Rochester blames Grace Poole. We find out later that Grace keeps a bottle of gin in her room. Bertha escapes whenever Grace gets drunk. 

Richard Mason

Richard is Bertha’s brother. When he comes to visit Thornfield, Bertha attacks him, nearly killing him. Upon hearing that Mr. Rochester plans on marrying Jane, he comes to the wedding and exposes his bigamy. 

Jane’s long-lost uncle, he leaves Jane 20,000 pounds in his will. 

Wrapping Up – Jane Eyre Characters and Analysis

While Charlotte Bront ë ’s Jane Eyre is focused on the moral and ethical development of its eponymous narrator, the text also provides a detailed depiction of the various strata of Victorian society. From governesses to coachmen, nobles to beggars, Jane Eyre weaves a rich tapestry of characters and classes. 

If you’ve found this article useful or interesting, you can also check out my summaries and analyses of 1984 , Frankenstein , The Great Gatsby , Hamlet , The Crucible , Beloved, Brave New World , The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , and Macbeth . 

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Devon Wootten

Devon holds a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing & International Relations, an MFA in Poetry, and a PhD in Comparative Literature. For nearly a decade, he served as an assistant professor in the First-Year Seminar Program at Whitman College. Devon is a former Fulbright Scholar as well as a Writing & Composition Instructor of Record at the University of Iowa and Poetry Instructor of Record at the University of Montana. Most recently, Devon’s work has been published in Fugue , Bennington Review , and TYPO , among others. 

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COMMENTS

  1. Jane Eyre's Quest for Truth and Identity

    Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English Volume 1 Article 6 1999 Jane Eyre's Quest for Truth and Identity Christina J. Jnge University of Maryland Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/tor Part of the American Literature Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Literature in English,

  2. PDF An Analysis of Jane Eyre From the Perspective of Eco- Feminism

    A Seminar Paper Research . Presented to . the Graduate Faculty . University of Wisconsin- Platteville . In Partial Fulfillment of the . Requirement for the Degree . Master of Science . in . ... The writer of Jane Eyre was Charlotte Bronte, who lived in the first part of the nineteenth century. During the period, the capitalist has developed for ...

  3. PDF Identity and Independence in Jane Eyre

    Previous Research Jane Eyre has received somewhat of a cult status in women‟s studies. There is a substantial amount of essays and analyses written on both the novel and the author. "A dialogue of Self and Soul: Plain Jane‟s Progress" is written by Gilbert and Gubar, which is published in their book Madwoman in the Attic.

  4. Trauma and Emotional Manipulation in "Jane Eyre"

    Abstract. Charlotte Brontë's 'Jane Eyre' has the characteristics of a love story, of a feminist manifesto, and of a bildungsroman. But we should also consider it as a story-world encompassing ...

  5. PDF Reflection on Feminism in Jane Eyre

    Jane's experiences, this paper points out that Jane gradually becomes a feminist in pursuing independence and equality and true love. Index Terms—Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, feminism I. INTRODUCTION Charlotte Bronte (1816—1855) is an English novelist, the eldest of the three Bronte sisters whose novels have

  6. (PDF) Topic: Jane Eyre and the Feminist Movement ...

    Abstract. Feminism has taken a centre stage in the 21st century with more demands from women as time drags on. This paper emphasises "Jane Eyre" and the gender roles in the story. Details on the ...

  7. Objectification of Woman and Nature in Charlotte Bronte'S Jane Eyre

    This research paper aims to focus on the protagonist's defying nature in the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It also aims to picture the nineteenth century woman nature from various perspectives. It is not a single thought emerging from a single discipline. This paper defines the life of helpless woman all over the world.

  8. 'Odd and incorrect': Convention and Jane Eyre's Feminist Legacy

    This article investigates the Victorian reception of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) and the collision of literary criticism with political commentary. Brontë's novel has always had a reputation for being politically troublesome, but no one seems to know why. My essay develops two claims. First, I argue that the novel's political ...

  9. [PDF] Jane Eyre, from Governess to Girl Bride

    Jane Eyre, from Governess to Girl Bride. E. Godfrey. Published 18 November 2005. Art. SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900. Gendered identities in Jane Eyre are inseparable from Jane's working-class affiliations and from her role as a young wife to an older husband. Class and age complicate readings of masculinity and femininity in the ...

  10. Women and the discourse of marriage: A critical analysis of Jane Eyre

    Abstract. This short article aims to compare the discourse of the characters Jane Eyre from the eponymous novel by Charlotte Brontë, and Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice by Jane austen ...

