Now, however, when the demand for the work had assured success to Jane Eyre, her sisters urged Charlotte to tell their father of its publication. She accordingly went into his study one afternoon after his early dinner, carrying with her a copy of the book, and one or two reviews, taking care to include a notice adverse to it.
She informed me that something like the following conversation took place between her and him. (I wrote down her words the day after I heard them; and I am pretty sure they are quite accurate.)
"Papa, I've been writing a book."
"Have you, my dear?"
"Yes, and I want you to read it."
"I am afraid it will try my eyes too much."
"But it is not in manuscript: it is printed."
"My dear! you've never thought of the expense it will be! It will be almost sure to be a loss, for how can you get a book sold? No one knows you or your name."
"But, papa, I don't think it will be a loss; no more will you, if you will just let me read you a review or two, and tell you more about it."
So she sat down and read some of the reviews to her father; and then, giving him the copy of Jane Eyre that she intended for him, she left him to read it. When he came in to tea, he said, "Girls, do you know Charlotte has been writing a book, and it is much better than likely?"
But while the existence of Currer Bell was like a game to the quiet inhabitants of Haworth Parsonage, whose only excitement was caring for their infirm brother Branwell, the reading-world of England was in a ferment to discover the unknown author. Even the publishers of Jane Eyre were ignorant as to whether Currer Bell was a real or assumed name, whether it belonged to a man or a woman.
THE WIDE SARGASSO SEA
In 1966, after a lull in her career, West Indies-born novelist Jean Rhys astounded critics with her Wide Sargasso Sea, conceived as a prelude to Jane Eyre and written from a postcolonial perspective.
Set amid the sultry landscape of 1830s Jamaica just after the emancipation of the slaves there, Rhys's novel is the story of Bronte's Bertha Mason, Rochester's mysterious first wife, the madwoman locked in the attic at Thornfield. Giving her the name Antoinette Cosway, Rhys describes this Creole heiress as a woman straddling two cultures while belonging to neither. Antoinette is married off to Rochester for her money and ferried to England, only to be incarcerated at Thornfield. In Rhys's telling, upon the dissolution of his relationship with Antoinette, Rochester gives her the name Bertha.
Published when Rhys was seventy-six, Wide Sargasso Sea was an enormously popular and critical success, hailed as the author's most important work. While it triumphs as a sumptuous, original novel in its own right, the book adds a dark and beautiful dimension to Bronte's seminal work. Wide Sargasso Sea inspired a film adaptation in 1993.
Comments & Questions
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions which challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Jane Eyre through a variety of voices and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
COMMENTS
William Makepeace Thackeray
I wish you had not sent me Jane Eyre. It interested me so much that I have lost (or won if you like) a whole day in reading it at the busiest period, with the printers I know waiting for copy. Who the author can be I can't guess, if a woman she knows her language better than most ladies do, or has had a "classical" education. It is a fine book though, the man and woman capital, the style very generous and upright so to speak. I thought it was Kinglake for some time. The plot of the story is one with which I am familiar. Some of the love passages made me cry, to the astonishment of John who came in with the coals. St. John the Missionary is a failure I think but a good failure, there are parts excellent. I don't know why I tell you this but that I have been exceedingly moved and pleased by Jane Eyre. It is a woman's writing, but whose? Give my respects and thanks to the author, whose novel is the first English one (and the French are only romances now) that I've been able to read for many a day.
--from a letter to
W. S. Williams (October 23, 1847)
Charlotte Bronte
Your letter reached me yesterday; I beg to assure you that I appreciate fully the intention with which it was written, and I thank you sincerely both for its cheering commendation and valuable advice.
You warn me to beware of Melodrame and you exhort me to adhere to the real. When I first began to write, so impressed was I with the truth of the principles you advocate that I determined to take Nature and Truth as my sole guides and to follow in their very footprints; I restrained imagination, eschewed romance, repressed excitement: over-bright colouring too I avoided, and sought to produce something which should be soft, grave and true.
My work (a tale in I vol.) being completed, I offered it to a publisher. He said it was original, faithful to Nature, but he did not feel warranted in accepting it, such a work would not sell. I tried six publishers in succession; they all told me it was deficient in 'startling incident' and 'thrilling excitement,' that it would never suit the circulating libraries, and as it was on those libraries the success of works of fiction mainly depended they could not undertake to publish what would be overlooked there--'Jane Eyre' was rather objected to at first [on] the same grounds--but finally found acceptance.
I mention this to you, not with a view of pleading exemption from censure, but in order to direct your attention to the root of certain literary evils--if in your forthcoming article in 'Frazer' you would bestow a few words of enlightenment on the public who support the circulating libraries, you might, with your powers, do some good.
