Jane Eyre: by Charlotte Brontë 2 - THEMES

Jane Eyre: by Charlotte Brontë 2 - THEMES

    Jane Eyre: by Charlotte Brontë 2 - THEMES

MARRIAGE

                   In Jane Eyre, marriage is about a combination of three things: the dynamic trio of compatibility, passion, and ethics.

This novels shows us that marriage only works between like-minded individuals with similar attitudes and outlooks on life. Inequalities of class background or financial situation are no biggie, but characters who marry solely for wealth or status are totally doomed. But a marriage has to have more than common ground; it has to have passion. Characters who try to match themselves up based on rational criteria sin against their own natures... as do characters who try to claim that marriage and love are the same thing.

EDUCATION

                        You won't ever find Jane Eyre chanting "We don't need no education." She not only needs it; she wants it.

In Jane Eyre, education provides the only route for someone who isn’t independently wealthy to improve their character and prospects—it allows social mobility. The "education" we’re talking about in this novel, however, is mostly aesthetic; characters learn basic music performance, basic artistic skills, and a little bit of foreign language. It’s enough to make them seem cultured, but not to make them actually useful for anything except teaching music, art, and foreign language. Education is also a safe haven, something that provides emotional satisfaction in a protected space separate from the hardships of the world.

APPEARANCES

                    Appearances are almost always inversely related to the actual nature of the characters in Jane Eyre. Beautiful women turn out to be scheming harpies or selfish idiots; plain women turn out to have hidden depths of passion; ugly men aren’t actually ugly, but excitingly masculine in a harsh, craggy way.

Virtuous characters resist having their appearances radically changed or improved because doing so seems like pretending to be something they aren't. In contrast, characters who let themselves get obsessed with keeping external appearances plain and modest are distracted from deeper spiritual truths and often turn out to be hypocritical anyway.

SOCIETY AND CLASS

                      Jane Eyre (the novel, not the character) looks down its nose in disgust at the existing Victorian class hierarchy. The characters who are most interested in the trappings of wealth and status are hypocritical or morally misguided, but characters who take poverty on themselves to demonstrate their great moral natures are also mocked.

Instead of the normal class structures, Jane Eyre implies that poverty can be thoroughly respectable, as long as it’s accompanied by an earnest desire to better oneself—or at least to earn one’s keep. Of course, it’s easy to value poverty and hard work when, in the end, all the right people get the money.

THE SUPERNATURAL

                  There are very few things in Jane Eyre that are actually supernatural, but the supernatural is still a major theme in this novel. How can that be? Over and over, events that seem eerie, uncanny, Gothic, or supernatural will be explained away by rational circumstances.

But here’s the kicker: those rational explanations will turn out to be far more sinister than anything otherworldly. We’d tell you more, but we don’t want to spoil it. Oh, and those few things that are actually supernatural? Well, they add an interesting layer of ambiguity to the novel at the very beginning and the very end.

MORALITY AND ETHICS

                  In the strictest sense, Jane Eyre is all about morality—in fact, it’s close to being didactic (it's as if Brontë was trying to teach her readers about ethics). Characters seem to have an innate sense of right and wrong, and it isn’t difficult to tell what decision to make in an ethical crisis.

It is, however, super difficult for these characters to make ethical choices in a world where morality and passion seem to be mutually exclusive. Characters must choose between being right and being happy. Luckily, in the end, circumstances will conspire to get all the ethical obstacles out of the way so that we can have the happy ending we’ve been craving.

FOREIGNNESS AND "THE OTHER"

                Foreignness and "The Other" are uber-complex themes in Jane Eyre. The novel depends heavily on the relationship between England, at the center, and a variety of other places and groups: colonial holdings, continental nations, missionary outposts, and even Asian stereotypes.

England and Englishness are both strengthened and threatened by each of these factors, and the ability to move between the foreign and the domestic is an opportunity for financial and personal gain—but also a chance for contamination, threats, fear, or prejudice. Even characters who seem to be at the very center of England and the very center of the novel can easily be made to seem foreign and out of place.

THE HOME

              In one sense, Jane Eyre is about the quest of an orphan girl for a home. In this novel, home isn’t just where you hang your hat—it has to be somewhere that you not only feel comfortable and safe, but also have loving relationships with other people.

It’s even possible for characters to be metaphorically homeless here even though they’ve lived in the same place their whole lives. It’s also possible for characters to have more than one home because they have different family and romantic relationships that create several comfortable refuges for them.

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