Jane Eyre: The Best Brontë Novel?

The Book Club

The hosts explore the enduring legacy of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, examining its plot, characters, and historical context. They delve in

Key takeaways

• Charlotte Brontë published Jane Eyre under the pseudonym Currer Bell to avoid gender bias.
• The character of Mr. Rochester is believed by some to be inspired by Charlotte's relationship with Constantin Heger.

Main topics

• Charlotte Brontë's biography
• Plot and character analysis of Jane Eyre

Notable quotes

It is one of the best books in the English language.

Conclusion

A deep dive into a classic that reveals how personal tragedy and liter

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This episode is brought to you by Klarna. Tabby, as I was saying to you the other day, I Speaker 3 (0:06) don't get to do as much daydreaming as I used to. I used to go into these great reveries when I'd come up with my best ideas. I don't have a chance anymore because I spend so much time doing my life admin. It's the same for you, isn't it? You Speaker 1 (0:17) know, I used to spend a lot of time rewriting my favourite books so that I would get the endings that I'd always hoped for. Speaker 3 (0:24) But you know how you can get that time back, Tabby? I've started using Klarna to handle my real-world money. admin. And that gives me the headspace for the more important things like thinking about books. Because Speaker 1 (0:34) their app lets you view all your finances in one place. You can set budgets, stay on top of reminders and manage your payments. So you don't have to worry about any plot holes. And Speaker 3 (0:46) you know the other thing about the app, when you shop through the app, you unlock exclusive deals and you can get cash back on things that you are going to buy anyway. Speaker 1 (0:55) Download the Klarna app so you can stay on top of your money and think about, well, anything else. Klarna balance account required to receive cash back points. Limitations, terms and conditions apply. Speaker 1 (1:16) Just then it seemed my chamber door was touched, as if fingers had swept the panels, engroping away along the dark gallery outside. I said, who was there? Nothing answered. I was chilled with fear. This was a demonic laugh, low, suppressed and deep, uttered as it seemed at the very keyhole of my chamber door. I thought at first the goblin laughter stood at my bedside, or rather crouched by my pillow. But I rose, looked round and could see nothing. While, as I still gazed, the unnatural sound was reiterated. Something gurgled and moaned. I hurried on my frock and shawl. I withdrew the bolt and opened the door with a trembling hand. There was a candle burning just outside and on the matting in the gallery. I was surprised at this circumstance, but still more was I amazed to perceive the air quite dim, as if filled with smoke. And while looking to the right hand and left to find whence these blue wreaths issued, I became further aware of a strong smell of burning. Something creaked. It was a door ajar, and that door was Mr. Rochester's, and the smoke rushed in a cloud from thence. Tongues of flame darted round the bed. The curtains were on fire in the midst of blaze and vapour. Mr. Rochester lay stretched, motionless in deep sleep. Wake, wake, I cried. Speaker 3 (2:37) In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre? What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you plotted to drown Speaker 5 (2:47) me? Speaker 3 (2:48) Well, hello Speaker 2 (2:50) everybody. Speaker 3 (2:50) So that was Charlotte Bronte's great book, Jane Eyre, which was published on the 19th of October, 1847, published not by Charlotte Bronte at the time, but by the male nom de plume or pseudonym Curra Bell. It was enormously controversial when it was published. Some people, like the great novelist Thackeray, loved it. A lot of critics thought it was shocking. subversive, a challenge to the morality and to the principles of Victorian Britain. But it caused such a sensation, it accelerated the publication of Charlotte's sister Emily's book, Wuthering Heights. And of course, Wuthering Heights is the book with which, Tabby, we began this podcast. Speaker 1 (3:30) It's the original friend of the show. Speaker 3 (3:32) It is, exactly. So Jane Eyre, I think perhaps even more than Wuthering Heights, is seen as one of the canonical... books the towering heights of Victorian literature indeed perhaps all English literature I think it's one of the best books in the English language Betray My Hand Right at the beginning that's Speaker 1 (3:50) a hot take out the gates well Speaker 3 (3:51) it's not a controversial take I think loads of critics would agree it's one of the most intriguing the most ambiguous, fascinating, endlessly readable books ever written. And so much to discuss in this episode. So the life of Charlotte Bronte and indeed the Bronte family, which we talked about a bit before with Wuthering Heights, but Charlotte's quite a different character from Emily. Totally. The origins of Jane Eyre, the publication of the book, then these two incredible characters, Jane herself, one of the most distinctive narrators in all fiction, and her love interest, her master, her friend, employer, and her kind of sexual object. Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester, of course, has this dark secret in the shadows, which we have a hint of there in the introduction, and we'll be unravelling some of Mr. Rochester's secrets, and indeed, all the stuff about sexuality and race and empire and all of this that lies behind the book. The politics of the book, which was seen as very shocking indeed, incendiary at the time, and of course, whether it deserves its status as one of literature's great romances, because that relationship, Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre is one that has absolutely captivated millions of readers down the generations. So Tabby, I've already betrayed my hand and said how good I think this book is. What do you make of it? You Speaker 1 (5:06) said that it has this reputation for being possibly one of the great romances. So when I first read it, I was about, I don't know, 12 maybe. I remember I was reading it in year eight and I'd already fallen in love with Wuthering Heights, which I thought was so romantic and passionate. So I really liked Jane Eyre. But I didn't love it because I wasn't, I didn't think it was that romantic. I didn't find it as emotionally charged. That impression has totally transformed over the years. To betray myself as well, I think it is a work of absolute... genius. We were talking before we did this episode about how in awe we were of this book. So hopefully over the course of the episode, people will come to see why we think that. But very briefly, let's get into the plot. So as you said, Jaina is written in the early Victorian era, but it's actually set in an earlier period. It's looking back. Speaker 3 (5:51) Like Wuthering Heights. Speaker 1 (5:52) Like Wuthering Heights, exactly. You know, in that way, it's almost retro. Jaina is an orphan. She's raised by her horrible aunt, Mrs. Reed, and surrounded by cousins that hate her. And she's treated cruelly from a very young age. Then when she's 10, she is sent off to this awful puritanical school called Lowood, run by this hypocritical clergyman called Mr. Brocklehurst. And I think this is a part of the book that so many people remember when they think of Jane Eyre, because the conditions are appalling. The girls are beaten, they have their hair chopped off. But it is there that Jane forms a very close friendship with a girl called Helen Burns, who's almost angelic in her goodness. Speaker 3 (6:30) Yeah, like a martyr, saintly martyr, isn't she? Speaker 1 (6:33) Like a martyr. Exactly. And she ends up dying of typhoid when she's a little girl. But Jane stays at the school and becomes a teacher. And then at 18, she decides that she needs to spread her wings. She needs to do something more. She's grown restless. So she gets a job as a private governess for a little French girl called Adele, who is the ward of the mysterious Mr. Rochester, who she doesn't meet for quite some time. But he's the master of this vast, gloomy house called Thornfield Hall. And as you will have already noticed from that opening reading, strange things happen here. Footsteps at night, laughter in the shadows, fires. No one knows why. Speaker 3 (7:09) Yeah, so there's a hint of the sort of, of the gothic about this, which we will come back to. So Speaker 2 (7:13) we've been through the initial Speaker 3 (7:14) stage with the Reed family. Then we've been to the school with the Lowoods. And then the heart of the book, the bit that most people do remember the most is the relationship with Mr. Rochester. As you say, they don't... meet for some time. She meets him when he's falling off his horse and she helps him. He is her master. She calls him master. Maybe we'll come back to this about the different meanings of this. Speaker 1 (7:34) Yeah, erotically Speaker 3 (7:34) charged. Very erotically charged. And over time, she develops feelings for him, which she begins, I think, to admit to herself. She sort of struggles with them, but she's reasonably open with us. the readers, I think. Speaker 1 (7:47) Well, she's remarkably self-knowing, Jane. She Speaker 3 (7:50) is, Speaker 5 (7:50) exactly. Speaker 3 (7:51) Now, Mr. Rochester appears to have interests elsewhere. So there's a local beauty called Blanche Ingram as part of a sort of posh set that Mr. Rochester associates with. Speaker 1 (8:01) She's such a pick-me-girl, you know. She says all the things that she thinks the boys would like. Speaker 3 (8:07) Blanche, yeah, completely. She's Speaker 1 (8:09) very Caroline Bingley from Pride and Prejudice, if anyone has read that. Speaker 3 (8:12) And her milieu, they're a group, they're a load