READING PROJECT - JANE EYRE

Course: Advanced Reading C1

Lecturer: Đậu Thị Tuyết Mai
GROUP 5
Members:
Nguyễn Lê Đông Ngọc
Phạm Thị Vân Anh
Nguyễn Thị Đào

LAYOUT
I. GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT AUTHOR AND WORK
1. Author
2. Work
II. SETTING
III. SUMMARY
IV. CHARACTERS
1. Jane Eyre
2. Edward Rochester
3. Mrs. Reed 
4. St. John Rivers
5. Helen Burns
V. LESSONS FROM THE WORK
1. Marry only for love, nothing else
2. Always hope for the best
3. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do something just because you’re a woman. 

VI. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WHEN READING THIS BOOK

1. Like
a. Having the adaptation 
b. Jane Eyre is one of those classics that feels intimate and mesmerizing. 
2. Dislike
a. French in this work 
b. The words used are sometimes difficult for people who do not speak English as
their mother tongue to understand. 
 I. GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT AUTHOR AND WORK

1. Author

Charlotte Bronte was born April 21, 1816, in Yorkshire, England. In 1820 her father, a
clergyman, moved the family to the town of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. When Charlotte
was only five years old, her mother died, and her father sent Charlotte and her sister Emily to
join their older sisters Maria and Elizabeth at a boarding school. Conditions at the school were so
bad that the girls were brought home in 1825. Soon after returning home, Maria and Elizabeth
died of tuberculosis. One thing you mightn’t know is that Lowood School in Jane Eyre later is
based on the boarding school Bronte attended.
 
As they grew up,  Charlotte taught at a school and briefly served two families as a governess, but
the work did not appeal to her. Charlotte and her sisters decided to open their own school. To
prepare for this venture, Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels in 1842, where Charlotte studied
French, German, and music. There she fell in love with her teacher, but he was married and
rejected her attention. Brokenhearted, Charlotte returned home two years later. The plan for a
school failed when the three could recruit no students; instead they concentrated on writing. In
1847 Charlotte published Jane Eyre to great success.. Her work received popular acclaim and
recognition in the literary circles of London and in North America.
 
Much of Jane’s story came from Charlotte Bronte’s own early years. Along with her sisters
Emily and Anne, Charlotte endured a horrifying boarding school, worked as a teacher and
governess, and refused proposals from several suitors. Jane Eyre was immediately successful, in
great part since the richness of its author’s interior life is reflected in the title character

2. Work

Jane Eyre  is a famous novel , published under the pen name "Currer Bell", on 16 October 1847,
by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year
by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre has been called a Gothic romance, a love story,
and a novel about social and feminist consciousness. Literary critic Daniel Burt rates its author,
Charlotte Bronte, as one of the 100 most influential novelists and playwrights of all time. He
claims Bronte was "the first historian of the private consciousness," and the precursor of
novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce. It is a Bildungsroman which follows the
experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr.
Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall. The book contains elements of social
criticism with a strong sense of Christian morality at its core, and it is considered by many to be
ahead of its time because of Jane's individualistic character and how the novel approaches the
topics of class, sexuality, religion, and feminism.
 
II. SETTING

The novel is supposedly structured is in Northern England, late in the reign of George III (1760–
1820, early decades of the nineteenth century). It goes through 5 distinct locations: Jane's
childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and
cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she gains friends and role models but suffers
privations and oppression; her time as governess at Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with
her mysterious employer, Edward Fairfax Rochester; her time in the Moor House, during which
her earnest but cold clergyman cousin, St. John Rivers, proposes to her; and ultimately she
returns to Rochester to find him blinded from a fire set by Bertha, and they marry in Ferndean .
Throughout these sections, the novel provides perspectives on a number of important social
issues and ideas, many of which are critical of the status quo.

III.SUMMARY

When the novel begins, the title character is a 10-year-old orphan who lives with her uncle’s
family; her parents had died of typhus. Other than the nursemaid, the family ostracizes Jane. She
is later sent to the austere Lowood Institution, a charity school, where she and the other girls are
mistreated; “Lowood,” as the name suggests, is the “low” point in Jane’s young life. In the face
of such adversity, however, she gathers strength and confidence.

