Analyzing Eyre and Copperfield

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Recommended: Jane Eyre character analysis

In the novels Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, the protagonists are retrospectively looking back on their lives and illustrating tribulations they endured regarding familial, social, and romantic relationships. At the end of both novels, the central characters find harmony in idealistic partners. Ultimately, both novels demonstrate the necessity of eminent relationships, the impingement of negative relationships, and the experiences that led both protagonists to recognize the difference between which relationships were hindering and which were constructive.

The Bildungsroman genre entails a character’s formative years and his or her development from childhood. The characters from this type of novel recall, in detail, past relationships and experiences that impacted the characters growth, maturity, and exemplar for their relationships with other characters. An important component to Bildungsroman novels is the concentration on the characters childhood (Gottfried & Miles, 122). In Jane Eyre and David Copperfield, both characters childhoods were despondent. Both characters experience the loss of a parent: Jane is a literal orphan; David’s loss is metaphorical, then literal. When Jane Eyre begins, Jane has already lost both parents and is under the guardianship of her aunt, Sarah Reed. Reed and her children, Jane’s cousins, are abusive to Jane and never accept Jane as family. Jane has lost both parents and with the death of her uncle, Sarah’s husband and an advocate for Jane, Jane is without any caring relationship. In addition to being without affection, Jane must endure torment. It is this lack of adoration that leads Jane to seek acceptance throughout her life, while attempting t...

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...ight is present as the main character retells their life story, but is capable of exhibiting the naivety and inexperience that the character possessed at specific stations throughout their life.

Works Cited

The Undisciplined Heart of David Copperfield

Gwendolyn B. Needham

Nineteenth-Century Fiction , Vol. 9, No. 2 (Sep., 1954), pp. 81-107

Published by: University of California Press

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3044322

Defining Bildungsroman as a Genre

Marianne Hirsch Gottfried and David H. Miles

PMLA , Vol. 91, No. 1 (Jan., 1976), pp. 122-123

Published by: Modern Language Association

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461404

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Charleston: Forgotten Books, 2008. Print.

Burstyn, Joan. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood. Hatfield, UK: Routledge, 1980. 138-40. Print.

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