of people who, I mean, we're very familiar with in the show, Tabby. They're the red trouser brigade of the local area. They Speaker 1 (8:21) totally are. They love Paul Zeph. Speaker 3 (8:24) Totally. They are massively Gillian Courtesy wearing. Anyway, they turn up. Jane is very worried that Mr. Rochers... is going to marry Blanche. There's a great twist here. There are also strange things that are happening. So for example, at one point, Mr. Rochester has this mysterious guest to come and stay. And this guest overnight is attacked and bitten, isn't he? And Jane doesn't know why. Anyway, this is hanging there in the background. Mysterious goings on. A wonderful scene, actually. I think one of the great chapters in English literature when basically Mr. Rochester says to her, I've been messing with you. I've been, you know, I actually don't love this blanching room at all and these red trouser people. Speaker 1 (9:03) Yeah, I've been playing hard to get. Speaker 3 (9:05) Yeah, it's actually you that I love and I want to marry you. And it's a wonderful, wonderful scene. Them walking in the gardens. One of the most beautifully written, I think, scenes in all English literature. Speaker 1 (9:14) It's meltingly romantic, actually, I think. Speaker 3 (9:17) And they're going to get married. She can't believe it. The other servants are sort of stunned. And some of them seem, you know, the way they react. Slightly worries her and we'll of course discover why because when she turns up to marry him or on the wedding day dawns... Speaker 1 (9:34) Literally the wedding day. I mean, every bride's worst nightmare as I can attest. You know, apart from maybe turning up Speaker 3 (9:42) and saying that my groom is dressed as one of the creatures from Wind in the Willows. It's Mr Toad combing his hair. Yeah, Speaker 1 (9:48) exactly. But she gets to the altar and then, you know, that moment where it's like, does anyone object to this union? And then a voice at the back says yes. And it turns out, shockingly, that Mr. Rochester is already married. Who is his wife? Well, we will not be revealing yet. We'll be revealing after the break. But suffice to say that she's one hell of a love rival. But after this, I mean, Jane is shattered and I find this. There are these passages when she's sort of in her bedroom, paralysed by grief, but holds herself together and Mr. Rochester begs her to remain. As his mistress. As his mistress. A very shocking thing for this period. But she holds firm and she runs away. You know, she's reduced to wandering around the moors, begging penniless. Speaker 3 (10:31) Totally penniless, yeah. Speaker 1 (10:32) She's begging for crusts Speaker 3 (10:33) of Speaker 1 (10:33) bread, practically. She gets very, very ill, but she's taken in by the Rivers family. St. John Rivers is the local curate. And she goes on to... discovered that they are in fact, quite improbably, her cousins. Speaker 3 (10:45) What are the chances? Speaker 1 (10:46) What are the chances? But she also, along the way, comes into a great fortune. So Jane has been penniless all her life and suddenly she's an heiress. And then St. John Rivers, who I have quite a low opinion of, but he asked Jane to marry him and travel to India with him as a missionary's wife. So what will she do? Will she return to Mr. Rochester? Will she travel to India and all likely, all possibility die? We won't reveal until much later on in this episode. Now, it is, as we have said, a very dramatic Gothic book in so many ways. But actually, in Jaina herself, the character, there's a lot that's drawn from her creator, from Charlotte Bronte. And the journalist Erin Blackmore describes her as arresting and complex, passionate. deeply intelligent, outspoken and charmingly unaffected, which is all very Jane. And I think before we get into Charlotte and her life, for anyone that loves the Brontes or loves their work, as I do, it's hard to understand just how kind of quiet and isolated and lonely their lives were, particularly when we're all acquainted with the myth of them on the Moors, but also how well read they were. So let's get into them because they were, in spite of how they are overly mythologized, they are unusually dogged by tragedy. wouldn't you say? They Speaker 3 (11:55) are indeed. They are. So we talked to them a bit when we did Wuthering Heights, our very first episode. And Tabby, you and I got loads of grief from the listeners for mispronouncing the name of... Speaker 1 (12:04) No, I got loads of grief from listeners. Speaker 3 (12:07) I know, but I feel really responsible because we were discussing how to pronounce it and I said, I'm sure it's Hayworth. And actually it's Howarth. Speaker 1 (12:13) I very much left this portion of the notes to you, Dominic, because I just don't want to come under fire again. I don't want the East of Eden treatment. Speaker 3 (12:20) This is like a massive trauma for you. Anyway, so Charlotte Bronte is the third of