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I am currently studying English Level four, where I had to read the novel Jane Eyre
by Writer Charlotte Brontë. To begin with, I’m going to tell you a little bit about the
period and its author. Charlotte Brontë was one of the daughters of the parish
priest Patrick Brontë and lived with her brothers-the mother died when they were
young-in the village of Haworth in England in the early 19th century. They were five
female sisters and one male brother, but after spending a few years studying at the
school of Clergy Daugthers in Cowan Bridge, the two largest sisters died of
tuberculosis (Mary and Elizabeth), causing the other three to be removed from the
boarding school. Surely in these experiences Charlotte was inspired to describe in
such detail the school of Lowood ladies attended by our protagonist, Jane Eyre,
when her aunt, after mistreating and despising her, decides to get rid of her by
sending her pupil there. The parish, where the Brontë family lived, was far from the
village and surrounded by the cemetery, battered by strong winds and heavy rains.
In this isolation and with almost no social life, the Brontë sisters spent their hours
reading and writing, something that at that time was not natural in women. But
Patrick Brontë was a well-educated and quite distant man, who, in order to be
calm, allowed them, without objection, to access any reading they had at hand,
whether for entertainment or study. In this way, it is not uncommon that the three
sisters each wrote a novel, in addition to a book of poetry, which was the first
publication for them. As I have already said in the review of Cumbres borrascosas,
by Emily Brontë, the time was not propitious for this kind of activity in a lady, who
had to be a governess or dedicate herself to her own home, if she was lucky
enough to get married. For this reason, the three sisters published their books
under male pseudonyms: Anne, the younger sister, publishes Agnes Grey as
Acton Bell; Emily publishes Wuthering Summits as Ellis Bell, and Charlotte
publishes Jane Eyre as Currer Bell. I thought it was important to do this
introduction before talking a little bit about the book, because I think that both
Charlotte’s and her sisters' work is intimately linked to their lives and to that
particular climate in which they grew up. Jane Eyre’s novel begins with a first-
person account of a 10-year-old orphan girl who is mistreated by her cousins and
her aunt, Mrs Reed, who has promised her late husband to take care of the child
but has no sympathy for her. Little Jane, with the excuse that she is a rude and
rebellious child, is taken to the Lowood girls' school, where she will spend several
years and will be trained as a governess. When the time comes when she can
decide, Jane chooses to look for work and leave that dark, wet school where she
spent most of her life. So you will meet Mr Rochester in Thornfield, having charge
of the education of little Adele, in the custody of the owner of the house. And just
when Jane thinks she’s calm, in a cozy house, with a nice family, several events
begin to happen that cannot be explained, the nights become dangerous, and she
feels stalked by a strange presence. Jane Eyre’s plot contains all that particular
atmosphere of Gothic novels where the rainy days, the strange noises and the gray
evenings of an eternal winter transport the reader to an unknown but extremely
captivating world. And, of course, there can be no lack of the great love story, as
complex as everything in the life of our protagonist.
That is why it is very easy to empathize with her, who in such a courageous and
risky way tries to overcome the obstacles presented to her. In this sense, Jane
Eyre is an extremely transgressive character for the time, because she is a woman
who makes decisions and who rebels.