Jane Eyre part.1

Jane Eyre 1

Author

Charlotte Bronte

Publisher

Minumsa | Published 2008-07-30

Category

Novel

Book description

Evaluated as the first work in English literature to deal with desire, and to this day...

Author's rating

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If I had to pick the few works I remember most from the world literature collection I read as a child, they'd be something like 'The Secret Garden,' 'Two Years' Vacation,' 'Jane Eyre,' and 'Daddy-Long-Legs.' You can't say none of these works share any common ground. Because 'Jane Eyre' and 'Daddy-Long-Legs' clearly have some things in common. Both are stories where a 'young woman' meets a man and gets married, so should I call that the common point?? Anyway, that's not what matters. Today I'd like to introduce 'Jane Eyre,' a world literature classic I read for the first time in a while.

Actually, I didn't know that 'Charlotte Bronte,' the author of Jane Eyre, was the sister of 'Emily Bronte.' Emily Bronte's most representative work is 'Wuthering Heights.' (It is her one and only work; for Emily Bronte, this is the end.) I just thought these two merely shared the same surname, but that wasn't the case. If you compare their representative works (that is, comparing 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights'), you can see they are very different, but the fact that both unfolded their thoughts through different characters about how important the issue of 'marriage' is, is a common element. Of course, since the characters' personalities are so different, the differences are great too. They are a topic worth comparing because, regarding a woman's assertiveness about marriage, one side says it is necessary and natural while the other side says it is something that must not be done. I'll talk about that part later; first I'll discuss the comparison with the film 'An Education,' which is called the 21st-century version of Jane Eyre, then the comparison with Wuthering Heights, and I'll wrap up by looking at the story in volume 1 of Jane Eyre.

The film 'An Education' is one of the most outstanding films Carey Mulligan starred in. The protagonist Jenny (Carey Mulligan) meets 'David' while walking in the rain on a rainy day and feels attracted to him. After that, David grows closer to Jenny through several meetings disguised as coincidences, and Jenny, who had been a top student at school, abandons her teacher's advice that she must go to Cambridge through 'studying,' chooses deviation, and falls into another kind of 'pleasure.' Carey Mulligan won the British Academy Award for Best Actress for this work, and I remember how she expressed a 17-year-old girl of the time very beautifully and vividly while also perfectly carrying off the role of a lover in Paris. If I had to name the common point between 'Jenny' and 'Jane Eyre,' it's that both meet a 'married man.' Moreover, even the fact that they don't know he's married is the same. They are similar in being born not into a wealthy family but a very ordinary one and being good at studying, and similar too in their boldness, assertiveness, and honesty. Right after David and Rochester propose, Jenny and Jane learn that he had a wife, and they break up under the thought that this is something that must not be done and that the other person has betrayed me. Jenny then enters university and dates a very ordinary man, which shows a difference from Jane choosing Rochester; in the film, there was the ambiguity of whether 'education' really consists only of the 'transmission of knowledge' or whether it is saying that other things matter too. (Of course, it was also fascinating that this film was based on the story of a real person.) But what 'Jane Eyre' is trying to say was somewhat clearer. In the end, the situation was set up so that Jane Eyre no longer needed to be bound by the institution of marriage. Rochester's wife, 'Bertha Mason,' had died in the fire at Thornfield Hall, and Jane Eyre came to conclude that the life in which she herself chooses Rochester is precisely the right life and the life she wants.

If Jenny went to Paris, experienced 'freedom,' and once held in her heart the things she had wanted, you could say Jane was unable to do so. She never left England. After she grew close to Rochester, there was only Rochester. Wherever she went, Jane was a woman who could not forget thoughts of Rochester. But Jenny was a person who, even while looking at David, could look at that 'reality' itself and enjoy it. Jenny was both a more assertive woman than Jane and at the same time a freer woman. Of course, that both could not tolerate a married man is a common point. From the fact that, when Jenny later met David's wife, the wife asked Jenny whether she was pregnant, you could tell that David's private affairs were not a one- or two-time thing, and this was a little different from Rochester. In speaking to Jane, Rochester makes a point of his not having had deep relationships with other people. Even in the part where he explains the matter of his relationship with Miss Ingram, which had appeared like an unavoidable marriage, he says there was no woman who connected with him in heart as much as Jane, no woman who captured his heart as Jane did. He does this by telling her old events that Rochester had carefully observed and remembered, of her own actions that Jane had not been aware of. David doesn't do that; David seems to be portrayed as having simply met her because the young woman looked pretty, so I'm not sure how to judge this part.

You could say Jane came to Lowood School because of various traumas in the Reed household during her childhood. She came to Lowood School both because she wanted to and because they wanted to send her away from the Reed home. Let me briefly talk about 'Helen Burns,' the first friend Jane grows close to at Lowood School.

