Monday, September 19, 2011

Writing about her own life?


There have been several references in the footnotes about parallels between Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte’s life. It was noted that Lowood was patterned after the school she attended and that Helen Burns was thought to be a representation of her sister that died of consumption. Also we have mentioned numerous times in class how Bronte was a governess as well so that she has some firsthand experience. These factors combined made me wonder how much of the rest of the story reflects Charlotte Bronte’s life as well. In fact when I looked into it, there is a picture on her Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bronte) page of the first edition of Jane Eyre and it calls it an autobiography.  To me this could simply be the fact that the voice of the novel is Jane Eyre herself telling us about her life, but alludes to the fact that there are at least pieces of the story that are derived from Bronte’s own experiences. There are also several references to some of her other works that say she took experiences from her life that she used to build those novels as well. I find myself wondering as I read each part of the novel if it has something to do with Bronte’s life. For example did she have a Mr. Rochester?

1 comment:

  1. Perhaps a more interesting question is think about how she transformed her life into the novel -- what changes did she make and how do they influence the novel?

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