Jane Eyre -Summary

Jane Eyre -Summary

Jane Eyre is the story of a young, orphaned girl (shockingly, she’s named Jane Eyre) who lives with her aunt and cousins, the Reeds, at Gateshead Hall. Like all 19th century orphans, her situation pretty much sucks. Mrs. Reed hates Jane and allows her son John to torment the girl. Even the servants are constantly reminding Jane that she’s poor and worthless. At the tender age of ten, Jane rises up against this treatment and tells them all exactly what she thinks of them. (We wish we could’ve been there to hear it!) She’s punished by being locked in "the red-room," the bedroom where her uncle died, and she has a hysterical fit when she thinks his ghost is appearing. After this, nobody knows what to do with her, so they send her away to a religious boarding school for orphans – Lowood Institute.

At Lowood, which is run by the hypocritical ogre Mr. Brocklehurst, the students never have enough to eat or warm clothes. However, Jane finds a pious friend, Helen Burns, and a sympathetic teacher, Miss Temple. Under their influence, she becomes an excellent student, learning all the little bits and pieces of culture that made up a lady’s education in Victorian England: French, piano-playing, singing, and drawing. Unfortunately, an epidemic of typhus breaks out at the school, and Helen dies. (We always knew she’d be a martyr.) Jane remains at Lowood as a student until she’s sixteen, and then as a teacher until she’s eighteen. When Miss Temple leaves the school to get married, Jane gets a case of wanderlust and arranges to leave the school and become a governess.

The governess job that Jane accepts is to tutor a little French girl, Adèle Varens, at a country house called Thornfield. Jane goes there thinking that she’ll be working for a woman named Mrs. Fairfax, but Mrs. Fairfax is just the housekeeper; the owner of the house is a mysterious Mr. Rochester, and he's Adèle's guardian, although we’re not sure whether she’s his daughter. (Yep, this is getting exciting!) Jane likes Thornfield, although not the third floor, where a strange servant named Grace Poole works alone and Jane can hear eerie laughter coming from a locked room.
One evening when Jane’s out for a walk, she meets a mysterious man when his horse slips and he falls – and, of course, this is Mr. Rochester. Jane and Rochester are immediately interested in each other. She likes the fact that he’s craggy, dark, and rough-looking instead of smooth and classically handsome. She also likes his abrupt, almost rude manners, which she thinks are easier to handle than polite flattery. He likes her unusual strength and spirit and seems to find her almost unworldly; he’s always comparing her to a fairy or an elf or a sprite.

Rochester quickly learns that he can rely on Jane in a crisis – one evening, Jane finds Rochester asleep in his bed with all the curtains and bedclothes on fire, and she puts out the flames and rescues him. Jane and Rochester have fascinating conversations in the evenings and everything seems to be going really well…until Rochester invites a bunch of his rich friends to stay at Thornfield, including the beautiful Blanche Ingram. Rochester lets Blanche flirt with him constantly in front of Jane to make her jealous and encourages rumors that he’s engaged to Blanche. Don't worry, though – it's really only Jane he wants.

During the weeks-long house party, a man named Richard Mason shows up, and Rochester seems afraid of him. At night, Mason sneaks up to the third floor and somehow gets stabbed and bitten (ew). Rochester asks Jane to tend Richard Mason's wounds secretly while he fetches the doctor. The next morning before the guests find out what happened, Rochester sneaks Mason out of the house.

Before Jane can discover more about the mysterious situation, she gets a message that her Aunt Reed is very sick and is asking for her. Jane, forgiving Mrs. Reed for mistreating her when she was a child, goes back to take care of her dying aunt. When Jane returns to Thornfield, Blanche and her friends are gone, and Jane realizes how attached she is to Mr. Rochester. Although he lets her think for a little longer that he’s going to marry Blanche, eventually Rochester stops teasing Jane and proposes to her. She blissfully accepts.

Everything seems to be going great, until we notice that there’s still a third of the book left. That means something bad is about to happen.

