J.E. #3: Poor, Obscure, Plain, and Little

Brontë willingly makes her heroine a woman who does not fit into the society surrounding her. In this way, she makes a statement against the values society places on women.

Jane acknowledges that she is "poor, obscure, plain, and little." Though society sees Jane's plain face and small, weak body as unfortunate disabilities, these features act to liberate her from the binds of male desire. Beauty leads to objectification, so Jane's unattractive appearance allows her to remain a person rather than a beautiful picture (Talairach-Vielmas).

Brontë further praises Jane's humble shell by depicting the perfect beauty of women like Bertha Mason and Blanch Ingram as the house for evil spirits--spirits which gradually begin to corrupt the outer self until they create monsters so horrific they are not fit for the world to see but instead must be locked away, hidden from civilization.

Fashionable women were expected to dress in restrictive devices such as "the crinoline with a circumference sometimes exceeding five yards [which] literally transformed women into caged birds" and further was a fire hazard (Cervetti). Being fashionable and beautiful were simply camouflaged methods of subjugation. In refusing the numerous fine silks which Rochester attempts to force on her, therefore, Jane is rejecting the inferior status of her sex.

Jane's lack of exterior beauty allows the reader to fall, along with Rochester, in love with her stunning mind and radiant spirit.

J.E. #2: Marriage Plot or Bildungsroman?

In traditional marriage plot novels such as Evelina and even in Austen's works, the story begins with a girl of marriageable age and focuses around her interactions with the hero. Brontë writes the story of a girl who grows and matures throughout the novel and becomes a woman who is stronger mentally and spiritually than when we met her in chapter one.

Though she is writing a marriage plot novel, Brontë takes the liberty of depicting Jane as a person beginning the novel with a child who has significant events, other than her marriage, in her life. The reader is made aware, as Jane herself knows, that she is much more than a young woman on the marriage market.

Even after her romantic interactions with the "hero," Jane leaves for several chapters showing Brontë's independence from the expected plot her society has given her. The very structure of this novel is so rich in rebellion that it is an ideal jumping off point.

J.E. #1: Eyre of Rebellion

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is a novel of love, a novel of marriage, but most importantly, it is a novel of female rebellion. Jane Eyre relates not only the rebellion of its heroine but also the parallel rebellion of its author. While we see Jane forced to live the life of a nineteenth century woman to employ herself with "women's" tasks, Brontë is forced to work beneath the strictures of the marriage plot novel--the only type of novel it is acceptable for her to write. Both women find a means of rebelling as they push against their boundaries without "technically" breaking the rules.

My next posts will be focusing on the empowering rebellion of these two inspiring women as it is preserved for the world within this incredible novel.

For a Glimps of Soul

"I sought her eye, desireous to read there the intelligence which I could not discern in her face or hear in her conversation. It was merry, rather small. By turns I saw vivacity, vanity, coquerty, look out through its irid, but I watched in vain for a glimps of soul. ... In sunshine, prosperity, the flowers are very well; but how many wet days are there in life--November seasons of disaster, when a man's hearth and home would be cold indeed without the clear, cheering gleam of intellect!"

-Charlotte Bronte, The Professor

American Landscape

According to David Morse, America's untouched, natural beauty served as a catalyst for the growth of Romantic thought in our nation. The seemingly endless landscape inspired a feeling of the "unlimited potential of the American character."

The pioneering painter Thomas Cole believed that the American artist had an advantage over one of Europe because he did not have to paint what so many men had already captured but instead had a "pure, immediate and spontaneous encounter with nature" which gave him a greater sense of his own power. With this inspiration, Cole painted natural Americ "in the grand Romantic manner." Before leaving America in 1829 to study painting in Europe, Cole made a trip to Niagra Falls in order to be "infused with the genius loci" and the "independence and originality" which it inspired even in the face of the masters of tradition in Europe.

Immanuel Kant, the author of Critique of Pure Reason and a predecessor of Romantic thought, believed that staring at the grandeur of the natural world would not make a man feel overpowered and insignificant but would instead be a "revelatory moment of his inner potentiality for greatness."

As Americans we have been incredibly blessed and influenced by our land. In protecting the wildness of our nation, we protect what makes us American.
In wildness is the preservation of our world. -Thoreau

He is risen!

In church this morning, I was struck by how much more powerful promises of rebirth and the story of Jesus's resurection are now that I have a child. Understanding the forgiveness of sins and the new life we have been promised is incredibly significant when these gifts are offered not only for oneself but also to the most precious thing in one's life. What a comfort to know that we really can store up treasures on Earth and that the work we do bringing up our children in God's love will be rewarded when we meet them in Heaven.

Anne Frank

How wonderful that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

--Anne Frank