Jane Eyre
Introd. and Chaps I-X: Girl’s Education
– duty and self-denial or
a pursuit of liberty and knowledge
Outline
• Review: 1) Social Background; 2) Brontë
Sisters
• Introduction: Jane Eyre and CB’s Life
• Chaps 1-4: Jane’s Social Position vs. Her
Cousins’
• Chaps 5-10: Jane’s Education vs. Helen
Burns’ and
• The Roles of Nature
Victorian Society: Women’s
Positions
• Contradictions between social prosperity
and social problems
• Women – angel in the house vs. fallen
women
Causes:
-- strict division of jobs  women seen as men’s
property
-- women not educated  women physically
and mentally unfit for serious intellectual
pursuits.
Victorian Society (2) Women’s
Education
•
•
•
•
At home, taught by mothers or governesses
boarding schools
Jane charity schools
(X: 80) A lady’s education
(3) Marriage and Inheritance
Traces of Jane Eyre in Charlotte
Bronte’s Life
Jane Eyre
Real Life
Rochester and
Bertha
--A governess married a gentleman who had
an insane wife
-- a home said to have an upper-floor room
with padded walls, where an insane mistress
was confined until her death in a fire.
Helen Burns
Charlotte's friend Ellen Nussey in her
religious piety.
Lowood Institution
Clergy Daughter's School, where an epidemic
broke out
Rochester's
blindness
Charlotte’s father, whom Charlotte took care
of.
"Overview: Jane Eyre." Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical
Events that Influenced Them. Joyce Moss and George Wilson. Vol. 2: Civil Wars to Frontier Societies (18001880s). Detroit: Gale, 1997. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2012.
2) The Brontë Sisters
• The Bronte Sisters (feature film)– Literary
Aspiration in their lonely and drab lives.
• 4:32—the painting, and Emily and Ann out in nature
(rose vs. holy bush)
• 14:00—letter from Southey
• 1:10 – Emily’s poems  1:16 publication of their
novels
• 1:38 –illness and death of Emily
• 1:50 – Charlotte at the concert hall
• Documentary: In search of the Brontes Part 1 1/6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQGgl-HtrmM
• The Death Of Emily Bronte
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dehmUqIxgjU&feature=related
Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre
Similarities
• Bleak and gloomy natural environment
• Heathcliff and Rochester as Byronic Heroes +
Villains
• Catherine’s (of two generations) and Jane Eyre
experience domestication
Differences
• Wuthering Heights – “wildness” presented as
ghosts and in landscape
• Jane Eyre – Bertha dead, and the protagonists
tamed.
Jane Eyre
• 1-4 -- Gateshead Hall
• 5-10– Lowood Institution
• 11-19 -- Thornfield Hall
• 20-27-- (21—back to Mrs. Reed)
• 28-39 – Leaving Thornfield  Moor
House at Marsh End  (back to
Thornfield  37 Ferndean Manor)
Locations
‘The Rydings' – Ellen Nussey's early
home; The manor house that
inspired Brontë’s creation of
Thornfield Hall. From Jane Eyre, vol.
1 (1905).
•
Haddon Hall (2011)
Filmic Adaptations
• 1944, 1983, 1996, 1997 and 2006– Rochester’s performances
ranked here
• 5th --1996: Film directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring William
Hurt as Mr Rochester, Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane,
• 4th -- 1997: TV adaptation directed by Robert Young and starring
Laura Harling as Jane and Ciarán Hinds as Mr Rochester
• 3th -- 1944: Black and white film directed by Robert Stevenson,
with a screenplay by John Houseman and Aldous Huxley. It
features Orson Welles as Mr Rochester, Joan Fontaine as Jane
• 4th -- 1983: Television miniseries directed by Julian Amyes starring
Zelah Clarke as Jane and Timothy Dalton as Mr Rochester
• 5th -- 2006: BBC miseries directed by Susanna White starring Ruth
Wilson as Jane and Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester (source)
2011: Film directed by Cary Fukunaga starring Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre
and Michael Fassbender as Rochester
Using the films to
• Help visualize the story and
• Understand the importance of the novel’s
narration.
• 2011 – John Reed vs. Jane
• 1983 – 1-3 Jane’s changes in responses
Chaps 1-4: Discussion Questions
1. How is Jane positioned socially? How is she
opposed to her cousins and treated by her aunts
and the servants?
2. How does Jane respond to her loneliness and
mistreatment? Do you find her “passionate,”
“realistic” or “childish”?
3. What are the significances of the red room?
4. What roles do Nature and books play in this part
of the novel?
Jane in The Reed Family
1. Mrs. Reed (I: 5) –
“contented, happy,
little children”
2. John (I: 7-9)
3. The servants (II: 910; 14) – be useful
and pleasant
4. Georgiana & Eliza
(II: 12; VI 24)
[later] X: 79
Jane’s responses:
1. “shrined in double
retirement” (I: 5)
2. Reed vs. Jane (I: 7-9)
habitually obedient to John,
“in frantic sort”
-- revolted slave (II)
3. Asserts herself (III: 19) I
cry because I am miserable.
4. Against Mrs. Reed (IV:
28-)
red room (II: 10-11;13-14) and
the pattern of Jane’s Pursuit
Gateshead: red
room
Lowood
Helen Burns
Thornfield:
Bertha
March End
St. John River
Nature & Books
• Nature
• I: 5-7 (love and
adventures)
• V: garden
• Books
• History of British
Birds
• Gulliver’s Travels (III:
17)
• Rasselas (V: 42-43)
Chaps 5-10: Discussion Questions
• What kind of school is Lowood? Does it in
any way resemble any school you know of or
have been to?
• How are the teachers (Ms. Temple, Miss
Scatcherd and Mr. Brocklehurst) in Lowood
presented?
• How and why are Helen and Jane punished
respectively? How do they respond to being
punished?
• What are the turning points in Jane’s pursuit
of liberty and a better life?
School
Chapter V:
• Class 38;
• Food 39
• Discipline 40
• Lessons 41
Teachers
Indoctrination and
Punishment
Wise Judgment and
Sympathy
• Miss Scatcherd –
Chap VI
• Mr. Brocklehurst (VII
54 -55; 56)
• Miss Temple – Chap
V: 41 & VIII: 61
Helen Burns vs. Jane
Helen
• Punished V 44; VI 46,
• VI: Your duty to bear (4849)
• Love your enemy (50);
you’d be happier if you
forget her severity
• (VIII: 60): conscience and
the invisible world
• (IX: 70-)
Jane V: 44 “How can
she bear it so
quietly…”
VII: 50 Good to those
who are good to you.
VIII: 64
Nature
• (II: 14)Was it, I asked myself, a ray from
the moon penetrating some aperture in
the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this
stirred: while I gazed, it glided up to the
ceiling and quivered over my head.”
• Garden (V: 41); VI: 47: the wind outside
the window a strange excitement
• (IX: 67) ramble in the wood
• (X: 74): Jane looks out the window again.
Turning Points and Helpers
• Mr. Lloyd  Lowood Institute
• Ms. Temple, clears her name, motivates
her to make further progress.
• Helen and Ms. Temple’s reading of
classical literature