Jane Eyre

                               Jane Eyre

Hi, today I will present you “Jane Eyre”.

This is the first published novel written by Charlotte Brontë, an English novelist. The book’s genre is middle age, gothic fiction, mystery, autobiographical.

Charlotte Brontë was born in 1816 and died in 1855. She was an English novelist and poet, whose novels became classics of English literature. Charlotte Brontë publishes the novel Jane Eyre, under the pseudonym Currer Bell in order to put all the odds on his side, at the publisher Smith, Elder & Co, which will publish it in October 1847. In 2003, the novel was ranked number 10 in the BBC's survey “The Big Read”. 

This gothic novel speaks about an orphan, Jane Eyre which is reluctantly gathered by an aunt who treats her harshly and whose children lead hard life their cousin. Then placed in boarding school, she stays there until she is eighteen. She became governess to the noble Mr. Rochester, which she soon falls in love with, but the obstacles will be numerous.

The peculiarity of the book given by the author is the fact that the novel narrates the life of a young woman who refuses the determinism of an unfair and patriarchal society to fully assume her life. The author speaks about the destiny of a young woman which is unique in the good English society of the mid-nineteenth century. Especially since the heroine is immediately described as disgraceful and especially independent, which is a major default for a woman in Victorian England.  

It is absolutely unimaginable that at that time a young woman, even if she is a character of a novel, may be aware of the reality of her life and decide to take charge of her destiny. Yet Jane Eyre refuses to be a victim and does not accept a life predestined by her modest social origins. She will take advantage of her stay in boarding house to rise intellectually and put all the chances on his side to invent a better future. This choice to rise through studies is an important moral revolution for a young woman of the nineteenth century.

Charlotte Brontë also describes in parallel the difficulty of living a free love when the social differences are great and the whole society declares this relationship incorrect. She denounces not only the weight of Victorian society over women, but also the social conventions that impede personal growth. The novel takes a strong political dimension because it stigmatizes the obscurantism and rejects in the nothingness of the limbo the Victorian rigor.

Jane is inspired by the author’s life which lost her mother and two very young sisters of tuberculosis. Besides, several protagonists of the book look like people having lived in the entourage of Charlotte.

Braced and rich, Charlotte Brontë's writing is one of the most incomparable finesse, allowing everyone to read the novel without problems. Forerunner of a true feminine writing, it will inspire a whole generations of young women writers.

The novel has been adapted into a number of other forms, including theatre, film, television - and at least two full-length operas. The novel has also been the subject of a number of significant rewritings and reinterpretations, notably Jean Rhys's seminal 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea.

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