Jane Eyre Research Paper

Charlette Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre has been studied for its depiction of the relationship between Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. It has also been studied for many other reasons, but recently there have been studies done on Jane as a youth and her time spent at Gateshead and the Lowood Institution. The crucial development of Jane as a child during the years when she craves love and companionship is mentioned for only eighty pages. Jane’s formative years are brushed aside for her romantic life as an adult. Jane does not focus on the little girl she is paid to teach, Adele is a background piece in the novel. Jane’s real interest at Thornfield is Mr. Rochester. In the novel The Nanny Diaries, Nanny spends all of her time with young children. This

The Lowood institution and Gateshead are key parts of young Jane’s life that shapes her into the woman she is at Thornfield. Her time at Gateshead made her partial to a quiet personality, and then her time at Lowood made her even more quiet in nature. Jane is not only quiet with speaking, she is quiet in dress, and accessory taste. She was conditioned to not have nice things as a child, and therefore, she feels no need to have them as an adult. While at The Lowood Institution, Jane has many women in her life. All of the teachers there are female, except the headmaster Mr. Brocklehurst. These women are second-hand mother figures to all of the little girls in the institution. Yet, most of these teachers behave as if the girls are not worth affection or praise for good behavior, they only receive real attention when a girl has done something wrong, or wrong in the eyes of the teachers. The overall nature of Lowood is bleak and inescapable, especially after so many girls did not leave Lowood after the typhoid epidemic. Lowood became a place of death and misery in the eyes of the readers, through Helen Burns and the other girls who did not survive that winter (Marsh 530). Because of Jane’s time at Lowood as a young girl, she became a woman of other-worldly appearance in the eyes of Mr. Rochester, he remarks that their first encounter is like a fairytale and bewitching (Bronte 112). Her upbringing not

She was hired to take care of a child and teach that child how to behave in society; yet, the novel centers around a love affair between master and governess. Jane’s time as a little girl is mentioned, but the novel rushes the audience past her formative years into early adulthood. Her adult life is where the main part of the novel takes place. The whole reason Jane is a governess is to get her close to Mr. Rochester without the scenario being too far-fetched. The welfare of Adele is not the main priority in Jane’s life. The change from adult to child-centered Nanny-Lit comes from the understanding that children need more than to learn how to read and write. Children need to develop human relationships that will help them grow as a person. The Nanny Diaries understands that children have emotions and needs, the novel also understands the dilemma faced by the upper class. The dilemma that children may have all the money to take care of them, but no real parental figures to mold them into functional little