It's the day of Jane and Rochester's wedding. It should be the happiest day of Jane's life, but during the church ceremony two men show up claiming that Rochester is already married! (Is this sounding like a Jerry Springer episode yet?) Rochester admits that he is married to another woman, but tries to justify his attempt to marry Jane by taking them all to see his "wife." Mrs. Rochester is Bertha Mason, the "madwoman in the attic" who tried to burn Rochester to death in his bed, stabbed and bit her own brother (Richard Mason), and who’s been doing other creepy things at night. Rochester was tricked into marrying Bertha fifteen years ago in Jamaica by his father, who wanted him to marry for money and didn't tell him that insanity ran in Bertha’s family. Rochester tried to live with Bertha as husband and wife, but she was too horrible, so he locked her up at Thornfield with a nursemaid, Grace Poole. Meanwhile, he traveled around Europe for ten years trying to forget Bertha and keeping various mistresses. Adèle Varens (Jane's student) is the daughter of one of these mistresses, though she may not be Rochester’s daughter. Eventually he got tired of this lifestyle, came home to England, and fell in love with Jane.
After explaining all this, Rochester claims that he’s not really married because his relationship with Bertha isn’t a real marriage. The main problem is that he can’t divorce her (because it was pretty tough to get a divorce at all in the Victorian period, and Bertha’s behavior isn’t grounds for a divorce, since she’s mentally ill and therefore not responsible for her actions). He wants Jane to go and live with him in France, where they can pretend to be a married couple and act like husband and wife. Jane refuses to be his next mistress and runs away before she’s tempted to agree.
Jane travels in a random direction away from Thornfield. Having no money, she almost starves to death before being taken in by the Rivers family, who live at Moor House near a town called Morton. The Rivers siblings – Diana, Mary, and St. John – are about Jane’s age and well-educated, but somewhat poor. They take whole-heartedly to Jane, who has taken the pseudonym "Jane Elliott" so that Mr. Rochester can’t find her. Jane wants to earn her keep, so St. John arranges for her to become the teacher in a village girls’ school. When Jane’s uncle Mr. Eyre dies and leaves his fortune to his niece, it turns out that the Rivers siblings are actually Jane’s cousins, and she shares her inheritance with the other three. (Now she’s Jane Heir, ha ha.)
St. John, who is a super-intense clergyman, wants to be more than Jane’s cousin (back when that wasn't considered gross). He admires Jane’s work ethic and asks her to marry him (how un-romantic), learn Hindustani, and go with him to India on a long-term missionary trip. Jane is tempted because she thinks she’d be good at it and that it would be an interesting life. Still, she refuses because she knows she doesn’t love St. John. To top it off, St. John actually loves a different a girl named Rosamond Oliver, but he won’t let himself admit it because he thinks she would make a bad wife for a missionary.

Jane offers to go to India with him, but just as his cousin and co-worker, not as his wife. St. John won't give up and keeps pressuring Jane to marry him. Just as she’s about to give in, she supernaturally hears Mr. Rochester’s voice calling her name from somewhere far away.
The next morning, Jane leaves Moor House and goes back to Thornfield to find out what’s going on with Mr. Rochester. She finds out that Mr. Rochester searched for her everywhere, and, when he couldn’t find her, sent everyone else away from the house and shut himself up alone. After this, Bertha set the house on fire one night and burned it to the ground. Rochester rescued all the servants and tried to save Bertha, too, but she committed suicide and he was injured. Now Rochester has lost an eye and a hand and is blind in the remaining eye.
Jane goes to Mr. Rochester and offers to take care of him as his nurse or housekeeper. What she really hopes is that he'll ask her to marry him – and he does. They have a quiet wedding, and after two years of marriage Rochester gradually gets his sight back. St. John Rivers, meanwhile, goes to India alone and works himself to death there over the course of several years.

Source: www.shmoop.com/jane-eyre/summary.html‎-13.07.2013    

Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë Analysis of Major Characters

Jane Eyre

The development of Jane Eyre’s character is central to the novel. From the beginning, Jane possesses a sense of her self-worth and dignity, a commitment to justice and principle, a trust in God, and a passionate disposition. Her integrity is continually tested over the course of the novel, and Jane must learn to balance the frequently conflicting aspects of herself so as to find contentment.