  11. PDF Analysis of Feminism, Social Class and Equality in Jane Eyre

    research aims at discussing feminism theory in a book titled, "Jane Eyre". The character development is very intense though there is no meaningful conflict but it is worth concentrating on. This may be an attempt on the part of the writer to make readers pity Eyre. Jane Eyre was the object of study as the main female character of this novel.

  12. Jane Eyre Revisited: Brontë Studies: Vol 41 , No 4

    Abstract. In 1847 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë's first published novel, at once captivated readers and to this day commands the admiration of the world's reading public.Understandably one of the world's great love stories, it is much more besides. It is the purpose of this article to explore implicit themes in the novel that, together with the pseudo-biography, lift the love story to a ...

  13. Jane Eyre and the Stereotypes of Nineteenth Century Women

    This paper examines the most recent adaptations of Jane Eyre, the ones produced by Sandy Welch and Cary Fukunaga, which were released in 2006 and 2011, respectively. Jane Eyre is widely known as one of the first feminist novels written during the nineteenth century.

  14. A feminist approach on Jane Eyre by Cherlotte Bronte

    This research paper aims to focus on the protagonist's defying nature in the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It also aims to picture the nineteenth century woman nature from various perspectives. It is not a single thought emerging from a single discipline. This paper defines the life of helpless woman all over the world.

  15. PDF Trauma and Emotional Manipulation in Jane Eyre

    2021-4225-LIT - 3 May 2021 1 1 Trauma and Emotional Manipulation in Jane Eyre 2 3 Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is one of the many narratives open to 4 interpretation. It may as well have the characteristics of a love story, of a 5 feminist manifesto, or of a bildungsroman. Nevertheless, we should also 6 consider it as being a series of traumatic events that lead to ongoing

  16. PDF On Nature Imagery and the Heroine's Growth in Jane Eyre

    understand Jane Eyre. This paper explains the important role of natural imagery in Jane Eyre in the process of the heroine's female consciousness growth. 2. Literature Review Since its publication, Jane Eyre has been hotly discussed by many scholars at home and abroad. To begin with, in 1974, the French scholar Francois d' Eaubonne (1974, p.

  17. GENDER ISSUES IN CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S JANE EYRE

    The aim of this research is to explore gender issues reflected in Jane Eyre written by Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre centers woman as the second sex under the domination of men. Woman autonomy is ...

  18. Jane Eyre: The Development of a Female Consciousness

    Shao-chih Su. History. International Journal of Education and Humanities. 2022. Jane Eyre, a full-length novel written by Charlotte Bronte in Victorian era deeply affected females. England was in a harsh reality in the 19th century---women live at the bottom of society and are…. Expand.

  19. PDF Sharing of the Text: A Postcolonial Analysis of Jane Eyre and

    onial suppression in the prequel that was written much later. Both the novels are interdependent and share the text to bring out the colonial forces working in the life of the protagonist and her intuitive decision to liberate. herself through both the texts and reclaim her lost identity.Keywords: Rhys, Postcol.

  20. Sorry, but Jane Eyre Isn't the Romance You Want It to Be

    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.".

  21. Trauma and Emotional Manipulation in "Jane Eyre"

    This research paper aims to focus on the protagonist's defying nature in the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It also aims to picture the nineteenth century woman nature from various perspectives. It is not a single thought emerging from a single discipline. This paper defines the life of helpless woman all over the world.

  22. Jane Eyre Characters with Analysis

    Major Characters in Jane Eyre with Analysis Jane Eyre . As the protagonist and narrator, Jane's interior life is the whole point of the novel. Remember - Jane Eyre is an "autobiography" written from a future where Jane and Mr. Rochester are happily married (with at least one son). That is not to say that the events of the novel are ...

  23. (DOC) 'JANE EYRE' AS A FEMINIST NOVEL

    This research paper aims to focus on the protagonist's defying nature in the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It also aims to picture the nineteenth century woman nature from various perspectives. It is not a single thought emerging from a single discipline. This paper defines the life of helpless woman all over the world.

  24. Jane Eyre Research Papers

    This paper studies the role that race plays in shaping of the fate of literary characters;two novels, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys have been taken into account (Rhys's novel is often seen as a prequel to Bronte's novel, as it is written from the viewpoint of Bertha Mason, a character in Bronte's novel, who ...