A History Lesson--Charlotte and Jane

For some time, I have harbored the false illusion that I once tried to read Jane Eyre but found it so boring that I couldn't make it through the first chapter. Henceforth, I have not, since this fictional occasion, felt any desire to return to the Brontes in any way, shape, or form. This being said, I am often confronted with questions of the literary nature posed by young and eager minds that I can't answer--and recently one came my way concerning a young girl by the name of Jane Eyre. Not having an answer for the question, I sought to find one by means of attempting anew to read the story. What I discovered, to my delight, is that I have never read this book before and the first chapter quite caught my attention! I have come to the conclusion that the book to which I previously referred was actually Wuthering Heights--a different Bronte sister entirely!

As I researched Jane and her creator Charlotte Bronte to gain some insight into the motivation of this narrative, I uncovered some fascinating new information (courtesy of Sparknotes, of course). Here's what I found out:

1. Either because of or in spite of its critique of Victorian assumptions about gender and social class, Jane Eyre (originally published under the male pseudonym Currer Bell) was one of the most successful novels of its era both commercially and critically.  This means that the Victorians, as perfect as they were, harbored secret desires to, so to speak, "balk the system".  Fantastic--I knew they had it in them.

2. The novel follows the form of Bildungsroman--a novel that tells the story of a child's maturation and focuses on the emotions and experiences that accompany and incite his or her growth into adulthood. *See Great Expectations and many other 19th century British works for further examples of this literary form.

3.  It is a fairly autobiographical narrative, based on Charlotte's experiences in boarding schools both as a student and teacher, including a crazy Evangelical reverend and a close friend who dies of tuberculosis. 

Stay tuned for more to come (I've only read 100 pages or so!).