As we pass through Jane's formative years and her subsequent blossoming at Thornfield Hall, I want you to consider how far Jane has come. What defines her as an individual? Basically, who is she? You can also compare her to Rochester if you want, to look for similarities and differences.
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Jane is an individual in general, before her incidents in Thornfield. You can define her as someone in the search of a life worth living and companionship. Referred from her own mouth afterwards acquiring the knowledge of her inherited fortune, “ ‘…cannot at all imagine the craving I have for fraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home, I never had brothers or sisters; I must and will have them now: you are not reluctant to admit me and own me, are you?’”
Jane is a modern woman with her own views and passions about life. She is morally upright, obviously after her departure from Thornfield. Her religious views challenge Victorian, Anglican views of the English. The views consist of Nature and spirituality being her God, a rather romantic trait of hers. She usually finds the strength to speak her mind, especially when regarding the feelings and emotions of herself and others.
While not very ambitious, Jane cannot live in the situation that doesn’t truly make her worthwhile. In Lowood, only the presence of her mentor, Temple, kept her there. Thornfield was purely for the love of Mr. Rochester and affection towards Adele and Fairfax. And so far, Jane has no intentions of leaving Morton after finding her true family. Also, we can refer this back to her constant search for love and understanding.
Her similarities to Rochester challenge his actions. She has suffered a life of no satisfaction, cruelty, and lost. While Rochester has experienced more in his life, he seemed readily jaded until he met Jane. Jane still has hopes for life, even if the reasons might be her age difference. One cannot imagine though Jane Eyre falling into temptation and sin in comparison to Rochester who will do just about anything to satisfy himself. They are both in a search of something more and they found that in each other, but Jane has the mental strength to restrain from what she promised to her God and herself as purely wrong (temptation).
Jane is all the above, a woman of great strength, independence, and love. What she lacks in beauty, she has in personality and courage.
Throughout the bildungs Jane’s life, we have seen her go from a fiery, immature little girl to a still fiery, independent young adult. Throughout every stage of her life we have seen some form of maturity and growth; from student to teacher, governess to fiancé, and now, beggar to proud-owner-of-one-thousand pounds. In Jane’s current situation, we do learn a little about the things she yearns for by means of her showing us her discontent: “I felt desolate to a degree. I felt – yes, idiot that I am – I felt degraded… I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence.” We know that she seeks some sort of self-worth. It is important, in my opinion, to note that Jane’s inner-flame seems to be waning. She lets herself get stuck in this place which she perceives to be a rut. She even says that “Much enjoyment I do not expect in the life opening before me.” All these comments are made right after she assumes position as mistress of the school.
It is also interesting that a couple of comments are made regarding Jane’s previous vocation, once by Miss Oliver, saying that she is too good for the position of a teacher at a charity school, she could easily be a governess to a rich family, and once before that when it is revealed that her cousins are also governesses. It might just turn out that an Eyre family trait is that of teaching/preaching to other people. By learning about her family we learn a bit more about her personality as we see how the inevitable similarities exist in all families.
All in all, I think that Jane is an independent, plain girl who, although having shared a vast part of her formation with the reader, is still an unstable teenager. Her adolescent thirst for enjoyment is still evident in her actions; her imprudent, sometimes rash actions still popping up from time to time. We may need a bit more time before we can truly uncover who Jane Eyre is and what exactly is going through her mind.
I just read what Basia posted and I agree with her comment on Jane being on the search for a life worth living. She is always ready to learn more, such as at the hands of Diana, and have some sort of value. She is one of those people whose personalities seem to be too great for their bird-like, elfish bodies. It is also interesting that pretty people like Miss Oliver are referred to as fairies while the not so appealing-to-the-eyes are elves.
Jane’s personality is an odd mixture of modern thinking and traditional values. As we soon discover, Jane is determined to become an individual, no matter what her circumstances are, but at the same time she aspires to have a familiar background that provides her with safety and stability. These traditional needs were reflected when she met the Rivers siblings, and everything about them screamed “home” to Jane, as this passage states: Thought fitted thought; opinion met opinion: we coincided, in short, perfectly.” (pg. 403). Jane’s progressive ideas were illustrated as well in her need of standing on her own two feet without the help of anybody else, as this quote explains: “…it was shelter and I wanted a safe asylum: it was plodding –but then, compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was independent…” (pg 408). Jane felt she must not be dependant of anyone, and this was her main motivation for every decision she had made during her life (leaving Gateshead and Lowood, an later on, Thornfield Hall).
