Shmoop - Jane Eyre: An Autobiography

So, this is a novel about a woman named Jane Eyre, and it's titled Jane Eyre. Seems pretty obvious, that one. But think about this for a second: the novel itself is Jane Eyre, but the main character is Jane Eyre, so we're going to get confused a lot about whether we're talking about the whole book or just the character. This confusion isn't accidental: this novel (like most novels named for the hero or heroine) is all about the ways in which the main character is and isn't the same as the book that bears her name.
And what about that name - "Jane Eyre"? The "Jane" part makes us think "plain Jane" - it's an everyday, basic sort of name, not flowery, not snazzy; it fades into the background, which is something Jane's going to try to do a lot - or at least she'll claim that's what she wants to do. And what about her last name, "Eyre"? That's not a name we've heard anywhere else. It's usually pronounced "air," by the way, suggesting airy-fairy sorts of qualities - and Rochester frequently accuses Jane of being like a sprite or a fairy or some other supernatural creature. Maybe it also suggests someone who "gives herself airs," someone snooty, uppity, or haughty, which is how the other servants in Rochester's household, like Mrs. Fairfax, seem to perceive Jane - as someone "with her nose in the air." You also might be tempted to pronounce Jane's last name as "ear," like the thing on the side of your head, and Jane is going to do a lot of listening and eavesdropping and being a sounding board.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves; if you want to know more about Jane, head over to the "Character Clues" section and read about her there. Right now we're thinking about that subtitle, An Autobiography. After all, this isn't Charlotte Bront's autobiography. It's not even Currer Bell's autobiography. (See "Brain Snacks" for more on the pseudonym "Currer Bell.") But the novel is Jane's own retelling of her life story to the reader (see "Narrator Point of View"). In fact, Charlotte Bront uses a lot of her own life experience to make Jane a rounded character - Charlotte, like Jane, taught at an unpleasant girls' boarding school, for example - and the book really toes the line between autobiography and fiction. So, not only is Jane Eyre going to make us think about the relationship between the protagonist and the text itself - are we talking about Jane Eyre or Jane Eyre? - it's also going to make us think about the relationship between the protagonist and the author.
All that from just the four words of the title! Think what'll happen when we actually analyze all 38 chapters! We don't know about you, but we can't wait.

Strangely, Jane Eyre doesn't end with Jane Eyre herself. Oh, sure, at the beginning of the last chapter, we get that famous line, "Reader, I married him" (3.12.1), and we're excited that we finally get to have the wedding that Jane was denied at the end of Volume II. But the novel seems to be pretty much over the whole wedding thing by this point; after just a few understated paragraphs where Jane tells us about how Rochester's servants take this news, it's suddenly ten years later, Rochester has gotten his sight back, he and Jane chat all the time, and "perfect concord is the result" (3.12.13). Hooray, a happy ending. But what Jane's really concerned with telling us at the end isn't how her story ended - it's about what happened to lots of the other characters, especially, for some weird reason, St. John Rivers.
St. John Rivers - remember him? The intensely, not to say obsessively, religious cousin who wants to marry Jane, teach her Hindustani, and take her with him on a missionary trip to India? And she's just about willing to go for the last two ideas, but the first one is