Jane Eyre was Charlotte Brontë’s second novel, but the first to be
published. The first, The Professor, was rejected several times by the publishers and was published
posthumously. Jane Eyre, on the other
hand, was accepted at once, favourably reviewed and recognised as something new
in English fiction - it used traditional conventions in a very
personal way. The strong autobiographical element is what typifies all her work
and this novel in particular. In fact, Charlotte Brontë’s fiction is best understood in the light of
her personal background, as it is essentially
the expression of her passionate
temper and the imaginary world in
which she lived. The first-person narrator, who in 18th-century
fiction was used to add the realism of narration, is used by Charlotte Brontë to convey personal feelings in order that the narrator becomes directly
identified with the author. This accounts
for the emotional use of language and reveals the strength of Charlotte
Brontë’s feelings and her interest in the nature of human relationships. She also employed
Gothic conventions in a personal way, not just for the sake of arousing a sense
of horror, but as a means of evoking feelings. The handling of
nature serves the same purpose. The emotional use of language, the symbolic handling of nature and
the projection of personal feelings are features typical of Romantic poetry,
but they appear for the first time in
serious fiction in the novels of Charlotte Brontë. The Romantic aspect
is also evident in the male protagonist of Jane Eyre
- Rochester is a typical Byronic
hero. Despite his stern manner and not particularly handsome appearance, he is very attractive to women, but
restless and moody and with something
mysterious about his past.
You can read The Guardian review here.Here you can read the novel.
"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags."
Charlotte Brontë
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