“The
soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a
faithful interpreter - in the eye.”
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is a gothic romance novel that has become a
classic. It is the story of Jane Eyre a strong, fierce, passionate, educated,
god-righteous woman as seen by her eyes. Jane was an orphan, she was sent to a
boarding school for the destitute when she was 10 by her neglecting aunt.
There, she received quite a good education and found a teacher that really
inspired her. Jane always wanted to travel and discover the world so after
completing her schooling and teaching there for two years, she becomes a
governess to a rich family with a mysterious master. The story is her struggle
in finding the balance between the morally right thing and her own passions,
between being obedient but independent and free-willed. Jane critiques the
social class division however sticks to it and believes in it all through her
life.
Charlotte Brontë made
my thoughts on old novels change. Through Jane Eyre I found that there can be
classic that I become absolutely enthralled. Sure, it still had some of the
conventional language found in older and gothic books: long paragraphs
describing something that appears to be insignificant (I’ll confess that
sometimes I end up skipping a line or two when it is too descriptive) and the
complete opposite, when a scene changes without notice that you are left to
wonder what is going on.
I think that Brontë
used Jane Eyre to explore concepts of social hierarchy and if status and
behaviour is innate. However, she did not use the protagonist to challenge
these concepts but rather, through her writing, gave the readers a ‘challenge’
to ponder for themselves in this issue. Jane Eyre was a strong, independent
woman however she never saw herself as an equal. 