JANE EYREAn Amalgam of Genres

AUTHOR AND PUBLICATION• The Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Anne, and

Emily – all published writings under the pseudonyms Currer Bell, Acton Bell, and Ellis Bell.

• Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) was the first to achieve success and was widely popular, paving interest for her sisters’ works, especially Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

• While Jane Eyre enjoyed success, once it was speculated that the author was female, criticism arose that the novel was “course” or “improper,” but it still remained famous.

VICTORIAN ERA

• Population increase • Technology enhancements• Poor conditions• Periodicals/ newspapersLiterature during this time period• Emphasis on realistic portrayal of life

VICTORIAN/ROMANCE NOVEL

• Jane Eyre has qualities of typical Victorian novels: a focus on virtue and morality, overcoming one’s faults, evildoers coming to punishment, and goodness being rewarded. Most Dickens novels also fall in this category.

• It also fits the qualities of a Romance novel: lovers being destined for each other and passion.

WELL, SORT OF

• The typical heroine of a Victorian and/or Romance novel was almost always beautiful, and she used her beauty as a means of navigating her world and advancing her interests.

• Charlotte Brontë is said to have argued with her sister Emily that she could create a heroine as “plain and as small as myself.” Jane’s better qualities are not in her appearance but in her moral strength and passion.

BILDUNGSROMAN• Jane Eyre is definitely a bildungsroman

or novel of education/development.• The novel follows Jane from her

childhood to adulthood. • While it is typical in this sense, Jane

Eyre was groundbreaking in the heightened focus it places on Jane’s interior conflicts: moral, spiritual, and emotional. These had traditionally been considered the realm of poetry, not novels.

GOTHIC NOVEL

• Jane Eyre also borrows traits from the gothic novel, which began to become popular during the 18th and continuing into the 19th centuries.

• Other gothic works include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

TRAITS OF GOTHIC LITERATURE

• It is not exactly horror fiction; instead, it relies heavily on the power of the unseen and unknown to disturb the reader.

• It is a branch of Romanticism, which placed a heavy reliance on emotions.

• The name “gothic” comes from the architecture. This literature places an emphasis on atmosphere, developed through setting and diction, to create a feeling of unease and suspense.

GOTHIC SETTING AND TRAITS CONTINUED

• Qualities of gothic settings: unnaturally still and quiet, gloomy, spooky, cold, desolate, isolated, and containing secret passageways.

• The stories often have a preoccupation with madness or the disturbances of the human mind (Dark Romanticism).

• They can have supernatural elements, as well. Romantics strongly believed that not everything could be explained by reason alone.

“THE BLACK CAT”

• While Poe and Brontë are two totally different writers, they do share the qualities of gothic fiction.