TITLE:  Jane Eyre.

AUTHOR: Charlotte Bronte.                                               

GENRE: Gothic Fiction.                                                                                        

THEME: Quest for family, sense of belonging & love.

                        Sharing experience of orphaned Jane Eyre who starts her journey from an undernourished Lowood School; her moves to Thornfield as governess to the Rochester family, falling blindly in love with Rochester; facing impediments to a legal wedding with him on becoming aware of Bertha, his wife who is mentally retarded; her stay at the Moor House with cousins; the annihilation of Thornfield in fire; and an appealing climax is all the plot of the novel is about.

            “I resisted all the way”—

                    The sentence of initial chapters foreshadows on the important theme of the rest of the book—tolerance. Other themes like that of class, resistance to power, dominance, judgment, love, dreams, independence, morality, sensuality, spiritual and supernatural elements are also a part of Jane Eyre; and can be far and wide traced all through the novel.

                Jane Eyre was written under the pseudonym Currrer Bell. Before the publication of Jane Eyre, women were—under the expectations of the Victorian society—simple and genuine. They were also regarded as icons from whom it is believed that morality sprang. After this novel’s publication, the ‘new woman’ or the ‘ideal woman’ concept became predominant based on the main character, Jane: an independent, strong, forward and a radical woman. Bronte defied the conventions of the Victorian society and raised the comfort bar high by portraying a woman's passionate search for a wider and richer life than what the society made feasible.        

                   Jane, the protagonist, not only shows the reader her beliefs on female independence through her actions, but also through her thoughts. She relates her feelings to all women, not just those of her class, saying: “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.” (Chapter 12).

             Jane Eyre is written in the first person narrative; form Jane’s perception. It can be classified as many types—romance: passionate relation Jane and Rochester form; Mystery: Bertha’s entry revealing the darker side of Thornfield; or gothic: with an eerie effect of the supernatural elements. Adaptations of Jane Eyre include The Sound of Music in English, and Santhi Nilayam (The House of Peace) in Tamil which were a massive hit.  

                 Jane Eyre tasks us with a race to turn its pages and find out its secrets—with a heroine full of craving, the treacherous secrets she encounters, and the choices she finally makes, Charlotte Bronte's challenging and lasting romantic novel is sure a worth try reading.

Happy reading!

DETAILS:

Material: Paperback with 520 pages.                                                                         

Publication: London: Smith, Elder, and Co., Cornhill, 1847.         

ISBN 10:  0141441143.        

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