Mary Ellen Snodgrass - CliffsNotes on Brontes Jane Eyre

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Jacobson, Ph.D., Karin.

CliffsNotes Jane Eyre / Karin
Jacobson, Ph.D.
p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-7645-8589-4 (alk. paper)

1. Bront, Charlotte, 18161855. Jane EyreExaminationsStudy guides. I. Title: Jane Eyre. II. Title

PR4167.J5 J34 2000

823'.8dc21 00-0038846

CIP

eISBN 978-0-544-18234-9
v1.0713

About the Author

Karin Jacobson received her Ph.D. in English from The Ohio State University and currently teaches English and Composition at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

Publishers Acknowledgments

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Editorial Administrator: Michelle Hacker

Glossary Editors: The editors and staff of
Websters New World Dictionaries

CliffsNotes Jane Eyre supplements the original work, giving you background information about the author, an introduction to the novel, a graphical character map, critical commentaries, expanded glossaries, and a comprehensive index. CliffsNotes Review tests your comprehension of the original text and reinforces learning with questions and answers, practice projects, and more. For further information on Charlotte Bront and Jane Eyre, check out the CliffsNotes Resource Center.

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At age twenty, Charlotte Bront sent a sample of her poetry to Englands Poet Laureate, Robert Southey. His comments urged her to abandon all literary pursuits: Literature cannot be the business of a womans life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. His response indicates the political difficulties women faced as they tried to enter the literary arena in Victorian England; domestic responsibilities were expected to require all their energy, leaving no time for creative pursuits. Despite a lack of support from the outside world, Charlotte Bront found sufficient internal motivation and enthusiasm from her sisters to become a successful writer and balance her familial and creative needs.

Born at Thornton, Yorkshire on April 21, 1816, Charlotte was the third child of Patrick Bront and Maria Branwell. In 1820, her father received a curate post in Haworth, a remote town on the Yorkshire moors, where Charlotte spent most of her life. In 1821, Mrs. Bront died from what was thought to be cancer. Charlotte and her four sisters, Maria, Elizabeth, Emily and Anne, and their brother, Branwell, were raised primarily by their unpleasant, maiden aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, who provided them with little supervision. Not only were the children free to roam the moors, but their father allowed them to read whatever interested them: Shakespeare, The Arabian Nights, Pilgrims Progress, and the poems of Byron were some of their favorites.

When a school for the daughters of poor clergymen opened at Cowan Bridge in 1824, Mr. Bront decided to send his oldest four daughters there to receive a formal education. Most biographers argue that Charlottes description of Lowood School in Jane Eyre accurately reflects the dismal conditions at this school. Charlottes two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died in 1824 of tuberculosis they contracted due to the poor management of the school. Following this tragedy, Patrick Bront withdrew Charlotte and Emily from Cowan Bridge.

Grieving over their sisters deaths and searching for a way to alleviate their loneliness, the remaining four siblings began writing a series of stories, The Glass-Town, stimulated by a set of toy soldiers their father had given them. In these early writings, the children collaboratively created a complete imaginary world, a fictional West African empire they called Angria. Charlotte explained their interest in writing this way: We were wholly dependent on ourselves and each other, on books and study, for the enjoyments and occupations of life. The highest stimulus, as well as the liveliest pleasure we had know from childhood upwards, lay in attempts at literary composition. Through her early twenties, Charlotte routinely revised and expanded pieces of the Angria story, developing several key characters and settings. While this writing helped Charlotte improve her literary style, the Angria adventures are fantastical, melodramatic, and repetitive, contrasting with Charlottes more realistic adult fiction.