In early adulthood, after several years as a student and then teacher at Lowood, Jane musters the
courage to leave. She finds work as a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she meets her dashing
and Byronic employer, the wealthy and impetuous Edward Rochester. At Thornfield Jane looks
after young Adèle, the daughter of a French dancer who was one of Rochester’s mistresses, and
is befriended by the kindly housekeeper Mrs. Alice Fairfax. Jane falls in love with Rochester,
though he is expected to marry the snobbish and socially prominent Blanche Ingram. Rochester
eventually reciprocates Jane’s feelings and proposes marriage. However, on their wedding day,
Jane discovers that Rochester cannot legally marry her, because he already has a wife, Bertha
Mason, who has gone mad and is locked away on the third floor because of her violent behavior;
her presence explains the strange noises Jane has heard in the mansion. Believing that he was
tricked into that marriage, Rochester feels justified in pursuing his relationship with Jane. He
pleads with her to join him in France, where they can live as husband and wife despite the legal
prohibitions, but Jane refuses on principle and flees Thornfield.

Jane is taken in by people she later discovers are her cousins. One of them is St. John, a
principled clergyman. He gives her a job and soon proposes marriage, suggesting that she join
him as a missionary in India. Jane initially agrees to leave with him but not as his wife. However,
St. John pressures her to reconsider his proposal, and a wavering Jane finally appeals to Heaven
to show her what to do. Just then, she hears a mesmeric call from Rochester. Jane returns to
Thornfield to find the estate burned, set on fire by Rochester’s wife, who then jumped to her
death. Rochester, in an attempt to save her, was blinded. Reunited, Jane and Rochester marry.
Rochester later regains some of his sight, and the couple have a son.

IV. CHARACTERS

1. Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is the protagonist and narrator of this story. The development of Jane Eyre’s character
is central to the novel. Treated as an outcast by the Reeds, who take her in as an infant, Jane
wants desperately to prove she is worthy of love and respect. In her search for freedom, Jane also
struggles with the question of what type of freedom she wants. While Rochester initially offers
Jane a chance to liberate her passions, Jane comes to realize that such freedom could also mean
enslavement—by living as Rochester’s mistress, she would be sacrificing her dignity and
integrity for the sake of her feelings. St. John Rivers offers Jane another kind of freedom: the
freedom to act unreservedly on her principles. He opens to Jane the possibility of exercising her
talents fully by working and living with him in India. Jane eventually realizes, though, that this
freedom would also constitute a form of imprisonment, because she would be forced to keep her
true feelings and her true passions always in check. Charlotte Bronte may have created the
character of Jane Eyre as a means of coming to terms with elements of her own life. Much
evidence suggests that Bronte, too, struggled to find a balance between love and freedom and to
find others who understood her. At many points in the book, Jane voices the author’s then-
radical opinions on religion, social class, and gender.

2. Edward Rochester
The wealthy master of Thornfield Hall and Jane's employer and, later, her husband. Over the
course of his life, he grows from a naive young man, to a humble yet still strong man worthy of
Jane. Both share similar virtues and seek their personal redemption. Edward Rochester wins
Jane’s heart, because she feels they are kindred spirits, and because he is the first person in the
novel to offer Jane lasting love and a real home. Yet Rochester errs in giving more rein to his
feelings than his judgment and in expecting the world to submit to his will, as when he tries to
marry Jane while still concealing her first wife - Bertha Mason and his secrets. In his distress
after losing his eyesight, Rochester comes to accept his need of guidance and respect for God. 

3. Mrs. Reed 
Mrs. Reed promised her husband, on his deathbed, to care for Jane as one of her own children.
However, she despises Jane for being a poor dependent and treats Jane as an outcast in the
household. She allows her own children to abuse and torment Jane. When Jane is 10 years old,
Mrs. Reed sends her to a religious school for poor children. Eight years later, when she is dying,
she contacts Jane to ease her conscience about a lie she told that affected Jane. However, she
maintains her dislike of Jane to the end. Mrs. Reed is representative of that part of society that
has a shallow fixation on wealth as the only measure of a person's value.

