Jane Eyre: A Cliff Notes' Introduction

When Jane Eyre was first published in 1847, it was an immediate popular and critical success. George Lewes, a famous Victorian literary critic declared it "the best novel of the season." It also, however, met with criticism. In a famous attack in the Quarterly Review of December 1848, Elizabeth Rigby called Jane a "personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit" and the novel as a whole, "anti-Christian." Rigby's critique perhaps accounts for some of the novel's continuing popularity: the rebelliousness of its tone. Jane Eyre calls into question most of society's major institutions, including education, family, social class, and Christianity. The novel asks the reader to consider a variety of contemporary social and political issues: What is women's position in society, what is the relation between Britain and its colonies, how important is artistic endeavor in human life, what is the relationship of dreams and fantasy to reality, and what is the basis of an effective marriage? Although the novel poses all of these questions, it doesn't didactically offer a single answer to any of them. Readers can construct their own answers, based on their unique and personal analyses of the book. This multidimensionality makes Jane Eyre a novel that rewards multiple readings.

While the novel's longevity resides partially in its social message, posing questions still relevant to twenty-first century readers, its combination of literary genre keeps the story entertaining and enjoyable. Not just the story of the romance between Rochester and Jane, the novel also employs the conventions of the bildungsroman (a novel that shows the psychological or moral development of its main character), the gothic and the spiritual quest. As bildungsroman, the first-person narration plots Jane's growth from an isolated and unloved orphan into a happily married, independent woman. Jane's appeals to the reader directly involve us in this journey of self-knowledge; the reader becomes her accomplice, learning and changing along with the heroine. The novel's gothic element emphasizes the supernatural, the visionary, and the horrific. Mr. Reed's ghostly presence in the red-room, Bertha's strange laughter at Thornfield, and Rochester's dark and brooding persona are all examples of gothic conventions, which add to the novel's suspense, entangling the reader in Jane's attempt to solve the mystery at Thornfield. Finally, the novel could also be read as a spiritual quest, as Jane tries to position herself in relationship to religion at each stop on her journey. Although she paints a negative picture of the established religious community through her characterizations of Mr. Brocklehurst, St. John Rivers, and Eliza Reed, Jane finds an effective, personal perspective on religion following her night on the moors. For her, when one is closest to nature, one is also closest to God: "We read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence." God and nature are both sources of bounty, compassion and forgiveness.

In reading this novel, consider keeping a reading journal, writing down quotes that spark your interest. When you've finished the book, return to these notes and group your quotes under specific categories. For example, you may list all quotes related to governesses. Based on these quotes, what seems to be the novel's overall message about governesses? Do different characters have conflicting perceptions of governesses? Which character's ideas does the novel seem to sympathize with and why? Do you agree with the novel's message? By looking at the novel closely and reading it with a critical focus, you will enrich your own reading experience, joining the readers over the last century who've been excited by plain Jane's journey of self-discovery.

Why did Jane Eyre choose Saul of Tarsus rather than St. John the Divine?

A redeemed sinner was worth as much to a Wesleyian as a righteous zealot. Rochester loved and needed Jane. St. John Rivers did not love Jane, and only needed her as a secretary. Jane was rewarded for her absolute faith in God's work. Was not St. Paul the man who brought the story of Jesus to the Gentiles? Had not Wesley openly acknowledged his debt to a feminine thinker Antionette Bouigignon, who had written "the love of God, outside of which there is no virtue". Brontë wrote with a sense of mission. Indeed, Brontë's first biographer, Mrs Gaskell, recalled being told by her that she always wrote "with a sense of mission". In Jane Eyre, this sense burns through almost every page. The novel Jane Eyre, regardless of personal predilection, is one that should at least be considered amongst religious works. Whatever the literary value by which it is judged, it is certainly not as spiteful triumphalist a book as that which describes the progress of a man called Pilgrim.  

Spiritual Revelation in Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre ends with a spiritual revelation. The change in Rochester echoes the change in Tennyson. "You think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog" he confesses to Jane, "but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now" (p. 393). God appears at last to Rochester in the form of the fire — an instrument of "divine justice" — which destroys Thornfield (p. 393). Rochester's newly found faith and his ensuing change of character make possible his marriage with Jane. The discovery of God, then, ties together all the loose ends of the novel, fulfills true love, and closes the book with an overall affirming message that two impassioned souls can unite in marriage after all, if the Lord wills it. A couple of contrasts with Tennyson, though, seem obvious. For one, Charlotte Brontë reveals God to her readers through symbolism, whereas Tennyson finally uncovers a divine plan in the various meanings of the word "type." Secondly, Brontë has God play an interactive role in the external, material reality, whereas Tennyson must search internally for God's revelation. For him, God exists as a "far-off divine event." If Tennyson had lived in the world of Jane Eyre, he probably would have not spent so long struggling with Hallam's death.

