Jane Eyre: An Autobiography

Charlotte Brontë was born in 1816 in Yorkshire. Her father was an Anglican clergyman who was very strict with his 6 children. After his wife and two of his children died, an aunt helped him raise his three daughters Charlotte, Anne, Emily and his son Branwell. Charlotte and Emily were sent to Clergy Daughters' school in Lancashire. It was not a pleasant place for the girls and may have inspired Charlotte when she imagined the Lowood Institution in her novel Jane Eyre. The girls went back home after a year and started writing romantic stories and reading them to each other. In 1831, Charlotte was sent to another school where she made some long-lasting friends. She went back home for a short period before returning to her school as a teacher. Charlotte refused two marriage proposals and so had to start working again to support herself and help her family. She became a governess and then planned on opening a school with one of her sisters. Their aunt agreed to finance this project. The two sisters went to Belgium to improve their French and learn some German with a man named Héger. Charlotte became quite fond of him but he was married and did not encourage her. She went back home but her school project failed.

The three sisters then realised they had all been writing and in 1846 published a volume of poetry under a pseudonym. After that, they tried to have their novels published : Anne's Agnes Grey, Emily's Wuthering Heights were accepted for publication but Charlotte's The Professor was refused. She quickly finished another novel Jane Eyre : An Autobiography. It came out in 1847 and was an immediate success. Of course, all three sisters published under pseudonyms because in Charlotte's own words : "we did not like to declare ourselves women because – without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine' – we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice".

However, the years that followed were extremely difficult : Charlotte's brother Branwell died in September 1848, Emily in December and Anne in May 1849. 

Charlotte continued writing and became acquainted with other writers : notably William Makepeace Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote the very first biography of Charlotte Brontë. A critic in The Guardian describes this book as " a loving defence of the value and power of women’s writing; […] revolutionary […] a testament to the constraints placed on female writers and the ways they have found to move beyond them."

Charlotte dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre to Thackeray : " Finally, I have alluded to Mr. Thackeray, because to him—if he will accept the tribute of a total stranger—I have dedicated this second edition of Jane Eyre." In a letter to a friend, Thackeray wrote : " I don't know why I tell you this but that I have been exceedingly moved & pleased by Jane Eyre."

Charlotte married her father's curate in 1854 and died in 1855.

VOCABULARY

clergyman : ecclésiastique
to raise : élever
long-lasting : de longue durée
governess : gouvernante
to improve : améliorer
to be fond of : éprouver de l'affection pour
to fail : échouer
Wuthering Heights : Les Hauts de Hurlevent
liable : susceptible
to be looked on with prejudice : être victime de préjugés
to become acquainted with : faire la connaissance de
notably : notamment
constraints : contraintes
to move beyond : dépasser
to allude : faire allusion
tribute : hommage
a stranger : un(e) inconnu(e)
exceedingly : extrèmement
moved : ému
curate : vicaire

At the beginning of the novel, the main character and narrator is ten-years old. Her parents have died of typhus so she is an orphan and therefore has to live with her uncle and his family. On the very first page, the reader realises that Jane is ostracised by the relatives who are supposed to look after her. She describes her aunt, surrounded by her children, whom she dotes on but : " Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, ‘She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance". 

Jane ends up being sent to a boarding school "Lowood Institution", which is a "charity school" for orphans. Jane is miserable there, she "felt ready to perish with cold" and there is never enough food so she is constantly hungry. Pupils who do not abide by the rules are flogged. Only one person is kind to Jane and the girls : Miss Temple, the superintendent. However after several pupils die, the school "improved, became in time a truly useful and noble institution. I remained an inmate of its walls, after its regeneration, for eight years: six as pupil, and two as teacher; and in both capacities I bear my testimony to its value and importance."

After two years as a teacher there, Jane leaves Lowood to work as a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she meets her handsome employer Edward Rochester. She has been hired to look after Rochester's daughter Adèle, whose mother was one of Rochester's mistresses. Jane falls in love with him : "And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader: gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see." Eventually Rochester proposes to Jane, who accepts of course. However on their wedding day, Jane finds out that he is already married and so she leaves his house.

She is taken in by a kind family, who, it turns out, are related to her. One of them, St John wants to marry her but Jane returns to Thornfield. The whole place has burnt down, Rochester's wife has died and he has become blind. Jane and Rochester marry, his eyesight improves and they have a son. Finally, as Jane herself says "My Edward and I, then, are happy"

Quotations about Jane Eyre :

"The novel also notably blended diverse genres. Jane’s choice between sexual need and ethical duty belongs very firmly to the mode of moral realism. However, her close escape from a bigamous marriage and the fiery death of Bertha are part of the Gothic tradition." (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Professor Shuttleworth wrote that : " Jane Eyre unsettled views as to how women should act and behave, suggesting, […], almost an overthrowing of social order. […], Jane demands equality and respect. ‘Do you think’, she demands of Rochester, ‘I am an automaton? – a machine without feelings?"

A critic in The Guardian wrote that : " There are three principal elements to Brontë's magic. First, the novel is cast, from the title page, as "an autobiography". This is a convention derived from Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. But the adventure offered by the author is an interior one. Jane Eyre portrays the urgent quest of its narrator for an identity".

VOCABULARY

orphan : orpheline
to ostracise : rejeter
relatives : parents, membres de la famille
to dote on : adorer
to end up : finir par
surrounded : entouré
to perish : périr
to abide by : respecter
to flog : fouetter
ugly : laid
to hire : engager
genial : agréable
to belong : appartenir
to propose : demander en mariage
to turn out : se révéler
to be related : être apparentés
eyesight : vue
to blend : mélanger
to belong : appartenir
to unsettle : déranger
to behave : se comporter
to overthrow : renverser
to demand : exiger
cast : présenté
derived from : tiré de
to portray : dépeindre
quest : quête