4. St. John Rivers

St. John is the savior of Jane. St. John and his sisters, Mary and Diana, rescue Jane when she
flees from Thornfield. He finds her a teaching position and later asks her to marry him and go
with him to India to do missionary work. Deeply religious and conscientious, St. John is
ambitious. Missionary work appeals to him because he wants more than an ordinary life. He has
a strong personality, but he is somewhat severe and distant. 

5. Helen Burns
Jane's best friend at Lowood, and a model of personal strength and even temperament for Jane.
Helen is a withdrawn intellectual with an optimistic religious view of universal salvation that
contrasts with St. John's beliefs.

V. LESSONS FROM THE WORK

 1. Marry only for love, nothing else
Jane’s love life is as complicated as everything else in her life. She falls in love with Mr.
Rochester. Their wedding is interrupted by the revelation /revəˈleɪʃn/ that Rochester has another
wife which compels Jane to break off the wedding because of her principles. She is then
proposed to by a St. John, but turns him down since she knew that it would be nothing but a love
less alliance which won’t be a meaningful marriage. The fact that one should always marry for
love can also be seen in Mr. Rochester’s life. His first marriage was more of a business deal
since he had an eye for his father-in-law’s wealth. Little did he know that his wife has an
underlying mental condition which eventually wrecked their marriage.
“I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me.” -Jane
Eyre

2. Always hope for the best

Having had a traumatic life as a child, Jane never lost hope. When she was sent to the charity
institution by her aunt, Jane hoped that no matter what, at least the place will be better than her
aunt’s place. When Jane came to Lowood Institution, the inedible food and harsh conditions did
not frighten her. Instead, she strived to have a better future and studied well. Jane’s faith helped
her through thick and thin and eventually good things did happen to her. She inherited a fortune
from her uncle, married the love of her life and found happiness. In the end, it all turned out to be
alright. “Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.”-Jane Eyre

3. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do something just because you’re a woman. 

Remember that this novel was published in 1847! “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, to 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.”

VI. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WHEN READING THIS BOOK

1. Like 
a. Having the adaptation 
Jane Eyre, the 1847 novel by English writer Charlotte Bronte, has frequently been adapted for
film, radio, television, and theatre, and has inspired a number of rewritings and reinterpretations.
The adaptations give readers access to the work in case that they do not have time to read the
entire book or find a hard copy of the book. 
The movies in 2011 is a romantic drama film directed by Cary Fukunaga and starring Mia
Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender. The screenplay is written by Moira Buffini based
on Bronte’s 1847 novel of the same name, a classic of the Gothic, bildungsroman,
and romance genres. The film was released on 11 March 2011 in the United States and 9
September in Great Britain and Ireland. It received positive reviews from critics. The film's
costume design, led by Michael O'Connor, was nominated for an Academy Award. 
b. Jane Eyre is one of those classics that feels intimate and mesmerizing. 

Jane talks to the reader confiding her innermost thoughts and passions. It’s also one of the few
books of it’s era that yields significant power to a female narrator. Jane is no fragile flower to be
placed on a pedestal to be admired. She is the ultimate female heroine (granted within the
context of the time period in which it was written). Jane’s struggle for self-realization, her
perseverance in the face of adversity, and her strong personality and wisdom make her one of the
few examples of strong women in Victorian literature. For a Victorian-era woman she was
spunky, outspoken, and entirely captivating to me. When I read the book I find the story
captivating specifically because of the strength of Jane and the ways in which Bronte managed
so cleverly to pull us into experiencing Jane’s inner thoughts and emotions.

2. Dislike 
a. French in this work 
Because the little girl, Adele, is French and Mr. Rochester and Jane speak French, there is quite a
bit of French in this book and there were sometimes just entire paragraphs in French so I had no
idea throughout the novel, which is kind of annoying. But if you do not speak French, you can
just skip it and you will be fine, you might miss a couple phrases but you will get the general gist
of what is going on.
b. The words used are sometimes difficult for people who do not speak English
as their mother tongue to understand.