The Gothic Elements in Jane Eyre

Abstract:Jane Eyre is considered as a realistic novel with Romanticism. The author Charlotte Bronte built a new woman fighting for the independence and equality in a patriarchal society in the novel. However, another very important factor that makes Jane Eyre a great work is the Gothic elements in Jane Eyre. The article briefly discusses the Gothic features through analyzing several extracts in the novel.

Key words:Jane Eyre; the Gothic elements; Charlotte Bronte

中图分类号： H319 文献标识码： A文章编号：1672-1578（2012)02-0010-02

1 A brief introduction of the Gothic novels

The word “Gothic” came from the name of a Germanic tribe. Goth was famous for their barbaric and brave character. Later, the word “Goth” was used to name a kind of architecture style in Medieval Age, which was featured by pointed arches, heavy walls, dark rooms, terrible paths, etc. Under the influence of some philosophers in Renaissance, the word “Gothic” was used to mean wild, barbarous, crude, mystery, dark times, medieval, etc. In the middle of 18th century, the word began to be used to describe a new kind of novel. By the 1790s, the Gothic novels had been established formally as a literature genre and developed into a literary trend in England as well as other countries in Europe and American. Thus the 1790s was called the “Gothic Decade” in history.

The early Gothic novels were usually set in the past times, most often the medieval times and in foreign countries, particularly the countries of southern Europe. The stories took place in temples, castles, prisons and so on. The themes mainly disclosed the evil and dark side of human beings by describing the fight for heirdom and the hostility of families. The plots contained unreal, supernatural, violent and terrible elements. (Liu 12-16) However, Charlotte Bronte does not just imitate the Gothic tradition; instead, she uses this form innovatively to describe the romantic story occurring in her times.

2 A brief introduction of Jane Eyre and its author

Charlotte’s works are all about the struggle of an individual consciousness towards self-realization, about some lonely and neglected young women with a fierce longing for love, understanding and a full, happy life. In her mind, man’s life is composed of perpetual battle between sin and virtue, good and evil. All her heroines’ highest joy arises from some sacrifice of self or some human weakness overcome. She is a writer of realism combined with romanticism. On one hand, she presents a vivid realism picture of the English society by exposing the cruelty, hypocrisy and other evils of the upper classes, and by showing the misery and suffering of the poor. On the other hand, her writings are marked throughout by an intensity of vision and passion. Jane Eyre: It is noted for its sharp criticism of the existing society. The success of the novel is also due to its introduction to the English novel the first governess heroine. The vivid description of her intense feelings and her thought and inner conflicts brings her to the heart of the audience.

Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage. She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. All of which circumscribe her life and position when she becomes governess to the daughter of the mysterious, sardonic and attractive Mr. Rochester. However, there is great kindness and warmth in this epic love story, which is set against the magnificent backdrop of the Yorkshire moors.

Jane Eyre was published in 1847, and this great work brought fame to Charlotte Bronte making her known by the world. Jane Eyre is in the form of a fictional autobiography, with some authentic personal experiences, especially in the earlier chapters. This novel brings up the question of women’s independence and the equality between men and women through the life experience of the heroine, Jane. The story is told in the first person, and the narrator’s personality is not just a window through which the events are seen, but it also defines the quality of the events.

The author Charlotte Bronte extracted a full measure of suspense and horror from the conventional machinery of Gothic and surpassed it. But what makes you impressed is the supernatural things and the dark sides of human beings, which are the typical features of Gothic. Although she uses this Gothic technique to dramatize the story and expresses her emotions perfectly, yet she goes further than the Gothic tradition. Because of these, Jane Eyre shows the unique and everlasting artistic fascination in the world literature for a long time.

3 The Gothic Elements in Jane Eyre

The Gothic novels were very influential at Charlotte Bronte’s time and they“besides influencing Romantic poets, but also 〔influence〕the Bronte sisters and other novelists in 19th century.”(Cecil 44) From the below we can see the Gothic Elements in Jane Eyre.

The plots in Jane Eyre disclose the Gothic Elements. The heroine, Jane Eyre, lived together with her aunt after the death of her parents. She was tortured and suffered a lot there, but she was self-independent and rebellious. Later she was sent to a boarding school where she received education, while in fact that school was something like a prison especially for keeping orphans. Eight years later, she was employed to St. Field as a governess. Before long, she fell in love with the owner of St. Field, Mr. Rochester. At the moment when they were holing a wedding ceremony in church, truth was told by the brother of Rochester’s wife, who was mad because of inheritance and was confined to the attic of St. Field. On the other hand, she thought they were coming from rather different family and living background, and they couldn’t marry. So she went away regardless of Rochester’s love. She was later saved by St. John, who was a priest and decided to devote himself to religion. St. John hoped Jane could marry him and went far away together with him to help those who needed help. However, Jane refused since she still couldn’t forget Rochester. With the love towards Rochester she returned to St. Field finding everything was fired to the ground. Rochester’s wife set fire to the whole fazenda with herself death in the fire. Rochester not only lost everything in the big fire, but also became blind and lost one arm. While Jane still loved him and finally they got married. The whole process of the heroine’s growth was focused on several plots. And in each plot the gloomy, horror atmosphere and some supernatural things happened. For example in chapter 20, there is a description: “I had forgotten to draw my curtain …Good God! What a cry!…a sharp, shrilly sound that ran from the end to end of Thornfield Hall…” (Bronte 194) *

The villain hero in Jane Eyre discloses the Gothic Elements. From the first time Jane Eyre was introduced to the hero Mr. Rochester, he was described as a villain hero:

“Here is Miss Eyre, sir,” said Mrs. Fairfax, in her quiet way. He bowed, still not taking his eyes from the group of the dog and child. “Let Miss Eyre be seated,” said he: and there was something in the forced stiff bow, in the impatient yet formal tone, which seemed further to express, “What the deuce is it to me whether Miss Eyre be there or not? At this moment I am not disposed to accost her.”…(111)

The images in Jane Eyre disclose the Gothic Elements. In the novel, the author uses the images of ice and fire. They are used not only to serve for the characters’ mood and to roast the atmosphere, but also glamorize the Gothic atmosphere. For example, when Jane was hopeless and desolate, the image of ice appears (411times’appearence in the novel, though not all of them are images); when the hero and heroine fought against the unequal social systems, the image of fire appears (145times’appearence in the novel, though not all of them are images).

4 Conclusion

From the above analyses, we can see that Jane Eyre contains a lot of Gothic elements. And the Gothic elements makes the novel unique and great. Jane Eyre became one of the greatest literary works and the author Charlotte Bronte is one of the most skillful writers.

*The following quotations of the book will be thereafter in page number only.

Works Cited：

[1]Liu Jia.On the Inheritance and Improvement of Gothic Tradition in Wuthering Heights[J]. Journal of Language Studies 12(2006): 12-16.

[2]Cecil, David. Early Victorian Novelists[M]. London: Constable& Co. Ltd, 1962.

[3]Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre[M]. Guangzhou: Guangzhou Press, 2006.

[4]Liu Bingshan, Luo Yimin, eds. An annotated anthology of English literature[M]. Henan People’s Press, 2006.

[5]Wu Weiren. History and Anthology of English Literature[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000.

作者简介：张艳（1982-），女，湖北省公安县人，硕士，讲师，研究方向：英语教学研究，语言学与应用语言学研究。