Typology, however, is not altogether absent from Brontë's novel. This "elaborate system of foreshadowing (or anticipations) of Christ" plays a crucial role in Tennyson, as we have seen. But it also plays a part in Jane Eyre. Helen Burns acts as a typological figure just as Hallam does. Like Hallam, this precocious girl who espouses Christian doctrine and seems closer to God than any of her evangelical teachers trods the earth "ere her time was right." She is too good for the world. We can view her death as a sacrifice because it teaches Jane a powerful lesson in faith. Her tombstone reads, "Resurgam," or "I shall rise again," confirming her status as a Christ figure, as well as foreshadowing Christ's second coming (p. 72). That two works as different as In Memoriam and Jane Eyre contain the elements of typology should not surprise the reader. Typology, after all, had an "enormous influence on medieval Europe, seventeenth-century England, and Victorian Britain" ("An Introduction to In Memoriam" ). At the time of Tennyson and Brontë, it proved a fundamental principle for the Evangelical Protestants, a minority party of the Church of England but a dominant force in English life between 1789 to 1850. The Evangelicals used this system to relate Old Testament figures and events to the New Testament. Eventually typology crossed into the art and literature of the era as well, providing these forms with an "imaginatively rich iconography and particular conceptions of reality and time".

Passion, Dreams, and the Supernatural in Jane Eyre

Introspection, half-belief in the supernatural, conflicting emotions, gushing description appear throughout Jane Eyre. Rochester's mention of prescience — both foreshadowing and premonition — come up again and again throughout the work. "I knew. . . you would do me good in some way . . . I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you," Rochester tells Jane. Both he and she believe implicitly the things they read in eyes, in nature, in dreams. Jane has dreams which she considers unlucky, and sure enough, ill fortune befalls her or her kin. When she is in a garden which seems "Eden-like" and laden with "honey-dew", the love of her life proposes to her. However, that very night the old horse-chestnut tree at the bottom of the garden is struck by lightning and split in half, hinting at the difficulties that lie in store for the couple.

The turbulent exploration of Jane's emotions so characteristic of the text reveals some of Brontë's most prevalent ideas — that judgment must always "warn passion," and that the sweet "hills of Beulah" are found within oneself.

As Jane grows throughout the book, one of the most important things she learns is to rule her heart with her mind. When a child at Gateshead she becomes entirely swept up in an emotional tantrum, which proves to be the most painful memory of her childhood. At the pivotal point in the plot when Jane decides to leave Rochester, she puts her love for him second to the knowledge that she cannot ethically remain with him - the "counteracting breeze" once again preventing her from reaching paradise. Only when Rochester has become worthy of her, and judgment and passion move toward the same end, can she marry him and achieve complete happiness./

Charlotte Brontë, like her heroine, traveled to wondrous lands within the confines of her own head. While Jane, engrossed in Bewick's History of British Birds, was mentally traversing "solitary rocks and promontories", her creator might have been calling to mind memories of her own sojourns in imagined lands. By the time she was a teacher at the Roe Head school, Charlotte and her brother Branwell had been writing stories and poems about an African kingdom called Angria for many years. While she was away at the school, the fate of the inhabitants of the country lay in Branwell's hands, which made her very nervous, as he was given to intrigue and violence. She was unhappy with her situation, loathing the available company and describing herself as "chained to this chair prisoned within these four bare walls," and so her happiest hours were spent in the wild landscapes of her mind. "What I imagined grew morbidly vivid," she says, and indeed her visions of Angria are almost more real to her than what is actually happening around her. "All this day I have been in a dream, half miserable and half ecstatic: miserable because I could not follow it out uninterruptedly; ecstatic because it shewed almost in the vivid light of reality the ongoings of the infernal world. (She sometimes referred to Angria as"infernal" or below.") When pupils or fellow teachers interrupt her reveries she is furious, saying once, "But just then a dolt came up with a lesson. I thought I should have vomited."

About 1839 Brontë finally left Angria, saying 'still, I long to quit for a while that burning clime where we have sojourned too long . . . The mind would cease from excitement and turn now to a cooler region, where the dawn breaks grey and sober and the coming day, for a time at least, is subdued in clouds " (all materials from the Norton critical edition of Jane Eyre). Though she did at last consent to leave her imaginary world behind, it played such a large part in her child and early adulthood that there is no doubt her recollection of time spent there affected Jane's experience.

Character Of Belinda In "The Rape Of The Lock"

Having a Cleopatra-like variety, Belinda is the one who is all pervasive and central character in Alexander Pope's mock heroic, "The Rape of the Lock". Pope's attitude to Belinda is very mixed and complicated: mocking and yet tender, admiring and yet critical. The paradoxical nature of Pope's attitude is intimately related to the paradox of Belinda's situation. She is as a bundle of contradictions as is the society she represents. She is a complex character and is more than a mere type. It is impossible to find a parallel of Belinda in any poem of the 18th century.