An orphan since early childhood, Jane feels exiled and ostracized at the beginning of the novel, and the cruel treatment she receives from her Aunt Reed and her cousins only exacerbates her feeling of alienation. Afraid that she will never find a true sense of home or community, Jane feels the need to belong somewhere, to find “kin,” or at least “kindred spirits.” This desire tempers her equally intense need for autonomy and freedom.

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 Brontë 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 Brontë, 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.

Edward Rochester

Despite his stern manner and not particularly handsome appearance, 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. Although Rochester is Jane’s social and economic superior, and although men were widely considered to be naturally superior to women in the Victorian period, Jane is Rochester’s intellectual equal. Moreover, after their marriage is interrupted by the disclosure that Rochester is already married to Bertha Mason, Jane is proven to be Rochester’s moral superior.

Rochester regrets his former libertinism and lustfulness; nevertheless, he has proven himself to be weaker in many ways than Jane. Jane feels that living with Rochester as his mistress would mean the loss of her dignity. Ultimately, she would become degraded and dependent upon Rochester for love, while unprotected by any true marriage bond. Jane will only enter into marriage with Rochester after she has gained a fortune and a family, and after she has been on the verge of abandoning passion altogether. She waits until she is not unduly influenced by her own poverty, loneliness, psychological vulnerability, or passion. Additionally, because Rochester has been blinded by the fire and has lost his manor house at the end of the novel, he has become weaker while Jane has grown in strength—Jane claims that they are equals, but the marriage dynamic has actually tipped in her favor.

St. John Rivers

St. John Rivers is a foil to Edward Rochester. Whereas Rochester is passionate, St. John is austere and ambitious. Jane often describes Rochester’s eyes as flashing and flaming, whereas she constantly associates St. John with rock, ice, and snow. Marriage with Rochester represents the abandonment of principle for the consummation of passion, but marriage to St. John would mean sacrificing passion for principle. When he invites her to come to India with him as a missionary, St. John offers Jane the chance to make a more meaningful contribution to society than she would as a housewife. At the same time, life with St. John would mean life without true love, in which Jane’s need for spiritual solace would be filled only by retreat into the recesses of her own soul. Independence would be accompanied by loneliness, and joining St. John would require Jane to neglect her own legitimate needs for love and emotional support. Her consideration of St. John’s proposal leads Jane to understand that, paradoxically, a large part of one’s personal freedom is found in a relationship of mutual emotional dependence.

Helen Burns

Helen Burns, Jane’s friend at Lowood School, serves as a foil to Mr. Brocklehurst as well as to Jane. While Mr. Brocklehurst embodies an evangelical form of religion that seeks to strip others of their excessive pride or of their ability to take pleasure in worldly things, Helen represents a mode of Christianity that stresses tolerance and acceptance. Brocklehurst uses religion to gain power and to control others; Helen ascetically trusts her own faith and turns the other cheek to Lowood’s harsh policies.

Although Helen manifests a certain strength and intellectual maturity, her efforts involve self-negation rather than self-assertion, and Helen’s submissive and ascetic nature highlights Jane’s more headstrong character. Like Jane, Helen is an orphan who longs for a home, but Helen believes that she will find this home in Heaven rather than Northern England. And while Helen is not oblivious to the injustices the girls suffer at Lowood, she believes that justice will be found in God’s ultimate judgment—God will reward the good and punish the evil. Jane, on the other hand, is unable to have such blind faith. Her quest is for love and happiness in this world. Nevertheless, she counts on God for support and guidance in her search.

Source:www.sparknotes.com › SparkNotes › Literature Study Guides › Jane Eyre‎-13.07.2013

 

