Jane Eyre | Introduction By Novy Kapadia

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Jun 19, 2019   •  94 views

So here are some points which you can include in your answer to enhance it.

Introduction by Novy Kapadia

• Charlotte's two elder sisters Maria and Elizabeth died in childhood in 1825 succumbing to the fatal disease of tuberculosis. In this novel, Charlotte commemorates Maria as Helen Burns, a portrait that impressed many of her earlier readers.

• Charlotte, the author uses several Gothic elements. For instance, there is the description of the mysterious third floor at Thornfield House, the suspicious behavior of Grace Poole, screams and inexplicable incidents that take place in Rochester’s bedroom.

• In the novel, Jane Eyre, the central consciousness is the narrator and heroine Jane herself. The use of a first-person narrator has ensured a certain kind of basic unity. She is ever present as a narrator, her character is consistent and varied and because of this she dominates the story she tells.

• The autobiographical form that Charlotte Bronte has used (as for much of her life the author worked as a teacher and governess) suggests that the events are presented from a subjective point of view.

• Bronte's bitter memories and feelings of neglect, when she worked with the wealthy Sidgwick family as a governess are another autobiographical reference.

• By the use of the first person narrative, the gothic elements and dream sequences, the novel Jane Eyre achieves a remarkable intensity, poetic symbolism and gives a new direction to the English novel in the 19th century.

• M.H. Scargill in his essay "Poetic Symbolism inJane Eyre" says that :

“ with the publication of Jane Eyre the English novel, which had already absorbed elements from the essay, the 'character' and the drama turned away from the external towards the expression of an experience exclusively personal".

• The intensity of feeling & frankness with which a woman speaks about herself is what makes Jane Eyre unique. Critics like M.H. Scargill have even suggested that "it is the memory oflove which Charlotte Bronte herself had experienced that is that the novel is some kind of autobiography."

• Jane Eyre was first published in 1847 and it can also be viewed as both a historical novel and a critique of society.

• This novel is the revelation of the mind of a young woman of intellectual and spiritual ardor who knows her worth and demands with the man she loves. She challenges Victorian England's prudish towards women and the lower classes- in this manner it is a critique of society.

• Historically- it shows us the condition of the dispossessed middle-class woman in England, with no dowry . The character ofJane Eyre represents the plight of the Victorian governesses in the 1840s.

• This unique & sensitive novel is also part of the Romantic tradition of writing. The autobiographical form that Charlotte Bronte has used implies that she is using a subjective point of view.

• Another aspect of the Romantic tradition used by Charlotte Bronte is making use of nature as a visible manifestation of the inward self.

• The depiction of childhood terrors, the mysterious, threatening sights, screams, sounds, inexplicable incidents and injurious acts that reveal the presence of some malevolent force at Thornfield are all elements of the Gothic in Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre.

• Charlotte Bronte's timeless classic, Jane Eyre, is also a perfect example of bildungsroman, the education novel.

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