1. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

2. Many Books in One Autobiography Fairy Tale Plot Marriage Plot
Bildungsroman or Quest Plot
Gothic/Mystery Plot

3. Jane Eyre as Autobiography
Parents: Rev. Patrick Brontë + Maria
Maria (1814), Elizabeth (1815), Charlotte (1816), Branwell (1817), Emily (1818), Anne (1820)
Picture of Haworth [how-worth]-Brontes' villiage: very rural on the moors (treeless landscape swept by winds)
Mother, Maria Branwell Bronte, died when Charlotte was 5.
Older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, cared for younger siblings until unmarried aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, came to live in Bronte home. Not affectionate and lovable. Also cared for by family servant, Tabitha Aykroyd, perhaps prototype of Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights and Bessie in Jane Eyre.
Haworth today

4. Jane Eyre as Autobiography
Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell: Charlotte Brontë Emily Brontë Anne Brontë
All three sisters published novels in WH and AG together in set.
Charlotte's: "The Professor" was rejected for publication at that time. But Jane Eyre was published shortly thereafter in same year.
male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
Wuthering Heights--Emily's only novel
Anne: Agnes Grey - a governess’s life; The Tenant of Wildfell Hall a girl’s marriage to a rake.
Charlotte published the most: Shirley, Villette, The Professor
1847

5. Branwell Brontë Jane Eyre as Autobiography
Ambition to be portrait painter. Studied for a time, dropped out; became train station clerk
Then tutor for wealthy family--affair w/ wife. Eliz. Gaskell thinks the wife initiated it.
Never able to hold steady job. Disappointment to whole family.
Also wrote some poetry.
Branwell’s painting of Emily, Charlotte, and Anne
Branwell’s painting of Emily

6. Angria Box of soldiers given to Branwell (1826 )
Jane Eyre as Autobiography
Angria
Map of Angria, drawn by Branwell
Box of soldiers given to Branwell (1826 )
Imaginary African world with extensive stories: Glass Town  Angria
Obsession “Farewell to Angria”
Charlotte and Branwell
Imaginary African kingdom
(Emily and Anne had a different kingdom: Gondal)
Crisis when Charlotte left for Roe Head School
Worried about fate of heroine, left to Branwell
Slipped into imaginary world at breaks;
wrote with eyes closed--trancelike: "Roe Head Journals"
Realized seriously obsessed--guilt
"Farewell to Angria" (1839) p. 425 Norton

7. Reading at the Window Seat: Bewick's History of British Birds (1804)
Jane Eyre as Autobiography
Reading at the Window Seat: Bewick's History of British Birds (1804)
window seat behind curtain w/book
metaphoric setting of private world of imagination and alternative window on reality
sea-fowl, solitary rocks on sea, austere arctic coasts
"The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him I passed over quickly: it was an object of terror Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting . . ." (6-7)
Charlotte Bronte copied some of the pictures from the book, in particular, the thief and fiend and the cormorant on the rock.

8. Education Clergy Daughter’s School, Cowan Bridge Roe Head School
Jane Eyre as Autobiography
Education
Clergy Daughter’s School, Cowan Bridge
Roe Head School
 Lowood School in Jane Eyre
Cowan school model for Lowood in JE
4 oldest daughters enrolled at Cowan in
In one year Maria and Elizabeth became sick, went home, died.
Charlotte, Emily brought home
Maria = model for Helen Burnes at Lowood School in JE
1831 (age 15): Charlotte to Roe School for 1 year, returned in 1835 as governess while sisters Emily, Ann pupils there.
1838: Charlotte left --> governess for wealthy family (Sidgewicks) 3 months; Whites for 9 months
3 sisters tried to open school in Haworth--no applicants

9. Jane Eyre and the Fairy-Tale Plot
Cinderella--Poor girl with heart of gold oppressed by wicked stepmother and stepsisters gets her chance to meet a Prince and prove her superiority, but not without serious obstacles along the way.
Early chapters lives w/ Reeds (father's sister's family)
Obnoxious children ~ step-siblings

