Jane Eyre is an orphan being raised by Mrs. Reed, her cruel, rich aunt. One day Jane is published by her aunt for fighting with her cousin Jone Reed. Jane is locked into a red room, in which Jane’ uncle died. While licked in, Jane believed that she sees her uncle’s ghost. She screams and faint. After she wakes she finds herself is taken care if by Bessie, a servant, and Mr. Lloyd, a businessman. Mr. Lloyd suggests to Mrs. Reed that Jane be sent to school. To Jane’s delight, Mrs. Reed agreed. The life at Lowood School is not as good as Jane expect. The headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst is a cruel and unkind man. He is strict to his students with the school rules, while use the school’s funds to provide his family a rich life. At Lowood, Jane meets a young girl named Helen Burns and becomes her friend. Helen’s tolerant attitude toward the school’s misery is both helpful and displeasing to Jane. A massive disease sweeps Lowood, and Helen dies of it. The headmaster is taken place of because of his failure of taking effective measures to control the disease in school. So Jane’s life improves dramatically. She spends more years at Lowood, six as a student and two as a teacher. After teaching for two years, Jane wants to new experiences. She then accepts a family tutor job at a big house called Thornfield. There she teaches a lively French girl named Adele. Jane’s employer is an impassioned man names Rochester. Jane find herself fall in love with him. Jane becomes depress when she see Rochester bring home a beautiful but bad woman. Jane believes that Rochester will propose to the women, but to her surprised, Rochester propose to Jane, and Jane agrees. The wedding day arrives. When Jane and Mr. Rochester prepare to exchange their rings, a man comes and cried out that Rochester already has a wife. Rochester is very surprised, but he does net deny the man’ claim. He explains he does marry a women named Bertha when he is young, but Bertha has gone mad. He takes the wedding party back to Thornifield, and they witness the mad women, bertha, who is hidden on the third floor of the building. Knowing that it is impossible for her to stay with Rochester, jane escape from Thornfield. Jane can not get money so she beg for food and sleeps outdoors. At last she is saved by three persons, who are relatives and live together. On of them named John, who is a priest, find a job for Jane at a charity school in Morton. One day he tells Jane he is Jane’s cousin, and Jane’s uncle John Eyre has died and left her a large fortune: 200,000 pounds. Jane is very surprised and decides to share this fortune equally with her three found relatives. John decides to travel to India as a missionary and he asks Jane to go with him as his wife. Jane agrees to go to India but refuses to marry his cousin because she does not love him. Jane still remembers the man she loves very much-Rochester and hurries back to Thornfield. She finds that Thornfield has been burned to the ground by Bertha Mason, the mad women, who lost her life in the fire. Rochester does not die but lost his eyesight and one of his hands. Jane and Rochester rebuild their relationship at Ferndean, Rochester’s new residence, and soon they marry. At the end of the story, Jane describes that she lives a very happy life and after two years of blindness, Rochester regains sight in one eye and is able to hold their first son with left hand.
Motif of the story
This novel successfully builds an image of a woman-Jane Eyre, whose character develops from the beginning to the end in order to struggle with her fate. At the beginning, Jane has her own sense of dignity, her principle. But they are challenged over the course of the novel, and Jane must learn to balance the conflicts to survival. As an orphan when she is a child, Jane feel exiled, and the cruel treatment she receives from her aunt Reed and her cousin only makes her feeling even worse. She is afraid that she will never find a true sense of home or community. Jane feels she need to belong to somewhere to find “kin”, or at least “kindred spirits”. This desire drives her to find freedom and autonomy. In her search for freedom, Jane also struggles with the question what type of freedom she wants. When Rocheter offer her a chance to release her passion. Jane realizes that such freedom also means as a slave. John River offers Jane another kind of freedom under which Jane can behave on her principles but Jane still find be prisoned because she does not love John and does not want to always keep passion on her face. Through this novel Jane’s courage to find love and freedom can be traced everywhere, and the development of her character is the center of the novel. From she we can see a women who struggle with her fate and tries to find her self-worth and dignity.
Comment Jane Eyre is a very good novel. Charlotte Bronte successfully creates an image of a women with simple words and sentences. In the novel, Jane Eyre keeps fighting with her fate and never stops asking for freedom and independence. We can say Jane Eyre is a women of struggle. In the beginning of Jane Eyre, she struggle against Bessic, the nurse at Gateshead Hall, and says “I resisted all the way: a new thing for me… ”(chapter 2). This sentence indicates that through out Jane’s life, she has no other choice but fights with unfair treatment and resists unfair punishment. Also we can find out that Jane while seeks for freedom and independent, she also tries all means to find spiritual comfort. She doesn’t consider social class the barrier of her marriage, and bravely loves a man who is regarded with higher class than her, and eventually marry him. The man is Rochester. When Jane is settled to Lowood Institute she finds the enjoyment of expanding her own mind and talents. After she is engaged to Rochester she refuses to depend on him and his money. She does not want to be a servant of Rochester and tries to seek her own fortune. Jane is not as good as Rochester in terms of wealth. She has no wealth, family, social position and beauty, and Jane is not intelligent enough, but her kindles makes Rochester fall in love with her. Here we can see the resistance against class, not only from Rochester’s decision to marry Jane in spite of the disapproval come from his class, but also from Jane’ resistance against other people’s disapproval. And Jane also holds her self-respect, because she refuses to depend on Rochester, and when she finds out Rochester is already married, she chooses departures from him. We can see Jane has a strong belief of female independence. This is very precious at that time. Jane wants to travel and see more world and influence people she meets. When she appreciates her simple life at Tornfield, she feel guilty not to want to travel again. She relates her feeling to all women by saying: “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 brother do. They suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow mind in their more privileged fellow-creature to say that they ought to confine themselves to making pudding and knitting stockings, to playing in the piano and embroidering bags”. (chapter 12) Another point worth mentioned here is the religion. Jane is a strong believer of religion. When Jane is at Lowood she meets Helen Burns, the good and tolerant girl, whom Jane asks lots of questions about God and Heaven. This seems to begin Jane’s relationship with religion. Jane calls God after she finds Rochester has a wife. And turn to ask for help from God when she faces some problems she thinks she can do nothing. Here we can see a weak point in Jane’s character. She does not have strong sense of believing herself, although she always seeks for independence. And there is also a supernatural aspect in the novel. Jane hears Rochester calling her from afar. Later it is related that Rochester could also hear her reply. Jane feels she sees a ghost while she is locked in the red room. She takes it as a message from another world. All of this reflect the limitation of her at that time. But despite this, we also are impressed by Jane’s spirit, courage, and the determination of struggling against her fate.