Jane’s character is foiled in that of Mr. Rivers’ as well. Both of them put their values and religion foremost. Neither of them has acquired what they really want in Earth so that they may have what they want in their afterlives. Both could have obtained their desires and yield to temptation, but they consider that obtaining heaven is more important, as Mr. Rivers expressed himself: “ My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven? (...) Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than the blood in my veins. It is what I have to look forward to, and to live for.” (pg 431). Their common troubles actually brought them together before they even knew they were related.
I agree with both Andres and Bayzha, in the sense that Jane is looking for something more in her life. She wants to grow up and become whoever she is supposed to be. Jane also aspires for the “whole package” (an independent life surrounded by family and traditions), and she finally seems to get it at the end of chapter 33, but love is still missing to complete her ideal. Hopefully she'll be able to obtain it at the end.
Jane, in her childhood, was a very headstrong child. She didn't conform with the situation she was living, as she new that there could be better things for her, which made her want to leave her aunt's side. Once she finally arrives at Lowood, she begins to change morally due to the strong influence of Helen. Though she mentions that she would never be able to act like her, she is still changed after her death into a more placid and more hardworking person, striving to do her best to earn trust and warmth.
By the end of her stay at Lowood, she is already a young woman with her own ideals about society and what's wrong and right, evidently shown when she leaves Rochester. While she was at Thornfield, she began her maturing through painful moments to a responsible adult (at least in her own eyes). Even though it was because of her own misconception of what "laws" are; i.e.: "I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man". She is obviously confused, since it is not her nature to not question that kind of authority, being, to me, such an outrageous and stupid law. (i still believe she's an idiot for leaving Rochester even after having everything been explained to her). Even so, it shows just how much she is changed, because at the very least, she is strong willed and can stay true to herself.
As Andrew quoted "I felt desolate to a degree. I felt – yes, idiot that I am – I felt degraded… I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence.” She is desolate, as in her young days, when she was only a little girl, an orphan: a reason to make the development of her character more drastic due to her emotional background. She learned to avoid this horrible feeling by learning to make friendships such as Helen and Mrs. Temple, who taught her live life as it came and always expect for the best to come. She was to study and teach all her life until an opportunity came to her life, that is, to be governess of Adele in Thornfield Hall.
Her existence before becoming what she was then, Became the ignition of her fire, that is, her development as a person and her escape from a normal life. To me, Jane is simply a woman who know better that the rest of humans around her, just like Elizabeth, where I feel that either Bronte o Jane Austen used the other's novel as an inspiration, because their protagonists are much alike: independent woman who know better and know what they want, but torture themselves by believing everything their mind's eye projects, whether it's about their future or about their love, they always struggle to find answers to questions because they make such deep analysis out of everything, the make conclusions based on speculation and pessimistic ideas that lead into degradation or depression to their own character. An example of this kind of conclusion would be Jane’s opinion on Miss Ingram, who she constantly believes that will marry Mr. Rochester, but also denies it from being true, wasting her time and punishing herself by thinking such things. Both Jane and Lizz depict men and women as equal, as for Jane, she mentions it while she thinks in the third story balcony.
“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”
That’s the main theme in the novel, although with Elizabeth, it’s emphasized on marriage, in this novel, marriage is only a phase of her life. Jane feels degraded as mentioned in quote 1, because she feels she has been “condemned, laugh at, and stepped on” by Rochester and the rest of the people who knew that Rochester was still married.
The 2nd quote defines Jane, everything mentioned in that paragraph is Jane’s true identity, and it’s what make her to look ahead everyday and to have hope for a better tomorrow. She is a woman who shows feminism to its whole potential and wants to make a difference, she wants to have the same conditions men have, and she wants action in her life because she thinks as Plato did “The unexamined life is not worth living” and so she will live her life at its best even if there are endless obstacles to get there.
Jane has tried to be better throughout her life, first she left her aunt to move to Lowood in search of a better life, then left to become a governess in which she makes more of herself, but decides to leave when she follows what is morally right after finding out Rochester had another wife. Now that she was living with the Rivers she was not comfortable at first because the jobs she would get were not what she wanted, but decided to stay there. When she found out she had a family and divided her inheritance among all, it shows that she has values and was looking for what she had never had: a family. Jane Eyre had never had the opportunity to live as a family and when she feels like "at home", she is finally happy.
Jane always stands up for what she believes is right even though it goes against her desires. When she left Rochester the day of their wedding because he had another wife said much about her. She was sacrificing her happiness to do what was right and she did indeed love him and we find this when she said " “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation ." This proves that her moral sense are much stronger than her desires to stay with Rochester. Rochester is so important in her life because he is pretty much one of the few people who have ever cared for Jane.
