Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre, Dispense di Inglese

Scarica Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre e più Dispense in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! CHARLOTTE BRONTE Jane Eyre The novel tells the story of Jane Eyre, an orphan girl raised by her uncles. She is bullied by her cousins and mistreated by her aunt. The only one who loves her is her uncle, who unfortunately dies prematurely. Jane’s aunt therefore sends her to a sort of college for orphan girls. Jane has to work and make a lot of sacrifices, she has to grow fast, facing a difficult environment. In particular, the death of her best friend for tuberculosis due to the poor hygienic conditions of the college, hurts her a lot. However, she continues her studies and decides to become a teacher. As an independent woman, she finds a job at Thornfield Hall as a tutor for Mr Rochester’s child, Adele. Jane works very well at Thornfield Hall untilMr Rochester’s arrival: he is an arrogant man but he immediately falls in love with her. Nevertheless, he is secretly already married to Bertha Mason, a woman who has become mad and kept locked in the castle. Jane runs away, deeply disappointed and decides to live with an ecclesiastical and her sisters. He proposes to her and then asks her to go on amission to India together but Jane refuses the proposal, because she thinks he is doing it out of pity. Jane goes back to Thornfield Hall and finds a devastated setting : the castle was burned down by a fire, after which Bertha had died andMr Rochester had lost sight. Jane and Mr Rochester are at last confined to the wedding and the man partially regains sight again. Main characters ✔Jane Eyre The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Jane is an intelligent, honest, young girl forced to contend with oppression, inequality, and hardship. Although she meets with a series of individuals who threaten her autonomy, Jane repeatedly succeeds at asserting herself and maintains her principles of justice, human dignity, andmorality. She also values intellectual and emotional fulfilment. Her strong belief in gender and social equality challenges the Victorian prejudices against women and the poor. → Jane Eyre is the eponymous. She is the main character of the novel and also the narrator, indeed all the other characters are seen through her eyes and we can really understand the development of her emotions. ✔Edward Rochester Jane’s employer and the master of Thornfield, Rochester is a wealthy, passionate man with a dark secret that provides much of the novel’s suspense. Rochester is unconventional, ready to set aside polite manners, propriety, and consideration of social class in order to interact with Jane frankly and directly. He is rash and impetuous and has spent much of his adult life roaming about Europe in an attempt to avoid the consequences of his youthful indiscretions. His problems are partly the result of his own recklessness, but he is a sympathetic figure because he has suffered for so long as a result of his early marriage to Bertha ✔St. John Rivers Along with his sisters, Mary and Diana, St. John serves as Jane’s benefactor after she runs away from Thornfield, giving her food and shelter. The minister at Morton, St. John is cold, reserved, and often controlling in his interactions with others. Because he is entirely alienated from his feelings and devoted solely to an austere ambition, St. John serves as a foil to Edward Rochester. ✔Mrs. Reed is Jane’s cruel aunt, who raises her at Gateshead Hall until Jane is sent away to school at age ten. Later in her life, Jane attempts reconciliation with her aunt, but the old woman continues to resent her because her husband had always loved Jane more than his own children. ✔Helen Burns Helen Burns is Jane’s close friend at the Lowood School. She endures her miserable life there with a passive dignity that Jane cannot understand. Helen dies in Jane's arms. ✔Bertha Mason Rochester’s clandestine wife, Bertha Mason is a formerly beautiful and wealthy Creole woman who has become insane, violent, and bestial. She lives locked in a secret room on the third story of Thornfield and is guarded by Grace Poole, whose occasional bouts of inebriation sometimes enables Bertha to escape. Bertha eventually burns down Thornfield, plunging to her death in the flames. ✔Mr. Brocklehurst The cruel, hypocritical master of the Lowood School, Mr. Brocklehurst preaches a doctrine of privation, while stealing from the school to support his luxurious lifestyle. After a typhus epidemic sweeps Lowood, Brocklehurst’s shifty and dishonest practices are brought to light and he is publicly discredited. ✔HOW VICTORIAN SOCIETY IS REFLECTED IN JANE EYRE→ Throughout Jane Eyre, the protagonist Jane occupies an ambiguous class position. She travels the entire spectrum of class status from homeless vagabond to upper class married woman. Even before birth, her class status was somewhat ambiguous, in fact her parents came from two different social classes. Even when she grows up Jane's class status remains low, as she travels to study at the boarding school Lowood. → working class girl.→ her education is able to propel her up into the lower middle class when she accepts a job as governess at the Thornfield estate ✔RELIGION→Religion is the perfect example of the lack of morality that we find in Jane Eyre, we find a sort of duality in this. On the one hand religion is described as the last of Jane’s comforts, on the other hand religion is put under negative light.Morality can be seen also through different characters: Mr. Brocklehurst embodies the hypocrisy of misguided religion. Rather than being kind to Jane as a true Christian would be to a child, Brocklehurst is extremely judgmental and continues the cycle of injustice and dehumanisation that has characterised Jane’s childhood. Rather than offering forgiveness to Jane, he commands all the girls at Lowood School to avoid her. Helen Burns is the first example in which religion is applied correctly in order to achieve a positive effect. Years later, as Mrs. Reed lays dying, Jane puts this advice to use: she fully forgives Mrs. Reed for her abuse and attempts to set her aunt at ease. Though it’s too late for Mrs. Reed to change her ways, Jane seems to believe that she did the right thing. In the novel Charlotte Bronte also portrayed the increasing importance of the feminine role and independence by giving typical feminist traits to many characters Key Moments Jane Eyre →Meeting Mr. Rochester : Jane met Mr. Rochester on the ice on the road leading to Thornfield Hall. Their encounter immediately defied the role of women as Mr. Rochester needed Jane's help because he sprained his ankle and couldn't get back on his horse without her aid. This encounter changed Jane as she had unwittingly met and helped her future employer. Their relationship was rocky from the start; however, she was able to grow from it as MR treated her as an equal, and he ended up becoming the first person she ever loved in her life. The relationship between the two, allowed them to grow as they learned how to treat people they cared about and how to deal with their flaws as well as the separation of class. →Finding out Mr. Rochester was married : When Jane finds out that Mr. Rochester is married to a madwoman named Bertha who lives in the attic, she is able to keep a calm air about her and excuse herself to think over her options. She learned that not everyone is who they say they are, and Jane makes the conscious decision to leave Mr. Rochester of her own accord due to her individuality and new found faith in herself. →Leaving Thornfield : Jane grows as a person when she leaves Thornfield because she has the courage to do what she believes to be right even though it means leaving the only person she has ever loved. She knows that in her heart it is the right decision to make, so she overcomes the decision to succumb to Mr. Rochester's wishes and makes her own decision to