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Charlotte bronte jane eyre comparison
Charlotte bronte jane eyre comparison
Comparing the character jane eyre with
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How does Brontë create sympathy for the character of Jane in her novel, ‘Jane Eyre’?
In the novel, ‘Jane Eyre’ Charlotte Brontë focuses on the life of Jane, an unwanted orphan who can’t do anything right in the eyes of her aunt. When she is about nine she is sent to Lowood Institute where she is also treated as inferior by Mr Brocklehurst. Although Jane is treated so cruelly and unfairly all her life she proves everyone wrong in the end by making something of herself.
There are many parts of the book where we feel sympathy for Jane. In this essay I am going to discuss how Brontë creates sympathy for Jane in chapters one, two and seven. The main scenes include when Jane is treated cruelly by her cousin John, when she is locked in the red-room and when Mr Brocklehurst tells everyone she’s a liar.
When we first meet Jane Eyre she is sitting in a window-seat trying to escape her worries by reading after being separated from the group by her aunt. The reasons for this include not being ‘more attractive’ and ‘more sociable’. This shows Mrs Reed is a very stereotypical Victorian woman as she thinks all girls should be pretty and polite. Brontë tells us Jane has been excluded from ‘privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children’. This emphasises the affect on Jane of how she is treated as she thinks of herself as not happy and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to do what happy, little girls do. Also ‘humbled by the consciousness of my inferiority to Eliza, John and Georgiana Reed’ is very effective as it tells us that Jane is aware of why she is treated the way she is and agrees with it. She returns to this spot later on after being sent away again, this time pulling the curtains around her. ‘Fol...
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...m. She describes the red-room as a ‘square chamber’ suggesting it is a small claustrophobic room but she then goes on to say it is ‘massive’, ‘deep’ and ‘large.’ As the red-room is ‘one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion’ with large polished furniture and ‘bed supported on massive pillars’ it must be extremely intimidating for the little Jane to be in. We can be certain that the room got its name from the vast amount of the colour red in it, ‘the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth.’ By Brontë using the colour imagery of red it symbolises the colour of blood and fear. The colour red emphasises where Jane’s uncle died and was laid. It also emphasises the fear that Jane feels while she is in the room. Brontë describes all the furniture being made out of mahogany to symbolise the room as being important.
Jane Eyre is born into a world where she is left bereft of the love of parents, family, or friends, but instead surrounded by hateful relatives. She resolves to attend school to begin her quest for independence. This theme is seen through Jane’s behavior when she renounces her relation to her aunt Mrs. Reed, ignoring the nurse’s orders and leaving her room to see Helen again, and when she acquires the courage to speak her opinion to Mr. Rochester.
In the novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte shows us that all people have a feeling inside of them to recognizing what their personal desires and what their duty to others is. In Jane Eyre, the endless theme of unforgettable war between a passion and responsibility always appears, with a strong set of principles Jane is able to decide what is right. Throw out the book Charlotte Bronte show us that Jane’s integrity to her self is more important than what anybody else thinks of her. Duty and desire plays a huge role in which Jane has to learn to control her desire of her anger outburst and her duty to herself.
The novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is an early 19th-century English literature; a literary work that is evocative and riveting. It depicts acts of betrayal between family members, loved ones and self-inflicted betrayal. The acts of betrayals are done by Mrs. Reed, Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre herself.
Eventually, she returns to her former employer, discovering Thornfield in ashes, Mrs. Rochester dead, and Mr. Rochester blind and free from wedlock. Flooded with motifs, Jane’s continual struggles between her passions and responsibility prevail as the main theme of Bronte’s entrancing narrative. From the introduction of Jane’s orphan life, she battles between her ire at cousin John’s antics and obedience to Aunt Reed’s reluctant guardianship.
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre chronicles the growth of her titular character from girlhood to maturity, focusing on her journey from dependence on negative authority figures to both monetary and psychological independence, from confusion to a clear understanding of self, and from inequality to equality with those to whom she was formerly subject. Originally dependent on her Aunt Reed, Mr. Brocklehurst, and Mr. Rochester, she gains independence through her inheritance and teaching positions. Over the course of the novel, she awakens towards self-understanding, resulting in contentment and eventual happiness. She also achieves equality with the important masculine figures in her life, such as St. John Rivers and Mr. Rochester, gaining self-fulfillment as an independent, fully developed equal.
Reed was, for the most part, verbal and mental, this mistreatment lead Jane to loathe her aunt who didn’t treat her as one of her own. After Mr. Brocklehurst’s visit to Gateshead, when Jane and Mrs.Reed were left alone, Jane built up the courage to say, “...I declare I do not love you; I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed. I will say that the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty” (Bronte 34). Here the reader learns Jane’s honest opinion of her aunt. Later on in the novel, when Mrs. Reed is on the brink of death, she never shows the level of maturity that she needs to finally forget events of the past and forgive and accept Jane Eyre.
Jane Eyre has been acclaimed as one of the best gothic novels in the Victorian Era. With Bronte’s ability to make the pages come alive with mystery, tension, excitement, and a variety of other emotions. Readers are left with rich insight into the life of a strong female lead, Jane, who is obedient, impatient, and passionate as a child, but because of the emotional and physical abuse she endures, becomes brave, patient, and forgiving as an adult. She is a complex character overall but it is only because of the emotional and physical abuse she went through as a child that allowed her to become a dynamic character.
Charlotte Bronte’s classic “Jane Eyre” has a beginning similar to that of the classic fairy tale “Cinderella”. The title characters both have depressing childhoods stemming from the abuses of their stepfamilies. Although the childhood cruelties that Jane faces do not all come from her adoptive family like the cruelties that Cinderella faces, the cruelties emposed on Jane Eyre changes her in a way that esposes her inner strengths and shapes her for her future. The beginning of Jane Eyre exposes the cruelties she faces at the hands of her aunt, Mrs. Reed, and cousins.
Immediately from the start Bronte’s character Jane is different. She is an orphan, mis-treated and despised by her family. She has no clear social position, is described as “less than a servant” and treated like one. A protagonist who one would assume had no characteristics worth aspiring too. Jane is displayed perfectly in her hiding behind the curtain. She is placed by a window, which beyond is icy and cold, contrasting immensely from the inside of the fire and warmth. A clear statement of the icy coldness of the family she has been put to live with, and her fiery and passionate nature which we discover th...
At the start of Jane Eyre, Jane is living with her widowed aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her family after being orphaned. Jane is bitterly unhappy there because she is constantly tormented by her cousins, John, Eliza, and Georgiana. After reading the entire book you realize that Jane was perfectly capable of dealing with that issue on her own, but what made it unbearable was that Mrs. Reed always sided with her children, and never admitted to herself that her offspring could ever do such things as they did to Jane. Therefore, Jane was always punished for what the other three children did, and was branded a liar by Mrs. Reed. This point in the book marks the beginning of Jane's primary conflict in the novel. She feels unloved and unaccepted by the world, as her own family betrays her.
The red room is symbolic of how society traps Jane by limiting her freedom and imprisoning her. Jane uses the red room, in this passage, as a means of drawing renewed strength from her past fights for independence so that she doesn't give in to the plans Mr. Rochester has made for her. Jane views this plans as immoral and cannot go along with them. It was going to take immense courage however to go against Mr. Rochesters will and Jane draws this courage from her experience in the red room as a child. As with Mrs. Reed, Jane is again forced to cast aside the bonds to those around her so that she can find happiness without infringing upon her morals.
In his essay “Jane Eyre: The Quest for Optimism,” Frederick L. Ashe writes, “It is hard to imagine anyone learned enough to read Jane Eyre who would consider her first ten years emotionally healthful ones” (Ashe). Ashe, whose criticism appeared in Novels for Students, Volume 4, is correct in his opinion. Jane’s abuse first begins in her own home. Her life until age ten is filled with abuse from her cousin John Reed, the mockery of the household servants, and the physical and mental abuse of her Aunt Reed. John’s first abuse of Jane comes when he throws a heavy book at her head. Bronte writes in Jane’s voice, “I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp” (Bronte 13). John’s physical abuse of Jane is not the only abuse she receives, though. After Jane recovers from the abuse bestowed upon her by John, Miss Abbot, a servant, says of Jane, “If she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that” (Bronte 28). Although this abuse pains Jane, it is the abuse of her Aunt Reed that hurts Jane the most. Aunt Reed’s first maltreatment of Jane is on the first page of the novel. Aunt Reed gathers her children around her for a happy family moment. Jane, however, is left alone. Jane says, “[Aunt Reed] regretted to be
Bronte utilizes the novel to express her investigate of Victorian class difference. Jane is reliably a poor individual inside a well off condition, especially with the Reeds and at
In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Jane is an orphan who is often mistreated by the family and other people who surround her. Faced with constant abuse from her aunt and her cousins, Jane at a young age questions the treatment she receives: "All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sister’s proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always brow-beaten, always accused, forever condemned?" (27; ch. 2). Despite her early suffering, as the novel progresses Jane is cared for and surrounded by various women who act as a sort of "substitute mother" in the way they guide, comfort, and inspire her. By looking into Charlotte Bronte’s own childhood and family background, as well as discovering aspects of Victorian motherhood in the mid-nineteenth century, one may be enlightened as to why so many substitute mothers are present to Jane throughout the novel. The substitute mothers, although a starting point for Jane’s emotional redemption, do not prove to fulfill what a mother in the Mid-Victorian era would be.
In the Victorian Age, people unfairly discriminated against others due to their lack of social status. This theme is emphasized in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The protagonist, a poor orphan named Jane, is a victim of this prejudice. With the settings of Gateshead, Lowood, and Thornfield, Brontë illustrates how someone in Jane’s position could be treated badly or differently simply because of poverty and a lack of rank.