REVISING JANE EYRE

Jane Eyre was Charlotte Brontë’s second novel, but the first to be published. The first, The Professor, was rejected several times  by the publishers and was published posthumously. Jane Eyre, on the other hand, was accepted at once, favourably reviewed and recognised as something new in English fiction  -  it used traditional conventions in a very personal way. The strong autobiographical element is what typifies all her work and this novel in particular. In fact, Charlotte Brontë’s  fiction is best understood in the light of her personal background, as it is essentially  the expression of her passionate  temper and the imaginary world  in which  she lived.  The first-person  narrator, who in 18^th-century fiction was used to add the realism of narration, is used by Charlotte Brontë  to convey  personal feelings  in order that the narrator becomes directly identified with the author. This accounts  for the emotional use of language and reveals the strength of Charlotte Brontë’s feelings and her interest in the nature  of human relationships. She also employed Gothic conventions in a personal way, not just for the sake of arousing  a sense  of horror, but as a means of evoking feelings. The handling of nature  serves the same purpose.  The emotional use of  language, the symbolic handling of nature and the projection of personal feelings are features typical of Romantic poetry, but they appear  for the first time in serious  fiction  in the novels of  Charlotte Brontë. The Romantic aspect is also evident in the male protagonist of Jane Eyre  -  Rochester is a typical Byronic hero. Despite his stern manner and not particularly handsome appearance, he is very attractive to women, but restless and moody and with something mysterious about his past. 

You can read The Guardian review here.
Here you can read the novel.

https://webtv.loescher.it/home/zoomPublic?contentId=1682921

"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 brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags."

Charlotte Brontë