1. Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte

2. Jane Eyre is thought to be highly autobiographical.
Brontë included many events in the novel that paralleled her own life.
She used a masculine pen name.

3. All events are told in the past from Jane’s point of view.
The setting is early 19th Century England.
Jane Eyre is classified as both a Gothic and a Romantic novel.

4. Important Ideas Explored in Jane Eyre ~
Love vs. Autonomy
Issues of Class and Society/Caste Systems
Gender Roles / Gender Relations
Religion
Feeling vs. Judgment
The Spiritual and the Supernatural
The Power and Influence of Home
Coming of Age

5. Jane Eyre: A bildungsroman
a Bildungsroman tells the story of a child’s maturation and focuses on the emotions and experiences that accompany and incite his or her growth to adulthood.
In Jane Eyre, there are five distinct stages of development, each linked to a particular place:
Jane’s childhood at Gateshead,
her education at the Lowood School,
her time as Adèle’s governess at Thornfield,
her time with the Rivers family at Moor House
her reunion with and marriage to Rochester at Ferndean

6. As you read, remember these questions and continue to develop your answers.
How does Jane grow and develop as characters are introduced into and separated from her and her life?
How does the presence and absence of these characters represent significant moments in Jane’s transformation?

7. Bronte’s most profound innovation ,however, is the division of the Victorian female psyche into its extreme components of mind and body, which she externalizes as two characters, Helen Burns and Bertha Mason…Bronte gives us not one but three faces of Jane, and she resolves her heroine’s dilemma by literally and metaphorically destroying the two polar personalities to make way for the central consciousness for the integration of the spirit and the body.
Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own

8. Study Question: Gothic novel
In what ways is Jane Eyre influenced by the tradition of the Gothic novel? What do the Gothic elements contribute to the novel?
The Gothic tradition utilizes elements such as supernatural encounters, remote locations, complicated family histories, ancient manor houses, dark secrets, and mysteries to create an atmosphere of suspense and terror.

9. THE manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity, moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood. I had heard of it before. Mr. Rochester often spoke of it, and sometimes went there. His father had purchased the estate for the sake of the game covers. He would have let the house, but could find no tenant, in consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site. Ferndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the exception of some two or three rooms fitted up for the accommodation of the squire when he went there in the season to shoot.
To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating rain. The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the chaise and driver with the double remuneration I had promised. Even when within a very short distance of the manor-house, you could see nothing of it, so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it. Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and passing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of close-ranked trees. There was a grass-grown track descending the forest aisle between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches.

10. Study Questions: Chapter 37
How are jane and Rochester’s position reversed in this part of the novel?
What is Jane Eyre’s view of love reflected in this chapter ?
Equality
Emotions and passion

11. Comparison: Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet
Write a thesis statement for your comparison about the similarities between Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet.
“Although Elizabeth Bennet and Jane Eyre are very different on the outside, their shared internal values connects them in literary history and in the fight for women’s rights.”

12. Differences: what do they reveal?
Historical period
Social class/familial connections
Physical attractiveness
personality
occupation
Economic status
Attitude towards love and marriage
Relationship with men

13. Jane demonstrates more
Autonomy(economical, spiritual, emotional)
Individualism

14. For further exploration: Jane Eyre and feminist ideals
The Victorian period saw the emerging idea of feminism ,or the equality of men and women.
In what sense can Jane Eyre be read as a novel of feminist ideals?
Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social rights for women that are equal to those of men.

15. Do you think I am an automaton. ­ a machine without. feelings
Do you think I am an automaton? ­ a machine without feelings?...Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong — I have as much soul as you, — and full as much heart...I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; — it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal, — as we are (252)

16. The novel is frequently cited as the earliest major feminist novel, although there is not a hint in the book of any desire for political, legal, educational, or even intellectual equality between the sexes. Miss Bronte asks only for the simple — or is it the most complex? — recognition that the same heart and the same spirit animate both men and women, and that love is the pairing of equals in these spheres The famous plea that women ought not to be confined 'to making pudding and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags' [Chap. 12] is not propaganda for equal employment but for a recognition of woman's emotional nature. The condemnation of women to a place apart results in the creation of empty, capricious women like Blanche Ingram, who tyrannize over men whenever possible, indulge in dreams of Corsair lovers, and can communicate only in the Byronic language of outdated romantic fiction. Only equals like Jane and Rochester dare to speak truth couched in language of unadorned directness.

17. Jane Eyre and feminist criticism
Feminist critics generally agree that their goals are
To expose patriarchal premises and resulting prejudices
To promote discovery and reevaluation of literature by women
To examine social ,cultural and psychosexual contexts of literature and literary criticism
In what ways can Jane Eyre be analyzed from a feminist perspective?

18. Discussion : “Women’s men”
Typical heroes in Victorian female novelists’ works:
Model heroes
Brutes
“They are not conventionally handsome, and often are downright ugly; they have piercing eyes; they are brusque and cynical in speech, impetuous in action.”
“Their heroes are not so much their ideal lover as their projected egos.”

19. Discussion: “the disabled man”
“The recurring motif in feminine fiction that does seem to show outright hostility toward man, is the blinding, maiming, or blighting motif.”
Why does women writers during Victorian Age constantly reveal hositility against their heroes?