six children. to remind people born to Patrick Bronte and Maria Bronwell in this Yorkshire village of Thornton. And when she's four, they moved to Parsonage at Speaker 2 (12:33) Howarth Speaker 3 (12:33) on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors. And Patrick has got basically a full-time job there. Now, Patrick is an extraordinary character. We talked about him in the Wuthering Heights episode. He is eccentric. He's very bad tempered. He's very domineering. But he's a remarkable man because he was born into a very poor rural family in Ireland. And then he sort of dragged himself to the brink of the gentry through education, through brains. He started his own school. He went to Cambridge. He Speaker 1 (13:00) started his own school at 16, by the way. At the age of 16, I was kind of mid-Babylonian captivity. schools was not something I would have been capable of. So that's quite something. From Speaker 3 (13:10) all that one hears about your school days, Tabby, you would not be. Too busy Speaker 1 (13:15) climbing up flagpoles. Right, Speaker 3 (13:17) exactly. It's interesting. Jane calls Mr. Rochester master. And there's a sense in which Patrick Bronte was both an inspirational figure for his children, but also a totally domineering and overwhelming one, I think. So there's a sense in which he's Speaker 1 (13:34) a Speaker 3 (13:34) little bit oppressive. I think, as a father, don't you? Don't you think, Debbie? Speaker 1 (13:38) Absolutely, yeah. Speaker 3 (13:39) So the Brontes, they're short on money. Their living conditions are not great. I mean, that's a massive understatement. People who listen to the Wuthering Heights episode will remember that they made themselves ill by drinking runoff water from the local graveyard. Corpse water seems a bit extreme. It's not surprising, really, given their shabby sort of conditions, that none of the children actually live very long. I mean, even the ones who end up as adults don't live that long. They don't quite fit in. Of course, Patrick is an Irishman. He is an immigrant. And there's always a sense of them being outsiders. They are a weird family. compared with most people at the time the Speaker 1 (14:18) tim burton stuff this is totally the image of them isn't it Speaker 3 (14:21) completely it is so they're always wearing i mean this is a theme in basically the bronte sisters lives they're always wearing the wrong clothes they're always like 30 years out of date in their fashions even as children they don't know all the games that everybody else plays you know when they meet the other children they don't know how to play you point out Tabby, in your notes, that Charlotte was extremely bad at ball games. Speaker 1 (14:42) Yes. So that was important to underline. Because it's important to relate. I mean, I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about you, but it's important to relate to the characters that we discuss on this show. Speaker 3 (14:50) It's a long-running source of dispute between me and Tabby because Tabby, the number of times I point out to her that I had my football colours, that I was the captain of the Balliol Dynamo's football team, and she just will not listen. What Speaker 1 (15:01) was it? The Balliol Dynamo's? I mean, that's hardly the elite, though, is it? It's not Oxford University AFC, though. I mean, that's like... Saying I was like an Olympic hopscotcher or I was like captain of the mud snorkeling team. You know? You're Speaker 3 (15:15) not listing your own sporting achievements here, Tabby, I notice. Speaker 1 (15:18) Yeah, I mean. Shivering on the sidelines, Speaker 3 (15:21) looking miserable, tears rolling down your cheeks. Speaker 1 (15:24) Someone had to bring out the D team bibs. Speaker 3 (15:27) Yeah, exactly. Did you cut up the oranges for half time? Speaker 1 (15:31) Yeah. So, as you say, they don't really fit in. They're very isolated. And I think that this is a big reason for the incredible imaginations that they cultivated. In their isolation, they channeled all of their energy and their lives into other worlds, so to speak. Speaker 3 (15:47) They're an incredibly bookish family, aren't they? I mean, the shelves lined with books, they read everything. We Speaker 1 (15:52) pointed this out in our Wuthering Heights episode. People find the fact that Emily, this young girl, wrote Wuthering Heights extraordinary, inexplicable. But in a way, it is explicable when you think of that. bookshelves that they grew up with. It was surrounded by Byron, Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Shakespeare. No Jane Austen, actually. But in later life, Charlotte Bronte read Jane Austen and she was incredibly disparaging of her, which I think is so interesting because I think they're often coupled together as these two great female writers of English literature. Also from a young age, they are scribbling. They're all writing and they come up with these imaginary worlds and they make up