Belinda is introduced as a paragon of female charm whose name is Latin for “Lovely to behold “. Pope seems to be enamoured with his own creation. He describes her in superlatives - the brightest fair, the fairest of mortals. She is the center of attention during her pleasure ride over river Thames; her lively looks, her sprightly mind, her flashing eyes charm one and all:

“Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay."

Pope compares Belinda to the sun and suggests that it recognizes in Belinda a rival , and fears her :

“Sol through white curtains shot a timorous ray ,

And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day."

Belinda is like the sun, not only because of her bright eyes and not only because she dominates her special world ( ' But every eye was fix'd on her alone ') . She is like the sun in another regard

“Bright as the sun , her eyes the gazers strike ,

And, like the sun , she shines on all alike. "

Belinda's exquisite beauty is enhanced by two curling side-locks of hair that charmingly set off her ivory white neck and which she has kept ' to the destruction of mankind:"

"Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,

And mighty hearts are held in slender chains."

Belinda's charms can work miracles and can make even non-believers kiss the cross. She is an embodiment of grace and sweetness which cover up her flirtation and faults:

“If to her share some female errors fall

Look on her face, and you 'll forget 'em all ."

According to Alice Miller, a person who is great, who is admired everywhere, and needs this admiration to survive, has one of the extreme forms of Narcissism, which is grandiosity. Belinda is the goddess, but she puts on her divinity at her dressing table; and, such is the paradox of beauty-worship, she can be both the divinity and the sincere devotee. Thus Belinda, in worshipping at the shrine of beauty, quite naturally worships herself.

"A heavenly image in the glass appears,

To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears."

Countless treasures of the world have been laid open at the altar of Belinda sent as “offerings “by her adorers. These cosmetics and ornaments, along with the aid of Betty and the Sylphs, add to her charms:

"Now awful beauty puts on all its arms;

The fair each moment rises in her charms. "

Here, Belinda is not only a priestess of “the sacred rites of pride " , she is also compared to a warrior arming for the fray. Later in the poem she is the warrior once more at the card-table in her conquest of the two ' adventurous knights ' , she emerges as a heroic conqueror in the epic encounter of the beaux and belles .

Belinda cares a fig for religion. To place the Bible with her loads of beauty accessories and love letters on the same dressing table indicates the confusion of values. She has transformed all spiritual exercises and emblems into a coquette's self- display and self- adoration.

At the Hampton Court, the young lovers are prepared to lose and surrender to this fair maid. This increases her self-importance and stirs up her vanity:

"Favours to none, to all she smiles extends

Oft she rejects, but never once offends, "

Belinda is what she is not. She deceives others as she deceives herself. Her pretentions and her real intentions are at logger-heads. She loves Baron at heart. But she rebukes and abuses him. This is what Ariel feels;

"Sudden he viewed, in spite of all her art,

An earthly lover lurking at her heart.”

Belinda undoubtedly possesses a superb skill in playing the game of ombre , but the manner in which she gloats over her victory shows not only her vanity and superficiality but also a childish temperament , she becomes too quickly joyous and too quickly depressed . Her tantrums, when a lock of her hair has been clipped by Baron, also show her as a spoiled child. We now see Belinda as a true Fury. She is weighed down by worry and anxiety. Then she begins to burn with an inhuman wrath, a more than mortal indignation:

"Not louder shrieks to pitying Heaven are cast,

When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last. "

But the very lament is hypocritical or superficial. She is anxious about her ' reputation ' alone, and would not care if she lost her ' honour ' or virginity in some secret love-affair:

“Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize

Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these! "

However Belinda’s fury is quite natural. Quoting Miller, grandiosity can be seen when a person admires himself, his qualities, such as beauty, cleverness, and talents and his success and achievements greatly. If one of these happens to fail, then the catastrophe of a severe depression is near (Miller 34). In Belinda’s case, it is a breach of hero-worship and rules of chivalry and courtship.

Belinda does undergo a "fall” from the narcissistic self-love and arid virginity. It is merely a fall into a more natural human condition and best regarded, perhaps, as a kind of fortunate fall.

Basically, Belinda is a model and more specifically represents the fashionable, aristocratic ladies of Pope’s age . Such social butterflies in eighteenth century were regarded as “petty triflers”, having no serious concern with life, and '' engrossed in dance and gaiety ''. Belinda’s fall indicates the decadence of her class. Through her, Pope describes the flippancy and depravity of the English society of his day.

Traditionally, Belinda is based upon on the historical Arabella Fermor , the lady in Pope's social circle who was offended by Lord Petre . John Denis says that Belinda '' is a chimera, and not a character ‘‘. Viewing the poem as a political satire, Belinda represents GREAT BRITIAN or (which is the same thing) her LATE MAJESTY. This is plainly see in Pope's description of her,

‘On her white breast a sparkling Cross she wore '.