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Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
$8.08 - Free shipping worldwide (to United States and
all these other countries) Usually dispatched within 48 hours | |Short Description for Jane EyreOrphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds a position as governess at Thornfield Hall. But when she finds love with her sardonic employer, Rochester, the discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a choice.
Full description- Publisher: PENGUIN CLASSICS
- Published: 01 November 2006
- Format: Paperback 624 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Classics
- ISBN 13: 9780141441146 ISBN 10: 0141441143
- Sales rank: 5,950
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Reviews for Jane Eyre
- Top review
One of the most passionate, intense heroines - and novels! - of 19th century literature
It's incredible to think or imagine that, of the two most intense, passionate heroines of 19th century literature, both would be written by sisters of the same family. But this is, indeed, the case. With Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. You are drawn into a first person narrative that. from the start., is compelling and becomes more disturbing and troubling. Many things have been written about Jane Eyre as a character, but to me there is no doubt that her intense character compels you to understand very specific and certain imperatives (nowadays described as feminist - then, Bronte was alone in imaginging it). In other words, her views are akin to: Be yourself, cope with circumstances, but don't give in to compromise that will drag your own personality down to nothingness; speak up in situations involving the most appalling difficulties, when it matters; assert your independence of heart and mind; maintain your integrity and self-respect against the odds.
The 19th century was a deeply moralistic society, at least on the surface, but one within and beneath which women as such had no identity or power beyond certain circumscribed roles (governess, wife, spinster, etc.). With Jane, you have a particular set of codes of behaviour that are radically established and are uncompromising about the male-dominated status quo: to cope with all circumstances without significant protest; not to give in to compromise that will drag your own personality down to nothingness; to speak up in situations involving the most appalling difficulties, when it matters; don't give in to compromise that will drag your own personality down to nothingness; ultimately, remain true to yourself. Such coda are radical not only in 19th century literature, but all literature before.
Jane Eyre as a novel signposted a revolution in terms of fiction writing and, in particular, challenged and questioned traditional attitudes and thinking about women and gave women an independency of voice and thought, and passionate determinism, not previously displayed. The only other novel that is as passionate, and as determined in thinking of the singular female self as Jane Eyre, is Emily Bronte's novel, Wuthering Heights, and her character, Catherine Earnshaw; yet Jane Eyre remains, through her novel, uncompromised of her own integrity and character, despite her circumstances et al. Catherine, according to Emily's narrative, is never given such a choice, or options of such freedom, i.e. independent female thinking.
Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is an astonishing novel: besides Wuthering Heights, by her sister Emily, it is one of the most passionate, intense, uncompromising, painful, and beautifully and intensely emotionally sustained novels of all literature. An astonishing achievement, irrespective of genre, author or century. by Robert White
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