Or it may have been a reminder to move forward. Jane presses on, running away from sin and toward herself. If she cannot be on equal footing with her partner, she will not have him at all.
Even before he copped to his attic-bound madwoman of a wife, Rochester made it clear that he wanted to own Jane. As his wife, she would have been his concubine: a petted plaything, but not an equal. By the time she falls in love, Jane knows she can fend for herself.
Once again she resolves to keep in good health and not die. She does more than refuse to die; she thrives. Jane escapes Thornfield and befriends the Rivers sisters and their intolerable brother, St. John, a Calvinist minister who gives her a job as a teacher in an obscure village. Coincidence then teaches her that not only are the Rivers siblings her cousins, she is an heiress. She shares the wealth, enjoying the money that has raised her out of obscurity.
Jane has one more obstacle to overcome: St. John is arguably even more sadistic than Rochester. He expects Jane to follow him to the ends of the earth, and to do so with a cold substitute for love. But his words crack like a whip. John would never make out with Jane beneath a tree. The principled minister finds no pleasure in his future wife.
Certainly, Charlotte had stopped thinking of herself as a wife by the time she wrote Jane Eyre. But not wives. Spinsterdom did have its uses: It allowed Charlotte to write.
It could be a lonely bargain, but it was one that allowed her to create Jane Eyre. Equipped with new knowledge and a new dismissal of the skim-milk version of love he offers, she decides that sin on her own terms is preferable to virtue on St. Turning down her cousin and returning to a man who, for all she knows, is still married, is helped along when she hears Rochester calling her name.
Jane, bolstered by her own financial security and her refusal to be diminished by a man who sees her only as a source of labor, is in a different position than she was when she left Rochester for the first time. She is ready for his call. She is ready to go to him on her own terms. That return has vexed readers for years. But is Jane really doomed to a life of subservience? Not exactly, says Pell. Gilbert, too, rejects the premise that Jane Eyre demeans herself by returning to Rochester.
In , her love of Rochester is so shocking it borders on treason. In any era, its relationship to the love it explores is uneasy, volatile. Nearly two centuries after it was published, Jane Eyre confounds every expectation. After they met in person, Charlotte and her editor began a correspondence that can only be described as stimulating.
She already knew that Smith loved her writing—when she sent him the draft of Jane Eyre , it captivated him so much that he read it through in one sitting, neglecting visitors and appointments as he rushed through the story. It almost seemed possible that their friendship was something deeper. When Charlotte visited London, Smith begged her to stay at his house.
He treated her to every amusement the city could afford. They traveled together, through London and even to Scotland, often chaperoned by his mother or sister. When they were apart, they wrote long, chatty letters, dissecting the literary news of the day. At times it is sparkling and witty. It verges on flirty, and then it falls apart. In great happiness, as in great grief—words of sympathy should be few. Accept my meed of congratulation—and believe me.
While Rochester falls victim to his wife, Jane becomes an independent heiress. When in the end they are reunited, the power structure of their relationship has been inverted. Rochester has to learn to depend on Jane, who in the meantime had to realize that she can only truly be happy living with her master. The story of Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester has often been read as a model for the genre of romance. There are two lovers who must overcome certain obstacles to be reunited in the end and live happily ever after.
Such a genuine romance is the product of two lovers who both choose their partner by their own free will. They choose to be with one another because of their feelings for each other and not for other reasons like money, social status or just mere passion.
But Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester couldn't be more different regarding their financial situations and social backgrounds. What is more, there is a big difference in their age and also in their intentions. For these reasons I wish to challenge the assumption that this is a genuine romance.
My aim is to point out how the profession and status of a governess at that time looked like to illustrate the class differences between Jane and Rochester and the social conventions of the Victorian era concerning courtship and marriage. Moreover, I want to distinguish between different concepts of love. In the next step, I want to sketch short pictures of the two characters, Jane and Rochester, concerning their attitudes towards life and relationships with the aim of exposing the difference in their social backgrounds and motives.
But the main focus of my term paper lies in the analysis of the love story between Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester. By reference to different scenes, I will demonstrate how severe the differences between these two characters actually are. Eventually, I will try to give an answer to the question whether the love story between Jane and Rochester can be considered a 'genuine romance', that is whether it can be read as a love story based on equally free decisions.
The governess was a profession created by the social alterations caused by the industrial revolution. Although she was hired as a status symbol by new middle-class families to teach their children, a governess was in fact little more than a domestic, working long hours for almost no money.
Jane is painfully aware of her poor circumstances and the tremendous improvement a situation as a governess would be over her position at Lowood, a step that doubles her salary and raises her social rank considerably. Jane also knows that her new position makes her very dependent on Mr.
Rochester, but that she also has the choice to leave Thornfield whenever she likes and advertise again. During the Victorian era it was usually the man who had to court the lady into marriage. Parents often regarded their girls as expensive, because they could not work in a profession due to social conventions and could thus not contribute to the family wealth. It was therefore often the aim of the father to dispose of the girls into marriage as soon as possible.
Young women were financially secured when they found gentlemen that would pay for their living. Women were thus very dependent on men and also often married older men who were not averse to marry young women.
I want to differentiate between three very different kinds of love affairs. At first, there is love for mere passion, just to answer the temptation.
A second type of love affair is marriage with the purpose to achieve better living conditions concerning money and social status. Last but not least, there is eternal love. That is when two lovers truly love each other with all their heart. These concepts are important to remember when analysing the love relationship between two characters. An orphan since early childhood, Jane feels exiled as a young girl.
Prior to the arrival of Mr. After supposedly Grace Poole sets Mr. It is evident from these lines that Mr. Jane too has a concealed love for Mr.
Rochester but when Mrs. Rochester yet refuses to allow herself those thoughts. Rochester develops two parts to his scheme to fool Jane into believing he intends to marry Blanche Ingram. First, he invites guests to Thornfield and also invites forces Jane to join his party in the drawing-room where he parades himself with Blanche in front of Jane. One instance is when Blanche and Mr.
Again, Mr. Rochester fails to express his true feelings for Jane. Strangely, Mr. Rochester disguises himself as a fortune teller to retrieve information from Jane and to reaffirm that he and Miss Ingram will marry.
Jane asks the fortune teller Mr. Rochester if the two are to be married and she in reality it is a he since it is Mr.
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