Jane is a character that has moved through different phases to look for that which she has not yet found. At the end of chapter 33 she has found a family, which finally gives her that sense of "home", but love and real conformity with who she is she has not found yet. Her only love had been married to a crazy woman and she left him for she believed more in her morals than in the immediate need to stay with him. Jane is trying to be better within every stage and she has in some way. She wants to find that something that makes her worth wile.
Jane is a single girls that has lived all her life in search for someone that loves her. since she was a child she has been mistreated and she has never felt the love of a family. even though she is an orphan we can see that she has really good morals, we can see this when she leaves Mr. Rochester even if she loved him so much because of his wife. one of the things she had always dreamed of was to be loved by someone and she had found it and lost it, "jane eyre, who had been an ardent expectant woman- almost a bride- was a cold, solitary girl again.
we can also she that she is a girl that respects herself and is not with anyone because of the money. i believe she truly believes in true, non interested love. when Mr Rochester does that to her she feels somewhat disappointed but she kind of expected it, she was very down to earth. then when she leaves and finds her true family we can see the joy there is in her to find some of her own family that love her, this is something that she has lacked always. when she received the fortune from her uncle we see how she is not a person interested in the money because she gives equal amount to all her family, staying only with 5000 pounds. we can see that to get a high social class is not something really important or significant for her.
After many years of struggle, Jane finally enters a place in her life where she is able to grow and develop. Thornfield becomes one of the most influential parts of her life because of that. Entering as a naïve, young governess, and emerging a saddened but more experienced Jane. Although, as previously mentioned, Jane has always been an individualistic thinker. Standing out from the crowd due to her ever questioning attitude and somewhat rebellious mind, always kept her from fitting into the mold of society. Always being slightly different from her peers, she was never able to feel completely comfortable in her surroundings. This, I believe, became her driving force to find people who loved her, that be it her family or a spouse.
“While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was not longer plain: there was hope inn its aspect and life in its color; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple.” Jane is describing her physical appearance while at Thornfield, during the time that she and Rochester are madly in love. If in a mere month or two of obtaining a feeling of belonging and of being loved she can actually change physically, this gives the idea of how much her conscious and subconscious mind desire that love.
After all she has gone through; I believe that aside from love Jane is looking for a fix to her problems. Rochester acted as her deus ex machina, the one that would magically save her from her unfixable problems. But like most “machine gods” they are too good to be true. This salvation, or escape route was pulled out from under her feet in a matter of a day. A brutal change, which pushed her to finally see things through hardened and experienced eyes. When Jane leaves Thornfield, she is not the same as the Jane who arrived that very first day. So then she heads out into the world again, with barely anything besides her person, looking for love once again.
She started the course of her life as a lonely little girl who had many sufferings in her life, from all the years she was spent in Gateshead and how her aunt and even john has treated her badly and made her life miserable. Bessie was the only one who actually made her life happier. After her radical change at her new school it seems her life will be happier and it is somehow nut still it was hard for, as in when helen died which was an important person in her live and even there she gets to know Mrs. Temple who gets along with Jane a lot. Time went by and she still looked for some meaning in her life something new even though she likes Lowood she still felt alone. At Rochester place I believe she actually found meaning to her life, it was a total new experience for her, she introduced to her life feelings of love and care. For the first time felt truly loved my a man and that made her happy. All her life she has felt homeless and know with Rochester she felt her life was perfect and she belonged to a home.“I am strangely glad to get back again to you; and wherever you are is my home—my only home.” suddenly when she realized the truth a great feeling of dissapointment, in which she felt that she didn't belong to that home anymore and left. Even when she left she never stops thinking about Rochester, he was certainly surprised by the way she acted towards the truth but it was the rigth thing to do and she even sees that in one of her dream i which her mother tells her to flee temptation. Finding this new family at Morton created a new chapter in her life, this feeling of loneliness she express throughout the book certainly is gone once she was found her cousins. She gets along with them really well and certainly at the end of chapter 33 she is happy again to have found something she has always wished for a family.
Jane is an individual seeking for something to complete her, like ligia said she is very modern for that time and that makes her different and more interesting. She has grown alot over the years in the sense of becoming someone that people care for and come to appreciate like Mary and Diana, Rochester, Bessie, etc.
Given to her childhood years, Jane is very independent and expects help up to a certain point. "Show me how to work: that is all I now ask; then let me go". She only wants what she thinks will fulfill, but has no true ambitions. As a person or a woman in that time she cares little about the money, trends, clothing, and those things which also make her stand out in the way that her plain beauty doesnt.
