The Rebellious Attitude of Jane Eyre - Book Report/Review Example

The Rebellious Attitude of Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre and many say it is an autobiographical sketch of her. In fact, she wrote a book called Jane Eyre: An Autobiography in 1850 under her pseudonym, Currer Bell. She wrote the novel because she wanted to show a woman who could overcome difficult situations. Similar to Jane, Charlotte Bronte was a woman who wanted to be independent. She wrote so that she could support herself and her younger sisters. (C.D. Merriman 2007). Charlotte was born in 1816 and it was during the Victorian Era. She was born in Thornton, England which was the background for the first part of her novel, Jane Eyre. Many of Janes experiences happened in the village where Charlotte grew up. She and her sisters used the village situations to write their stories. At one point in her early life, Charlotte also became a governess but she did not like what she had to do so she left (C.D. Merriman 2007). These experiences were the backdrop for what would become one of her most important novels and many people still continue to read this classic today. One of the issues that strike many critics is the fact that Jane Eyre was rebellious and did not allow others to tell her what to do. JANES EARLY YEARS Jane Eyre was a troubled woman in her early years because she went through many situations that caused her pain. In the beginning she lived at Gateshead House which was a place that she was living with her uncles widow and her children. These Reed children were difficult for Jane and she did not fit in with them. She was constantly doing something that Mrs. Reed thought was not appropriate for a young lady. Jane gets into trouble because she is accused of lying and she continues to be mistreated in this house. After awhile, Mrs. Reed gets tired of her and sends her to Lowood, a boarding school for poor children and she is given to a man named Mr. Brocklehurst. This place is not a better place to live but she finds a good friend in a girl named Helen. Lowood also is a place where many people get sick from typhus which Jane is able to survive. But, her friend Helen is not so lucky and she dies of tuberculosis. These sad situations continue throughout Janes life until at the end of the novel, she finds love and wealth. It seems that Janes experiences throughout her childhood are shaping her life later on. Throughout the book many people die or leave her and it is difficult to understand why she is able to deal with these situations. Some of the critics say it is becomes she generally has a rebellious attitude and it seems to be true because she does not let anything stand in her way. JANE IS A GOVERNESS At the school, Jane is trained to be a governess and she finally gets a job working for Mr. Rochester, who lives at Thornhill. She has one child to look after named Adele and there are many strange things that happen in the house. Jane eventually thinks she is in love with Mr. Rochester who wants to marry her but there is only one problem -- he is already married and the woman is kept in the attic because she went mad after he married her. Because she is angry and upset, Jane leaves and becomes a beggar in the street until another family finds her and helps her. JANES REBELLIOUS NATURE AND ATTITUDE The story of Jane Eyre is one that is about a lot of loss. She is considered by many people to be rebellious because she was a different type of woman than the time period was showing. In the Victorian Age, women were supposed to be very quiet and do what their husbands said. They were not allowed to have property of any kind and the only wealth they had was because of their husband (Ilana Miller 2009). Also, Jane was rebellious in the fact that she was a single women and people other women looked down on women who were single. The entire idea for women was that they were supposed to find a man to marry and have many children (Ilana Miller 2009). Jane did not fall into that category until the very end of the book and she took care of herself. Elizabeth Rigby argues that Jane had a rebellious nature all her life. "There is a hardness in her infantine earnestness and a spiteful precocity in her reasoning…"(82). This writer has to admit that this sentence was difficult to understand until I looked up some of the words. This sentence means that she already had the skills as she was growing up to be independent at an early age. I was not sure exactly what this meant but I think it is saying that she was already rebellious as a small girl because of the situations she had to live with as she was growing up. Jane also never lets anything or anyone get in her way. She is shown as having a free spirit by many critics. Maria Lamonaca argued that one of the reasons that Jane was such a free spirit was because of her own religious convictions: Janes insistence upon her spiritual and moral integrity enables a stinging critique of societys expectations for women. Janes religious convictions are presented as the primary force behind her resistance to conventional female subject positions (246). During the Victorian Era religion was very important