these stories. There's Gondal, Glastown, Angria. And it gives you a real sense of the breadth and the depth of their imaginations because these stories are set in... Africa, all over the world, the Pacific. They feature the Duke of Wellington and soldiers and seduction and vast battles. They have a rich, fertile inner life that they share, the siblings. So for instance, Charlotte Bronte wrote of their storytelling as children. We wove a web in childhood, a web of sunny air, which I think is lovely. And then in 1839, the first tragedy in their lives. And this is Charlotte's mother and she dies when Charlotte is only five years old. Speaker 3 (16:56) Yeah, the first of many, isn't it? So three years later, she and her sisters, including Emily, are sent to school, to this terrible school for clergyman's daughters called Cowan Bridge. And Cowan Bridge is like your absolute trademark kind of stereotypical 19th century school where, you know, it's absolutely freezing. There's no food. Everything is horrible. And you are subjected to this sort of reign of terror. The burnt porridge. Burnt porridge. So everybody who's read the Lowood section in Jane Eyre remembers the burnt porridge. I mean, Tabby, you and I both were sent away to school and you remember the privations of bad food. You know, when something goes wrong like that, it sticks in your head forever, right? Speaker 1 (17:37) There's a terrible typhoid outbreak as there is in Jane Eyre. Speaker 3 (17:40) Yes. They're physically punished. They're hungry all the time. All of this kind of thing. When they're at the school, the two of the older Bronte girls, that's Maria and Elizabeth. get TB, don't they? And the school may not be single-handedly responsible, but it's probably part of it. There's an argument that Maria Bronte is one of the inspirations for Helen Burns, who is Jane Eyre's great friend, the kind of saintly martyr in the book. And obviously that means that from a very early age, the Bronte sisters are brought face to face with their own mortality, disease, death, suffering, all of this sort of thing. Charlotte... From a very young age, people said, well, she'll be a governess. I mean, this is a classic Victorian thing. Basically, if you're from a poor or reasonably poor family. Speaker 1 (18:24) Shabby gentility, I guess. Speaker 3 (18:26) Shabby, shabby, genteel, exactly, sort of family. And you're bright. You'll go off to be a governess, which is to say you will hold a position which is not quite that of a servant, but not really a member of the household either. So as people sometimes said about Victorian governesses, they were expected to have all the respectability and all the attainments. of sort of married people from the middle classes, but they had none of their status. So Speaker 1 (18:51) it's like this awful in-between thing where you are constantly on the edges of high society, but you're never part of it, but nor are you going to be eating dinner with the servants. So where do you belong? Speaker 3 (19:01) Exactly. So that, of course, anticipates what happens to... to Jane Eyre. So when Jane gets to Thornfield Hall, she's in this sort of in-between world. And Charlotte is so aware of this. So Charlotte wrote to Emily at one point. She said, as a governess, I'm not considered as a living and rational. being. And I think Charlotte, her sense of being an outsider, her sense of being awkward, her sense of being on the fringes of something and not taken seriously and not appreciated. I mean, of course, that's a feeling that we all have. It's part of the human condition. But she has it, I think, very powerfully. She's shy. People say she's not terribly good looking. You know, all of this finds its way into the portrait of her great. narrator? She Speaker 1 (19:42) was painfully, tragically aware of her own appearance. People have, you know, her biographers, people who have written about her, people that knew her, have been quite disparaging about her physical appearance. It's interesting because there's a very well-known portrait of her. This is the 1850 sketch by George Richmond, which is in the National Portrait Gallery, which is how I think most people, it's kind of how she's been immortalised and she's very elegant and quite pretty looking in that. In reality, Elizabeth Gaskell described her as plain, so did her publisher, George Smith, and looking very old-fashioned. Speaker 3 (20:09) And when people say plain, in the 19th century, they basically mean a bit ugly. Am I wrong? Speaker 1 (20:14) Yes, because she was described by both and by other people as having a head that was slightly too big for her body. And she was very, very small. And she had a fragile, slender figure, reddish brown hair. And people said that she had a large nose, a crooked mouth, and a slightly overhanging forehead, which is just awful because all I can picture is like, I don't know, a cartoon from Family Guy or something. Speaker 3 (20:38) Right. Oh my