Jane Eyre is a woman, a lonely woman who has endured numerous sufferings through her life. To begin with, from her very first days she was destined to confront a harsh life- losing her parents, and shortly after, his uncle as well- Being then left to his aunt( that repudiated her even though she behaved fairly good compared to her own son and daughters)she became more miserable every day as she could not interact with her cousins nor aunt and was treated very harshly; besides, she lacked beauty. All her feelings and thoughts are expressed to her aunt, Mrs Reed, when Jane told her: “You think I have no feelings? And that I can do without one bit of love of kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back into the redroom.. You are deceitful”. Days after this, she was finally sent away, to an orphans school. Up til now, Jane Eyre can be described simply as a lonely, miserable girl, enduring and facing a harsh life a day at a time.
Yet life gave a new twist for her in this new fond place which would soon become her home. The school was a place were she still suffered physical pain- hunger, cold- and were she was sometimes miserable as she could not bear the mistreatment of others. But here, Jane Eyre´s life improved (or so I would say) since for the first time in her life she had a friend, a very nice one indeed, Helen. At the same time, she was nicely treated by Miss Temple. During her years here, Jane developed into being an educated and proper lady. Though misery kept interrupting her way- Helen eventually died and Jane was struck hard. Years later, Miss Temple married and left the school as well.. and Jane began to feel the “stirring of old emotions” and now she remembered that “ the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse”. She felt this world she had lived for eight years in this school was not enough. Jane Eyre became a woman who seeked liberty and a new servitude.
After advertising herself in the Herald, Jane got a job as a governess, and a new chapter in her life began. In Thornfield, she was gladly and gently received by everyone in the house and soon began to teach a young girl named Adele with which she rapidly became aquainted. Jane was content here. We can now say, Jane was a well-hearted governess who carried on with her duties and led a simple, practically boring life, and had a desire to see more of the world. All this changed though, a man changed it all… Mr Roechester. She was the owner of thornfield, and little by little, Jnae began to fall for him. Though she acknowledged that their love could not be. She could not believe it possible for him to love her back. Was she to be always miserable? Did she not deserve happiness? …they both talked oftenly, yet he appeared to have no particular interest for her, but for a beautiful woman, Miss Ingram, who he said he wanted to marry. Jane accepted this.. misery was something she was used to dealing with. Yet life shone brightly for the first time when Mr Roechester expressed his love and desire to marry her. At this moment.. Jane became simply happy. Indescribably happy for once in her life.. it was a fairy tale to her, something that could not be real!! ..her fairy tale did not last long though, misery continued to crush her… It later came to light that Mr Roechester was a married man and that could not marry Jane. His wife was a mad woman he did not love; yet, it was wrong for Jane to be his mistress.”The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my lost love, my hope quenched, my faith dead struck, swayed full and mighty above me and inone sullen mass” …She still had her values and morals with her. She was still a respectable woman, lovely and with tender feelings.. yet she RESPECTED HERSEFL AND “kept the law given by God”… she then left, and “abhorred herself” ..Jane was now a woman deeply and truly in love, yet, once again miserable as her love could not be and as she hurted that one person she loved the most….
Jane Eyre has suffer throughout her life. first as a child, jane, was left without family under the responsability or the Reed´s family. Her new family mistreated her and made her feel that she was worth less than anyone else in the world.Jane was 10 years old and when she felt rejected and abused, she started to feel hated and anger towards the family ,starts to hold resentment in his hard. then jane goes to a school where everything is perfect until the moment she feels good to be around mrs temple and happy of meeting helen but when the principle mr bocklehurst arrives to the school she nervous and scared that she is not hoing to loved by the school society, since Mr.B was told very bad thing of her. As she thought, Mr.B humiliated her infront of the whole this humiliation had no words for her, she wanted to dissapear and go somewhere else because in lowood she was going to be hated.
Helen and Mrs temple show her what justice really is and how friends would not judge.. she here learns about loyalty. jane is happy to be believe and everything seems better in her life.
Helen dies and jane learns that not everything lasts forever and starts to value everything.. she becomes number one in her class and when graduated she worked to years in the school as a teacher.
A new stage in her life is presented to her when she decides to go as governess to thornfields where she is treated with love and sympathy and where she receives everything that was missing to have a happy life. in this new part of her life she finds love and has a short time to experience it, here we learn she is passionate and trueful to her sentiments and how important love is for her but Rochester disappoints her and she gives up without fighting for what she really loves. When this happens we learn tha her first priority is to follow what is wrong or right for her, her principles and values, and that no matter how much she wants something if is not right she is no going to go for it.
Jane when about to marrige is in aposition where she can waste as much money as she wants, here we learn that she knows who she is and how strong is her personality and we find out that money is not a part of her life. She is careless about it, for her money is not a way to be happy.
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