Jane Eyre Critical Quotes

J.E. as a novel, Vicky Simpson, 2008

The mix of the realist mode of autobiography with the supernatural world of folk and fairy tales' understood as 'a response to the constraints imposed on women in the early Victorian period, a kind of feminist "doubleness" that negotiates the space between realism and romance.

which religion shaped the 1840s + what did it promote.

Evangelical Anglicanism. Promoted female submission, and viewed female independence as morally dangerous. Example is the work of writer Hannah More, emphasised that the role of women was as mother, wives, and moral educators to their children in the home.

Vicky Simpson

2008

J.E. as a novel, Elizabeth Rigby, 1848, Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair

pre-eminently an antichristian composition

Elizabeth Rigby

Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair, 1848

J.E. as a novel, Anonymous Review in the Atlas, 1847

it has little or nothing of the old conventional stamp on it… it is full of youthful vigour, or freshness and originality

Anonymous Review in the Atlas

1847

Jane Eyre, Jennifer Gribble, 1968

questions the kind of dichotomy between inner experience and outer world

Jennifer Gribble

1968

Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Rigby, 1848

Jane Eyre is proud, and therefore she is ungrateful too

The orphan, John Mullen, 2012

the orphan above all is out of place

John Mullen

2012

bronte about readers and childhood, Sally Shuttleworth, 2015

Bronte clearly expected her readers to be on the side of her defiant child as she stands up to adult tyranny

Sally Shuttleworth

2015

childhood, Harriet Martineau, 1849, Household Education

Few parents know anything of the agonies of its little heart, the spasms of its nerves, the soul-sickness of its days, the horrors of its nights

Harriet Martineau

Household Education, 1849

chilhood and emotional suffering, Sally Shuttleworth, 2015

Children were not just blank slates until adulthood, but capable of even more intense emotional suffering than adults

Lowood, Gilbert and Gubar, 1979

orphan girls are starved and frozen into proper Christian submission

Gilbert and Gubar

1979

The Red Room, Helene Moglen, 1984

a terrifying womb world in which Jane loses her sense of boundaries of identity…. Thence is born into a new state of being

Helene Moglen

1984

The Red Room, Elaine Showalter, 1977

conveys Jane's transition from childhood to adulthood

Elaine Showalter

1977

Female Passion, Mary Eliott, 1820

What is so hateful to the sight, what can soon deform, features intended to delight, as passion's angry storm?

Mary Eliott

A poem titled ‘Passion’ from ‘Flowers of Instruction’, 1820

female sexuality, Elaine Showalter, 1977

'sexual appetite was considered one of the chief symptoms of moral insanity in women'

female sexuality, D.H. Lawrence, 1929

I find Jane Eyre verging towards pornography

D.H. Lawrence

1929

Bertha as a double, Gilbert and Gubar, 1979

Bertha is the 'the truest and darkest double' of Jane, 'the angry aspect of the orphan child'

Bertha, Elaine Showalter, 1977

'the incarnation of the flesh, of female sexuality in its most irredeemably bestial and terrifying form'

Bertha, Gilbert and Gubar, 1979

'Bertha's laugh is the voice of Jane's submerged and angry self, which lurks behind the bars of social restraint'

Mr Brocklehurst, Gilbert and Gubar, 1979

a black pillar of society and a large bad wolf

St John, Nicholas Johnson, 2000

Jane's passionate nature is nearly entrapped by St John's icy reason and self-control

Nicholas Johnson

2000

St John, Gilbert and Gubar, 1979

he has as an almost blatantly patriarchal name, one which recalls both the masculine abstraction of the gospel according to St John… and the disguised misogyny of St John the Baptist, whose patristic and evangelical contempt for the flesh manifested itself most powerfully in a profound contempt for the female

Rochester, Josie Billington, 2014

'the character of Rochester… does not simply reverse the terms of its Romantic prototype; rather the novel complicates and interrogates its model'

Josie Billington

2014

Rochester, Richard Chase, 1948

Rochester's injuries as 'a symbolic castration' for his earlier promiscuity

Richard Chase

1948

colonialism, Susan Meyer, 1990

Jane Eyre was written in an ideological context in which white women were frequently compared to people of non-white races, especially black, in order to emphasise the inferiority of both to white men

Susan Meyer

1990

colonialism and the attitudes of the british, Keunjeng Cho, 2003

Rochester illustrates 'the arrogant attitudes of the British' which are 'mingled with vulnerability and an inability to conquer the unruly madness of the choleric 'Negro' as well as the climate within a land which supposedly belongs under the flag of Empire'

colonialism and the West Indies as hell, Keunjeng Cho, 2003

Rochester offers a variety of associations between madness and 'impure' racial composition and reverts West Indian climate as a cultivating force of such madness, a kind of hell for the 'civilised' Englishman

Keunjeng Cho

2003

female relationships, angela andersson, 2011

Jane's longing for kinship causes her to try and find a substitute mother in first Bessie and then Miss Temple

Angela Andersson

2011

Miss Temple, Gilbert and Gubar, 1979

she is is even more house than angel, a beautiful set of marble columns designed to balance that bad pillar, Mr Brocklehurst

the governess, mary poovey, 1988

the proximity the governess bears to two of the most important Victorian representations of woman: the figure who epitomised the domestic ideal, and the figure who threatened to destroy it

mary poovey

1988

class, susan meyer, 1990

the plot of Jane Eyre works towards a redistribution of power and wealth but… its revolution improves only the lot of the middle class, closing out the working class

identity, adrienne rich, 1979

Jane returns of her own free choice and because of her belief that she can become a wife without sacrificing a gran of her Jane Eyre-ity

adrienne rich

1979

religion, Charlotte Bronte

conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion

freedom, john mullan, 2016

Jane's dissatisfaction is magnificent - a deep hunger for warmth and love, but even more for truth and freedom

john mullan

2016

freedom, helen dunmore, 2016

Jane repudiates the idea that women's mental capacities are less than those of men. She would rather live alone than accept a relationship that compromises her independence

Helen Dunmore

2016

Rochester, Richard Chase

his being maimed is a symbolic castration for his earlier promiscuity

Terry Eagleton

Jane represents the triumph of conscience over passion

what happened in 1818

thomas bowdler edited shakespeare to make it more morally appropriate