"-omitted-......But still, you remember too minutely the things she said and did to you. Her harshness seems to have driven a nail into your heart. No matter how badly I am treated, I don't memorize it so painfully. Wouldn't it be better to forget her harshness and the resentful thoughts that follow it? Life seems too short to harbor grudges or to dutifully memorize bitter thoughts. Every one of us, you and me alike, bears faults in this world, and so it must be. But the day will come when, by casting off the body that is bound to become our dust, we cast off our faults too, and together with this troublesome body, corruption and sin all vanish, and only the flame of the soul, only the invisible essence of life and thought, will remain in the pure form it had at the moment it left the Creator's hand and was breathed into man.......-omitted-"

Should I call it the religious sublimity of Helen Burns? I think this thought of hers, which sounds high-minded, logical, and self-evident, has a very great influence on Jane later on. Because this one remark of Helen Burns's is at once the author's thought and an important part that becomes Jane's set of values. Since the words I hear from my girlfriend are similar to that, Helen's thought was a part that was conveyed all the way into my heart. It is a part that teaches that, just because someone else has wronged you, continuing to bury and dwell on that matter is wrong both for yourself and for the other person. As the very first friend to breathe a 'religious' disposition into Jane, Helen skillfully fulfills her role, and that is something I truly envy about Jane. Because I, too, wish such a religious heart of mine would grow stronger. Through the fact that it is ultimately Heaven's will, I was also able to confirm that 'Jane Eyre' does indeed contain religious content.

The part showing that Jane Eyre is a very assertive and progressive woman could be found in the following. This is a part where she states her own thoughts, and I've trimmed it just a little.

It is commonly thought that women are generally calm beings. But women have the same feelings as men, and just like their brothers, they need a ground on which to exercise their abilities and efforts. In that they suffer from too harsh a restraint, from too complete a stagnation, women are no different at all from men. To say that women must be cooped up at home making puddings and knitting socks and playing the piano and embroidering bags is nothing more than the thoughtless notion of men who enjoy more privileges. To blame or ridicule a woman who tries to do and learn more than what custom has decreed necessary for women is a senseless thing.

In my opinion, the background against which works like Thomas Hardy's 'Tess' and 'Jude the Obscure' appeared after Jane Eyre is precisely this assertiveness of 'Jane,' and Jane's disposition can be called very progressive. Unlike other women who are passive and only do what is given to them, Jane wanted to try more than that. She declared that she could not lead a married life merely listening to a man's words, and because of this Rochester is a little flustered but accepts it. Rochester says that when he dies Jane must die together with him, but Jane firmly says she cannot. It is a fairly strong statement for a woman of the time, but I think Charlotte Bronte portrayed it this way because she felt that figure of her was needed.

As for how Jane comes to know that she loves Rochester, you could say she noticed it from the fact that her way of looking at Rochester differs from other people's. When Jane hears other people describe Rochester, she mostly hears only descriptions tinged with a 'negative tendency.' But Jane, looking at Rochester, describes a man entirely opposite to the descriptions she had heard. The Rochester Jane feels was only a person who was a bit difficult during the period when they first met, and after that he becomes someone who connects with her. There's a thread that somehow seems to connect them, a relationship with many things in common and much shared thought. But these two also have a wall: namely, 'class.' Because one is rich and the other is merely a poor governess, the two cannot develop into a relationship beyond friends. Rochester and Jane each have a partner suited to them. Here, the 'suitable partner' refers to people of similar outward status: it suits Rochester to marry the daughter of a wealthy family, and it suits Jane to marry an ordinary man. For Rochester, that 'partner' is precisely 'Miss Ingram.' Between Miss Ingram and Rochester, Jane wavers and gradually tries to bury her love for Rochester within her heart. Thinking of herself as someone unsuited to Rochester, she grows little by little more distant.

Then, upon hearing of Mrs. Reed's critical condition, she leaves Thornfield Hall. From this point the pace of the narrative begins to quicken somewhat, and Mrs. Reed's death provides 'Jane' an opportunity to wash away her wounds from the past. Of course, Mrs. Reed still holds antipathy toward the past Jane, negative memories remain, and even amid her illness she wounds Jane through various remarks. But Jane is no longer a wounded little child. As a mature woman, under her own values and convictions, she is not hurt by what Mrs. Reed says, and she speaks her own feelings and present thoughts. For her, who has taken a step up, the wounds of the past have become a healed memory.

Through the words Mrs. Reed left as she died, Jane learns that she has an uncle, and this can be called very important in that it later gives Jane a chance for 'rising in status.' But the story after that I'll have to tell in part 2.