Jane Eyre Research Paper

Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre is a Gothic psychological romance set in the early 1800s in England. This coming of age story pictures Jane, a young girl who lives with her cousins of whom she believes to be her only family. She is abused by them—the son, John Reed in particular—and never shown any form of love while in their household. Not until she moves away, obtains an education, and later meets her employer Edward Rochester, does she obtain any understanding of love, outside of the platonic kind shown by friends such as Helen Burns, and the simplistic comprehension of romance that reading provides. However, the love she discovers is unraveled when a secret is told that compromises the safety, trust, and legality of the relationship.

Jane finds Rochester to be an intense and critical man, of whom she finds herself falling subconsciously in love with due to the “ease of his manner [that] free[s] [her] from painful restraint” and the “friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treat[s] [her]” (Bronte 168; ch. 15). While living in his company, Jane almost feels as though they are equals, and kindred spirits, rather than master and servant. However, she begins to suspect an insincerity in him after rescuing him from a fire that was said to have been started by a drunken maid name Grace Poole. The suspicion increasingly grew the longer Rochester kept Poole under the same roof. Rochester is deceiving Jane in this claim, for it was not Poole that started the fire, but his mad wife Berth, who lives locked up as a monster, with Grace Poole as her caretaker. Not only does Rochester lie to Jane and put her in danger, but he also deliberately makes her jealous when he brings an exotically beautiful yet vicious woman named Blanche Ingram into his home. Jane assumes that Rochester will propose and be wed to Blanche, but Rochester instead proposes to Jane, who accepts almost disbelievingly. When the wedding day arrives, Jane discovers the lies that Rochester has been withholding and concludes that she must leave Thornfield because she knew and told Rochester ‘“it would [wicked] to obey [him]”’ because of her moral obligations (Bronte 367; ch. 27). Jane recognizes the evil she would be committing if she were to stay therefore abandons her newfound home and lover. Shannon O’bryne summarizes the statement that Jane makes in leaving Mr. Rochester by stating, “In refusing Rochester, Jane simultaneously rejects the lawlessness of insanity and its fellow traveler, extreme emotion (both represented by Bertha)” (O’Bryne 46). Her words