The Sea by James Reeves

The criterion of the actions of the sea and its behaviour pattern is eloquently depicted in the poem. The Sea, James Reeve’s diction style, rhythm and thyme, the metaphors and the tone itself create the actual image of changing moods of the sea.
Firstly James Reeves introduces the sea in the form of “a hungry dog” with all its activities, actions and reactions. The reader is able to visualise the image of the “hungry dog” “clashing teeth and shaggy jaws” Hour upon hour he gnaws”.
The awful sound of the waves rolling towards the beach with his “Clashing teeth and shaggy jaws”. Usually the sea is compared to the grace and beauty of a woman, expressing the movements of the feminine gender, but here James Reeves has employed a character of the canine; the drastic actions of the angry sea . “The rumbling tumbling stones”.
“And bones, bones, bones, bones”.
The repetition of the word BONES mirrors forth the drastic actions and the fierce behaviour pattern of the SEA DOG. Every action is symbolised by the giant Sea Dog.
“Shaking his wet sides over the cliffs and howls and hollows long and ‘loud”
The roaring sea with its fierce actions depicting the fierce behaviour pattern of a sea dog getting back to its normal mood during the months of May and June.
“But on quiet days in May or June,
Whenever the grasses on the dune
Play no more their sandy tune,
He lies on the sandy shores
So quiet,
So quiet,
He scarcely snores”
The calm and serene mood of the sea is symbolised by the image of a dog – fierce and drastic at one time and calm and quiet at other times, The calmness of the Changing Sea is highlighted by the words
“So quiet
So quiet
He scarcely snores”
The varied rhyming pattern serving itself to create the visual image of the sea calm and glorious at one time and nasty and rough at other times. The animal behaviour pattern of the dog with the characteristic beastly action ‘sniffs and sniffs’, “rolls gnaws, moans, clashing teeth, shaggy jaws, greasy paws, justifying the similies used by the poet to describe the changing mood of the sea and the “hungry dog”.
The picturesque presentation of the sea and its similarity to the canine behaviour, pattern, mirror forth the radical changes of the sea from period to period. The picturesque presentation of the sea in its various moods strike the reader in a forceful manner.
The semantic procedure of the Poet in creating the images of a HUNGRY DOG and a QUIET DOG is eloquently brought forth creating a cinematic view of the procedure of the sea in different ways.
The sea is grammatically neuter in gender, but usually the sea assumes feminine gender. In this poem the writer uses neuter gender, presenting the DOG IMAGE – The “contented dog, and the hungry dog” the poet has personified it by using “he” bringing much life and colour to the procedure of the Dog’s behaviour pattern, the poet has created the suitable background for his ideas to be expressed in a profound manner; the fierce hungry dog and the contented dog expressing the moods of the sea.
The rhyming scheme functions in an efficient manner creating the HUNGRY DOG and the CONTENTED DOG the rhyming pattern is well maintained though the metre varies at times. The opening line and the last line of each verse varies a little. The poet has maintained the varied tones of the behaviour pattern of the sea beautifully and elegantly.
James Reeve’s poem THE SEA remains as a piece of literature that could be appreciated and enjoyed by the reader visualising the varied tones and behaviour pattern of the sea in its splendour and its ferocity.
Mrs. C. Ekanayake,
Retd. Specialist Teacher
Eng.The Sea
by James Reeves
The criterion of the actions of the sea and its behaviour pattern is eloquently depicted in the poem. The Sea, James Reeve’s diction style, rhythm and thyme, the metaphors and the tone itself create the actual image of changing moods of the sea.
Firstly James Reeves introduces the sea in the form of “a hungry dog” with all its activities, actions and reactions. The reader is able to visualise the image of the “hungry dog” “clashing teeth and shaggy jaws” Hour upon hour he gnaws”.
The awful sound of the waves rolling towards the beach with his “Clashing teeth and shaggy jaws”. Usually the sea is compared to the grace and beauty of a woman, expressing the movements of the feminine gender, but here James Reeves has employed a character of the canine; the drastic actions of the angry sea . “The rumbling tumbling stones”.
“And bones, bones, bones, bones”.
The repetition of the word BONES mirrors forth the drastic actions and the fierce behaviour pattern of the SEA DOG. Every action is symbolised by the giant Sea Dog.
“Shaking his wet sides over the cliffs and howls and hollows long and ‘loud”
The roaring sea with its fierce actions depicting the fierce behaviour pattern of a sea dog getting back to its normal mood during the months of May and June.
“But on quiet days in May or June,
Whenever the grasses on the dune
Play no more their sandy tune,
He lies on the sandy shores
So quiet,
So quiet,
He scarcely snores”
The calm and serene mood of the sea is symbolised by the image of a dog – fierce and drastic at one time and calm and quiet at other times, The calmness of the Changing Sea is highlighted by the words
“So quiet
So quiet
He scarcely snores”
The varied rhyming pattern serving itself to create the visual image of the sea calm and glorious at one time and nasty and rough at other times. The animal behaviour pattern of the dog with the characteristic beastly action ‘sniffs and sniffs’, “rolls gnaws, moans, clashing teeth, shaggy jaws, greasy paws, justifying the similies used by the poet to describe the changing mood of the sea and the “hungry dog”.
The picturesque presentation of the sea and its similarity to the canine behaviour, pattern, mirror forth the radical changes of the sea from period to period. The picturesque presentation of the sea in its various moods strike the reader in a forceful manner.
The semantic procedure of the Poet in creating the images of a HUNGRY DOG and a QUIET DOG is eloquently brought forth creating a cinematic view of the procedure of the sea in different ways.
The sea is grammatically neuter in gender, but usually the sea assumes feminine gender. In this poem the writer uses neuter gender, presenting the DOG IMAGE – The “contented dog, and the hungry dog” the poet has personified it by using “he” bringing much life and colour to the procedure of the Dog’s behaviour pattern, the poet has created the suitable background for his ideas to be expressed in a profound manner; the fierce hungry dog and the contented dog expressing the moods of the sea.
The rhyming scheme functions in an efficient manner creating the HUNGRY DOG and the CONTENTED DOG the rhyming pattern is well maintained though the metre varies at times. The opening line and the last line of each verse varies a little. The poet has maintained the varied tones of the behaviour pattern of the sea beautifully and elegantly.
James Reeve’s poem THE SEA remains as a piece of literature that could be appreciated and enjoyed by the reader visualising the varied tones and behaviour pattern of the sea in its splendour and its ferocity.
Mrs. C. Ekanayake,
Retd. Specialist Teacher
Eng.