to everyone and the way that women were supposed to act was based on religious and moral principles (Miller 2009). Jane was also rebellious in the way she worked with men. She never allowed men to control her. Lamonaca states that: Janes resistance to male control … is vexed by the fact that both Rochester and St. John cloak their agendas in religious language that they both presume that their desire to control Jane is Gods will (247). This shows more of Janes rebellious attitude and nature and creates an understanding that she is not the type of woman who is typical of other Victorian women. She is not willing to create a life with a man who is going to make her be the typical wife and mother. Chris R. Vande Bossche argues that many critics say that she starts out in the book as a "angry narrator" and then she softens towards the rest of the book; in the end she gets married and has children but she also has her own money. Bossche states that Jane Eyres "heroine rebels against social exclusion yet ultimately does not seek to overturn the existing social order … " (46). To me this meant that Jane just wanted to find a space for herself in the world, and that she did not want to change the way the world was towards women. Jane also stays away from wealth because she is not married and at one point she lives in poverty because she does not want to be controlled by Mr. Rochester. She would rather leave his house and live on the street than be mistreated by him. Jane seems to be a very sad women for the first half of the book because of all the situations that happened to her. Anyone reading the book could see what that was, but she still kept going. Lorna Ellis reports that Jane is also able to gain her own economic independence when her uncle John left her money which is not something that happened in this time period. She does share her money with St. John and others in the family because they are her cousins. What is interesting is that Jane eventually has power over her husband because she marries Mr. Rochester and he is blind at the time of their marriage (138). Jane has shown that she is able to get through the challenges in her life and still become married and have a family. In one sense, this gave the reader a way to relate to all of Janes trials by showing that a person can go through a lot of situations and still come out on top at the end. Another way that Jane is able to show rebellion, though she does not understand at the time that this is what it is, when she is with the Reeds in the beginning. She is expected to act like a girl of her age and this does not happen because she is not that type of girl. Ellis suggests, "Janes suffering is due to her inability to fit in with the Reed children and to fit Mrs. Reeds expectations of what a child should be like" (142). This sets the stage for Jane to continue to be rebellious. Frederick L. Ashe has a different idea about Jane and states that although many critics say she is rebellious, he sees her as pessimistic in the beginning and then sees her change to be optimistic in the future. He states that readers have to take into account that Jane spent the first ten years of her life being mistreated and then the next eight with people who humiliate her. These situations carved her into a person who had a "tenacious pessimism concerning her prospects for happiness" (121) and she has to combat this pessimism as she gets older; she finally wins over it in the end. CONCLUSION The story of Jane Eyre seems to be a complicated one in some respects and people are able to read many things into the story. I think that critics sometimes have a lot to say but I am not sure whether they are right or wrong about what they see. I did see that Jane Eyre was a rebellious woman for her time and I believe that that is what helped her survive all the cruelty that she was given in the first half of the book. Most people like to see someone overcome the bad things that happen in their lives and this was one of the things that made Jane Eyre a good book to read although sometimes it was difficult to understand. Works Cited Ashe, Frederick. "Jane Eyre: The Quest for Optimism". Novels for Students. 4. 1998. 121-130. Literature Research Center. 21 08 2009, Gale Document Number: GALE H1420011420. Ellis, Lorne. "Jane Eyre and the Self-Constructed Heroine." Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism. 152, 138-161. Literature Research Center. 21 08 2009, Gale Document Number: GALE H1420065086. Lamonaka, Maria. "Janes Crown of Thorns: Feminism and Christianity in Jane Eyre. Studies of the Novel. 34.3. 21 08 2009. Literature Research Center. 21 08 2009,Gale Document Number: GALE|A94130197 Merriman, C.D. "Charlotte Bronte". 21 08 2009. The Literature Network, 2007. . Rigby, Elizabeth. "Review of Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre. Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism. 1983. 82-99. 08 20 2009. Literature Research Center, Document Number: GALE H1420011353. Vanden Bossche, Chris. R. "What Did Jane Eyre Do? Ideology, Agency, Class and the Novel". Narrative. 13.1, 2005. Gale Literature Resource Center. Gale Document Number: GALE: A128062437. Read More