10. Jane Eyre and the Fairy-Tale Plot
Beauty and the Beast?

11. Bluebeard
“I lingered in the long passage to which this [staircase from attic] led, separating the front and back rooms of the third story: narrow, low, and dim, with only one little window at the far end, and looking, with its two rows of small black doors all shut, like a corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle” (91 Norton)
In Charles Perrault's fairy tale, Bluebeard (1695), Bluebeard tells his young bride before he goes away on business not to unlock the door of one particular room in the castle.
Scene from Bela Bartok’s opera: Bluebeard’s Castle

12. Jane as Otherworldly Sprite
Mrs. Reed (22)
Rochester (104, passim)
When is Jane referred to as an otherworldly creature capable of working magic?
(narrator) Mrs. Reed "gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child or fiend" (23) after "something spoke out of [her] over which [she] had no control" (22).
Rochester, in first tea together after his fall.Enhanced by her having no parents:
“No wonder you have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet. Who are your parents?” (104)
Titania’s Awakening by Charles Sims

13. “Poor Orphan Child” What do you remember about this song?
Was sung by Bessie while Jane recuperating from red room trauma
Original poem by Bronte for this book
what is major theme? God will look out for the orphan while no one else will.
Other orphans in fairy tales and fantasy?
The Little Matchstick Girl, Snow White, Harry Potter, Xeno
"Many well-known fairy stories share a common format: a forlorn, orphaned young person, cast out from his or her former home, after various trials and tribulations is rescued and united with a loved one -- a parent or royal personage. Cinderella serves as a good model: the orphaned child is trapped and bullied by her wicked stepmother and ugly stepsisters, meaning that the human soul is estranged from its spiritual nature or "father in heaven" and comes under the unpleasant control and influence of the lower side of nature. These are not her natural blood relatives, suggesting that the human soul rightly belongs to its better side. Dislodged from its proper status, the soul struggles to recover its legitimate state. By purity and virtue it gains the support and help of its fairy godmother, the spiritual soul. Many tales use the godmother and giver of gifts to represent the soul's finer qualities unfolded through merit." "The DNA of Fairy Tales: Their Origin and Meaning" By Renee Hall

14. Jane Eyre and the Romance/ Marriage Plot
“Once upon a time, the end, the rightful end, of women in novel was social—successful courtship, marriage—or judgmental of her sexual and social failure—death.” Rachel DuPlessis

15. Jane Eyre and the Bildung Plot
a.k.a. Quest Plot
Bildungsroman: growing up story; a novel dealing with the growth and education of the protagonist
Typically a male hero, on a journey toward self-realization/independence
Often orphaned or presented with other challenges
e.g., Dickens’ Great Expectations, David Copperfield
Bildung story special interest of post-Romantic world
"The child makes the man"
1. Interest and respect for children
2. Influence of theory of evolution and application to individual growth and development
Also a new sense in 19th century of "self-culture"--continuing development into adulthood based on life choices

16. Marriage Plot vs. Bildung Plot
Contradictory contemporary views:
19th c. women’s fiction typically ends in the female protagonist’s setting aside the bildung plot by either getting married or dying. (Rachel DuPlessis)
19th c. women’s fiction often shows that through marriage, women and men develop individually by merging of female and male spheres and gender roles. (Chris R. Vanden Bossche)
Pride & Prejudice, Emma, Little Women, Wuthering Heights, Return of the Native, Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss, etc. (2 heroines already married, die anyway: Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary)
Only when women had the legal right and the economic resources to forgo marriage, could they work seriously on personal quests that did not involve marriage-inheritance, divorce, property, birth control, etc. and "write beyond the romantic ending" (4)
(DuPlessis 4)
A feminist assumption that self-actualization cannot take place in relationship
But JE shows importance of love AND independence in woman's life.

17. Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot
“Dark Romanticism”
Mystery
Haunted castle or house
Dreaming and nightmares
Doppelgänger or alter ego
Physical imprisonment
Psychological entrapment and helplessness
Involvement of the supernatural
Psychology of horror and/or terror
Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare, 1781

18. Mystery Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot Mystery elements?
Jane shares her questions with reader:
Why did Rochester become so upset when looking at the manor? (124)
"What mysterious cause withheld [Rochester] from accusing [Grace Poole]" following bed fire? (132) Have she and Rochester shared a past relationship?
"Why had he enjoined [Jane] too, to secrecy?" (132)
How can Grace Poole be so composed when talking about the fire? Why does she go around laughing at night?

19. Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot
The Byronic Hero
Named for Lord Byron, flamboyant poet turn of 19th c.
Became the great heart throb of the day.
Lord Byron by Richard Westall, 1813
Byron in Albanian attire by Thomas Phillips
A.K.A. Villain-Hero: Aristocratic, charming, moody, solitary, secretive, intelligent, cynical, and emotionally wounded. Irresistable to women--relationships destructive.

20. Byronic heroes of Brontë sisters
Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot
Byronic heroes of Brontë sisters
1. Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights film, 1970
2. Olivier as Heathcliff 1939
3. Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff, 1992
4. Orson Wells as Rochester in JE 1944 (w/Jane Fontaine)
5. William Hurt as Rochester in Zeffirelli's 1995 JE (w/ Charlotte Gainsbourg)
6. A&E Rochester (Ciaran "kee-ran" Hinds), 1997 (w/Samantha Morton)

21. The Distressed Heroine
Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot
The Distressed Heroine
“Female Gothic”
Female protagonist is pursued and persecuted by a villainous patriarchal figure in unfamiliar settings and terrifying landscape.
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Lady Macbeth by Henry Fuseli 1784

22. Architecture of the Mind
Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot
Architecture of the Mind
Gothic heroines explore their unknown inner selves as they wander through the mysterious house
Thornfield, manorial seat of Rochesters becomes physical metaphor for Jane's mind.
Other famous haunted houses with psychological implications:
Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher"
Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights"--the estate of Earnshaws
Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey" (spoof)
Daphne du Maurier's Manderley in "Rebecca"
CB visited North Lees Hal in Derbyshirel in her inspiration for Thronfield
Home of the Eyres at time of her visit
North Lees Hall, c. 1590

23. The Tragedy of the Brontës
Branwell--addiction to alcohol and opium
1848: Family caught cold/flu leading to 3 deaths
Branwell and Emily in 1848; Anne in 1849.
1854: Charlotte married Rev. A.B. Nicholls and died same year (pregnant)
cause of deaths disputed: influenza, tuberculosis (consumption)
Charlotte romance w/married professor Heger (at Pensionnat Heger) when she and Emily had gone to Brussels to study languages in preparation for starting their own school
No evidence of romantic attachment to Nicholls.
Charlotte's death disputed as pregnancy toxemia, self-induced dehydration, tuberculosis

24. Acknowledgements
Bossche, Chris R. Vanden. “Moving Out: Adolescence.” In A Companion toVictorian Literature and Culture. Ed. Herbert Tucker. Malden, Mass: Blackwell, (82-96)
DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Writing Beyond the Ending:Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers. Blomington: Indiana UP, 1985.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Life of Charlotte Bronte, London: Smith, Elder, 1857.
Glossary of Gothic Terms at Georgia Southern University’s Department of English and Philosophy:
Hall, Renee. "The DNA of Fairy Tales: Their Origin and Meaning"
Images:
Angria map and woodcut showing school:
Bewick’s birds:
Albanian Byron by Thomas Phillips, 1835:
Charlotte Brontë, from the portrait by George Richmond. BBC Hulton Picture Library. Chalk:
Emily Bronte by Branwell Bronte:
Henry Fuseli paintings:

25. Acknowledgements, cont.
Jane Eyre, 1996 film stills:
and
Lord Byron at age 25 (1813 portrait by Richard Westall):
North Lees Hall, photo:
Portrait by Branwell Brontë of his sisters, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte (c. 1834):
Titania’s Awakening by Charles Sims ( )

26. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre