other

• key themes (4)

  -justice and injustice

  -social class

  -love and romance

  -personal growth
• theme: justice and injustice

  bronte illustrates injustice through a protagonist with limited power, showing how people with wealth and status can treat people unjustly:

  
  

  -gateshead: jane is treated unjustly by mrs reed, regarded as 'less than a servant'

  -lowood: shows the injustice of the harsh conditions

  -thornfield, jane is treated unjustly as rochester wants to marry her, despite being married

  -thornfield: rochester unjustly imprisons bertha mason. who is powerless
• theme: social class

  bronte shows us how janes social class means despite her education, her lack of money prevents her from having autonomy (independance)

  
  

  -jane is an orphan with no money, living with mrs reed, whose high status is shown by her luxurious home and servants

  -janes social class limits her options: she must work if she does not marry

  -jane works as a governess, meaning she's an employee
• theme: love - complexity of romance

  bronte shows how romantic love conflicts morally correct behaviour, ending with 'reader i married him' suggests morals can eventually result in romance

  
  

  complex romance:

  -rochester and jane have a power imbalance

  -rochester creates uncomfortable parallels between jane (who he loves: 'fairy' 'sorceress') and bertha (who he hates: 'goblin' 'monster')

  -rochester deceives jane by flirting with blanche, disguising himself as a fortune teller, imprisoning bertha etc
• theme: love - platonic

  bronte shows janes friendships as an important source of comfort, suggesting platonic love is more powerful than romance

  
  

  friendship:

  -lowood: jane is comforted by helen and miss temple

  -moor house: the rivers family rescue her after she runs away, diana and mary become close friends
• theme: personal growth

  bronte illustrates a protagonist with limited power (reflecting many girls at the time), but shows how personal strengths can empower individuals and lead to a happy ending

  
  

  -bildungsroman: showing her life story

  -first person: from jane's perspective

  -conclusion: despite her disempowerment throughout, her personal growth enables her to overcome everything and end up happy
• the 'i' in jane eyre


  more intimate and allows us to trust her perspective. bronte shows a female author who is the author of her own story, she aims to persuade her victorian readers to view women as individuals in their own right, as equal to men
• main context points (4)

  -gender

  -social class

  -christianity

  -the supernatural
• context: gender (5)

  -originally published under a male pseudonym: currer bell as nobody took female authors seriously

  
  

  -victorian society was very patriarchal, shown by john reed attending an expensive school while his sisters learn at home

  
  

  -when women married, their property and money became their husbands. mrs reed has inherited hers from her husbands death. bertha became rochester's property

  
  

  -chapter 12: bronte addresses gender inequality directly

  
  

  -bronte addresses gender inequality indirectly through brocklehurst controlling lowood, rochester imprisoning bertha and st john choosing his life path while his sisters depend on him
• context: social class (4)

  -19th century society was divided by social class, defined by wealth: eg. the ingrams (highest: aristocrats)

  
  

  -the poorest people often depended on workhouses and charitable institutions: eg. lowood school

  
  

  -bronte is critical of social class: shown by jane preferring her personal merits over beauty and expensive clothes, describing blanche as inferior because she is not genuine

  
  

  -at the time white british people saw themselves as superior: bertha is someone disempowered as a creole woman with mixed ethnicity
• context: christianity (2)

  -important, nearly everyone was christian, bronte lived in a parsonage (church house) and attended a christian school called cowan bridge, which was like lowood

  
  

  -Brontё critiques the misuse of Christianity, but accepts the baseline realities of Christian belief:Characters like Mr Brocklehurst, St John Rivers and even the saintly Helen Burns represent Christian beliefs that are either distorted or extreme

  -Characters like Miss Temple and the sisters Mary and Diana Rivers represent moderate Christian beliefs, like kindness and tolerance
• context: the supernatural (4)

  -awareness was common, bronte uses is to illustrate the richness of janes imagination

  
  

  -supernatural storylines were successful prior to bronte

  
  

  -examples: the red room ghost and ignis fatuus, jane's dreams and berthas 'demoniac' laughter, jane 'hearing' rochester at moor house

  
  

  -supernatural motif - the doppelganger: jane and bertha have parallels such as their imprisonment in the red room and thornfield, and marrying rochester
• symbolism (1 for each 5 phases)

  -Jane is first seen hiding behind a red curtain at Gateshead Hall: her position behind the curtain is symbolic of her exclusion from the family, the colour red is symbolic of Jane's anger at the unjust treatment she encounters

  
  

  -Lowood school is huge, dark and "gloomy": symbolic of the lack of openness and truth about the conditions there

  
  

  -When Jane arrives at Thornfield Hall, she enters it in darkness: many of the most important scenes at Thornfield take place at night, symbolising the secrets concealed

  
  

  -Jane is drawn to Moor House when she sees its light from the darkness of the moor: symbolic of the welcome, warmth and friendship that the Rivers family offers

  
  

  -Jane reaches Ferndean Manor in the evening: fading light is symbolic of Rochester's blindness and fading hope
• symbolism: janes lack of freedom (3)

  -At Thornfield, Jane is often seen at the edge of rooms and building: she frequently "paces" the upper floors emphasising her sense of confinement, mirroring Bertha's imprisonment

  
  

  -When Jane is ordered to join Rochester's guests, she sits alone at the edge of the room, just like she did at Gateshead, emphasising her social unimportance

  
  

  -At Gateshead, Jane is locked in the red-room, which increases her feelings of anger, exclusion, alienation and confinement
• recurring motifs

  -fire (rochesters room, thornfield burning down etc): passion, exclusion. foreshadowing, anger

  
  

  -jane's plain clothes: honesty, openness

  
  

  -foreshadowing of janes disasterous marriage: the chestnut tree splitting in half after he proposes + the wedding veil being ripped by bertha
• direct addressing the readers (3)

  At several points in the novel, Jane addresses readers directly as "Reader"

  
  

  Brontë uses this technique to create a direct dialogue between narrator and reader: This creates a sense of intimacy with Jane's feelings and thought processes

  
  

  However, like Jane's reference to her "autobiography", the direct address reminds us that we are reading a work of fiction