Annotated Bibliography Of Jane Eyre

Autobiographical Evidence in Jane Eyre

When creating a literary work, authors often write what they know. It isn’t uncommon for an author to weave their own experiences, ideals, and opinions into their writing. Especially for a work of fiction, it is much easier for an author to create a believable and likeable story when they can extract details from the life they have already lived. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, is no exception. The original novel, Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, published under Brontë’s pen name, Currer Bell, was titled as such because Brontë modeled Eyre after herself so much. In fact, in a conversation with her sisters, Brontë said she would show them “a heroine as plain and small as” herself (“Introduction”). It is for

this reason that there are several parallels between Charlotte Brontë’s life and her novel. This paper will examine a few of the most prominent examples, including the similarities between Jane and Charlotte’s upbringing and schooling experience, as well as their difficult love lives and vivid imaginations.
The first, and possibly most important, similarity between Charlotte Brontë and Jane Eyre is the loss of a parental figure or figures.

When Charlotte was just five years old, her mother died of cancer. As a result, her mother’s sister, Elizabeth, moved into the Brontë household to help Charlotte’s dad raise his six children (“Charlotte Brontë”). Similarly, Jane is depicted as an orphan who lost her parents to typhus before she ever really knew them. She then goes to live with her Aunt Reed at Gateshead Hall, where she suffers a myriad of emotional and physical abuses from her aunt and cousins. While Charlotte’s early years were far less abusive than Jane’s, they both suffered severe loss at a very young

age.
The parental loss that both Charlotte and Jane suffered wasn’t the only hardship they had to face as children. When Charlotte was about eight years old, she and three of her sisters were sent to the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan bridge. Due to the harsh and unhealthy conditions of the school, however, two of Charlotte’s sisters fell ill with tuberculosis and died shortly after returning home (Merriam). Similarly, Jane was sent away by her Aunt Reed to Lowood School when she was ten years old. The conditions there are also horrid. The first morning after Jane arrived at the school, she describes her experience- the room where they slept was “bitter cold”, the food “sent forth an odour far from inviting”, and she was “ravenous” and “very faint” as the portions of the almost inedible food they received were far from adequate (Brontë, 26). To make matters worse, with the arrival of spring comes a tuberculosis break-out causing most of the girls to fall ill or die.
Despite the hardships Charlotte and Jane faced as children, both girls had a wonderful imagination that they used to help them escape the harshness of their realities.

For Charlotte, an imaginary world that she and her siblings created, Angria, was her escape. Charlotte recalled that many times, “what she imagined grew morbidly vivid” and that she was “half miserable” when she could not pursue her daydreams uninterrupted by the world around her (Brownell). Jane, on the other hand, was often very restless, especially during her days at quiet Thornfield Hall, where she lived as a governess after she left Lowood. “I could not help it; the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third story, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it—and, certainly, they were many and glowing,” (Brontë, 69). Jane’s way to escape her restless mind and long, boring days was to escape into her mind, just like

Charlotte.
A final similarity between Charlotte and Jane is their love lives, or lack thereof. When Charlotte was twenty nine years old, she received a marriage proposal from a man named Reverend A.B. Nicholls. Aparently, Charlotte’s father was very opposed to the marriage and condemned it, a fact that didn’t upset Brontë in the least as she did not have feelings for Nicholls. However, a year later, her father relented and Brontë and Nicholls were married, even though she still did not love him. In fact, many believe that Brontë’s death was either consciously or unconsciously hastened by the fact that she was miserable in her marriage (“Biography of Charlotte Brontë”). Similarly, Jane also has relationships that don’t amount to much emotionally. While at Thornfield Hall, she fell for the master of the house, Mr. Rochester, even though he was almost twice her age and prone to quick mood changes. As Mr. Rochester grows increasingly moody and abrasive with Jane, she seems to accept the fact that her love will never fulfill her emotional needs, yet she stays with him anyway (“Parallels Between Charlotte Brontë and Jane Eyre”). In both cases, the women sacrifice real love just so they can be with the men they are drawn to.
The autobiographical elements that are present in Jane Eyre are hard to ignore. The experiences that Charlotte Brontë had growing up are glaringly present in the life and character of Jane Eyre. Brontë’s less than ideal schooling experiences are reflected in Jane’s life at Lowood. Jane’s orphan status and life growing up with her aunt are also very similar to the result of the death of Brontë’s mother. Despite all the heartbreak, however, Brontë still managed to retain her child-like imagination and also write a similar love for dreaming in Jane. Finally, both women accepted less than ideal love lives simply so they could be with the men they wanted. It is for these reasons that Jane Eyre became a novel that so many grew to love. If Charlotte Brontë had not written from her own experiences, Jane Eyre would not have become the classic novel that it is renowned as today.