Jane Eyre
By Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre, aged 10, lives at Gateshead Hall with her maternal uncle’s family, the Reeds, due to her uncle’s dying wish. Jane was orphaned several years earlier when her parents died of typhus. Jane’s uncle, Mr Reed, was the only one in the Reed family who was kind to Jane. Jane’s aunt, Sarah Reed, dislikes and treats her as a burden. Mrs Reed also discourages her three children from associating with Jane. As a result, Jane becomes defensive against her cruel judgment. The nursemaid, Bessie, proves to be Jane’s only ally in the household, even though Bessie occasionally scolds Jane harshly. Excluded from the family activities, Jane lives an unhappy childhood. One day, as punishment for defending herself against the bullying of her 14-year-old cousin John, the Reeds’ only son, Jane is locked in the red room in which her late uncle had died; there, she faints from panic after she thinks she has seen his ghost.
The red room is significant because it lays the grounds for the “ambiguous relationship between parents and children,” which plays out in Jane’s future relationships with male figures throughout the novel. She is subsequently attended to by the kindly apothecary, Mr Lloyd, to whom Jane reveals how unhappy she is living at Gateshead Hall. He recommends that Jane be sent to school, which Mrs Reed happily supports. Mrs Reed then enlists the aid of the harsh Mr Brocklehurst, the director of Lowood Institution, a charity school for girls, to enrol Jane. Mrs. Reed cautions Mr. Brocklehurst that Jane has a “tendency to deceit,” which he interprets as Jane being a liar. Before Jane leaves, however, she confronts Mrs Reed and declares that she’ll never call her “aunt” again. Jane also tells Mrs Reed and her daughters, Georgiana and Eliza, that they are the ones who are deceitful and that she will tell everyone at Lowood how cruelly the Reeds treated her. These words poorly hurt Mrs Reed, but have neither the courage nor the tenacity to show it.
Genre: Romance Books | Gothic
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Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet. She was the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature.
Biography.
She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, published under the gender-neutral pen name Currer Bell. Jane Eyre became a successful publication and is widely held in high regard in the gothic fiction genre of literature. She enlisted in school at Roe Head, Mirfield, in January 1831 at 14. She left the year after to teach her sisters, Emily and Anne, at home, returning in 1835 as a governess. In 1839, she undertook the role of governess for the Sidgwick family but left after a few months to return to Haworth, where the sisters opened a school but failed to attract pupils. Instead, they turned to writing, each first published in 1846 under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
Although her first novel, The Professor, was rejected by publishers, her second novel, Jane Eyre, was published in 1847. The sisters admitted to their Bell pseudonyms in 1848 and were celebrated in London literary circles by the following year. Charlotte Brontë was the last to die of all her siblings. She became pregnant shortly after her marriage in June 1854 but died on 31 March 1855, almost certainly from hyperemesis gravidarum, a complication of pregnancy that causes excessive nausea and vomiting.
Charlotte Brontë
