Charlotte Brontë Burns Through the Cool Veil of Jane Eyre

After our brief sojourn through Yorkshire, Andrea returned us to the topic at hand, her next slide presenting the elements of the classic gothic novel. For a protype of the gothic genre, please read The Castle of Otranto by Horatio WalpoleJane Eyre contains several gothic elements including a castle (or manor like a castle) setting; secret stairs/rooms/passageways; dark/brooding/dangerous lord; young (often poor) virginal woman; and, unlawful/thwarted love.  What sets Jane Eyre above and apart from the gothic novel is Charlotte’s use of realism, didacticism and her attention to class distinctions, all of which are Victorian elements.  Other examples, from Charles Dickens, of similar novels, include David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations.  All of these novels share with the audience what true virtue looks like regardless of class (low or high).

Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics)
Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics)

Andrea mentioned another common element in Victorian novels as the problem of what to do with second sons.  Most were married off to rich woman so they were accounted for financially.  At this point, one of the readers posed a question or observation about class distinctions as portrayed in Jane Eyre; how the gentry were shown as egotistical, decadent and inbred — basically amoral.  In contrast, the middle class exemplified the best qualities of morality.

Charlotte’s novel, Jane Eyre, was a run away best seller in 1847.  That popularity provided ample ammunition for her contemporary critics:

Jane Eyre ‘fastens itself upon your attention, and will not leave you.’  Passages ‘read like a page out of one’s own life.’  — George Henry Lewis (1847)

‘The most alarming revolution of modern times has followed the invasion of Jane Eyre.’  It is ‘a wild declaration of the “Rights of Woman.” … Here is your true revolution.’ — Margaret Oliphant (1855)

‘The auto-biography of Jane Eyre is preeminently an anti-Christian composition.  There is throughout a murmuring against the comforts of the rich and the privations of the poor. … We do not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine. …’ — Elizabeth Rigby (Lady Eastlake, 1848)

‘The book which caused the distemper would probably have been inoffensive, had not some sly manufacturer of mischief hinted that it was a book which no respectable man should bring into his family circle.  Of course, every family soon had a copy of it. …’ — E.P. Whipple (1848)

Virginia Woolf, author of A Room of One’s Own (1929), scathingly berated Charlotte, who ‘had more genius in her than Jane Austen; but if one reads [her novels] over and marks that jerk in them, that indignation one sees that she will never get her genius expressed whole and entire.  Her books will be deformed and twisted.  She will write in a rage where she should write wisely.  she will write of herself where she should write of her characters.  she is at war with her lot.  How could she help but die young, cramped and thwarted?’  Andrea noted that Virginia’s point, vicious though it appears, was the result that Charlotte could not do anything with her life because she had ‘no cash and no space.’

Andrea selected an excerpt from Chapter XII (in Volume I) to read.  Jane had just arrived at Thornfield.  She’s bored, which shocked Victorian society.  That a woman might want more than aspiring to raise children and be content in her domesticity.  This famous narrative (on p. 129 of the Penguin Classics edition) resonates with the anger Virginia Woolf referred as Charlotte’s ‘poor art.’

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7 thoughts on “Charlotte Brontë Burns Through the Cool Veil of Jane Eyre”

  1. Gorgeous pictures, but I thought it was Elizabeth and Maria who fell ill at school and died influencing that story line in Jane Eyre? Emily and Anne lived until they were about 30. There were also six siblings, not four.

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