A minor bird by Robert Frost

Robert Frost was born in 1875. Being the most famous America's twentieth century poet, Robert Frost was considered as the poet Robert Frost was considered as the poet Laureate of America and was invited to read one of his poems 'on the occasion of the inauguration of John Kennedy as President of the USA". Following the nature poets, Robert Frost favoured themes close to nature and his poems mirror forth his own conception of nature. Robert Frost's minor bird is a simple short poem. To begin with he shows his intolerance of the song of the bird and later admits the fact that one has to cultivate tolerance and live in harmony with nature and nature's gifts.

Thus the poet gives an exceptional place to nature; coming into terms with various conceptions of nature driving away all objections and disagreements, Just as his poem 'The Most of It" brings alive his perceptions of nature, with the aim of highlighting his feelings and reactions to the bird in his garden, the poet uses the present perfect tense, giving life to the situation described.

"I have wished a bird would fly away and not sing by my house all day."

"Have clapped my hands at him from the door when it seemed as if I could bear no more."

The tense pattern is made to change in order to show his sympathy to the little bird and the act of injustice caused by chasing away the bird; highlighting the pathetic situation and the poet's repentance. "The fault must partly have been in me the bird was not to blame for his key." "The bird's key is a gift of nature and 'Frost, as a result of his maturity accepts it without objection" (Gamini Fonseka's comments)

Though the bird has been chased away no harm was caused to the bird. The poet tries to pacify himself with excuses to establish the fact that mere chasing has not caused any bodily harm to the innocent creature and thus "freeing the bird from the blame for his key". The KEY here is exceptional; it's not the piano key. It's a heavenly gift of nature to the bird. The final couplet

"And of course there must be something wrong in wanting to silence any song" Highlighting the true fact that a bird has the freedom to sing as it wishes and repenting for the injustice caused by him. This is quite symbolic and the poet trying to free himself of the vicious situation created.

"Have clapped my hands at him from the door".

Frost's diction style is simple and direct. His ardent admiration of nature is clearly emphasised in this poem-, A minor bird. Nearer to spoken idiom, his language style invites the reader's attention and admiration Thus inspiring the reader to admire and love nature's creations, with sympathy and understanding.

"And of course there must be something wrong.

In wanting to silence any song

"Frost's syntax is clear and the tone remains conversational" (Angela, Hussein) with the common rhyming scheme a,a,b,b,c,c,d,d, highlighting the Theme and elegance of the poem.