You advise me too, not to stray far from the ground of experience as I become weak when I enter the region of fiction; and you say 'real experience is perennially interesting and to all men.'
I feel that this also is true, but, dear Sir, is not the real experience of each individual very limited? and if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist?
Then too, Imagination is a strong, restless faculty which claims to be heard and exercised, are we to be quite deaf to her cry and insensate to her struggles? When she shews us bright pictures are we never to look at them and try to reproduce them?--And when she is eloquent and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear are we not to write to her dictation? I shall anxiously search the next number of 'Frazer' for your opinion on these points.
Believe me, dear Sir,
Yours gratefully
C Bell
--from a letter to G. H. Lewes
(November 6, 1847)
G. H. Lewes
After laughing over the Bachelor of the Albany, we wept over Jane Eyre. This, indeed, is a book after our own heart; and, if its merits have not forced it into notice by the time this paper comes before our readers, let us, in all earnestness, bid them lose not a day in sending for it. The writer is evidently a woman, and, unless we are deceived, new in the world of literature. But, man or woman, young or old, be that as it may, no such book has gladdened our eyes for a long while. Almost all that we require in a novelist she has: perception of character, and power of delineating it; picturesqueness; passion; and knowledge of life. The story is not only of singular interest, naturally evolved, unflagging to the last, but it fastens itself upon your attention, and will not leave you. The book closed, the enchantment continues... Reality--deep, significant reality--is the great characteristic of the book. It is an autobiography,--not, perhaps, in the naked facts and circumstances, but in the actual suffering and experience... This gives the book its charm: it is soul speaking to soul; it is an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit: suspiria de profundis!
 
; --from Fraser's Magazine (December 1847)
Charlotte Bronte
I trust your firm will not lose by the 3rd edition of 'Jane Eyre' what has been made by the first, but I must say I think you enterprising to run the risk; however you have all along been the reverse of timid in the business. Success to the fearless!
It is very kind and right in you to answer 'Currer Bell' to all queries respecting the authorship of 'Jane Eyre': that is the only name I wish to have mentioned in connection with my writings 'Currer Bell' only--I am and will be to the Public; if accident or design should deprive me of that name, I should deem it a misfortune--a very great one; mental tranquillity would then be gone; it would be a task to write--a task which I doubt whether I could continue. If I were known--I should ever be conscious in writing that my book must be read by ordinary acquaintances--and that idea would fetter me intolerably.
--from a letter to
William Smith Williams (April 20, 1848)
James Lorimer
If these remarkable works are the productions of a woman we shall only say she must be a woman pretty nearly unsexed.
--from the North British Review
(August 1849)
Charlotte Bronte
The North British Review duly reached me. I read attentively all it says about E. Wyndham, J. Eyre, and F. Hervey. Much of the article is clever--and yet there are remarks which--for me--rob it of importance.
To value praise or stand in awe of blame we must respect the source whence the praise and blame proceed--: and I do not respect an inconsistent critic. He says 'if "Jane Eyre" be the production of a woman--she must be a woman unsexed.'
In that case the book is an unredeemed error and should be unreservedly condemned. 'Jane Eyre' is a woman's autobiography--by a woman it is professedly written--if it is written as no woman would write--condemn it--with spirit and decision--say it is bad--but do not first eulogise and then detract. I am reminded of the 'Economist.' The literary critic of that paper praised the book if written by a man--and pronounced it 'odious' if the work of a woman.
To such critics I would say--'To you I am neither Man nor Woman--I come before you as an Author only--it is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me--the sole ground on which I accept your judgement.'
--from a letter to William Smith Williams
(August 16, 1849)
QUESTIONS
1. William Makepeace Thackeray, knowing nothing about the author of Jane Eyre, immediately wrote to a friend, "It is a woman's writing, but whose?" What do you think tipped him off? Is there anything about Jane Eyre that strikes you as especially characteristic of "women's writing"?
2. Thackeray also said that he was "exceedingly moved and pleased" by Jane Eyre. Evidently, even if the novel is by a woman, it is not only for women. What in the novel could be described as appealing to our humanity rather than our gender?
3. Jane Eyre has been read as a proto-feminist protest against the conditions of women in Charlotte Bronte's time and place. Is that reading justified by the actual text? If so, does the protest still resonate in this time and place?
4. There have been critics who said that most Victorian novels are built on either the Marriage Plot or on the Inheritance Plot. At the end of Jane Eyre the heroine is an heiress and, as she writes, "Reader, I married him." But Bronte has decided to blind and maim Rochester, and to burn down the house that is the visible sign of his prestige and power. Do you think Bronte cut Rochester down to size for Jane's sake--to make the happy ending happier still?
For Further Reading
BIOGRAPHIES
Barker, Juliet, comp. The Brontes: A Life in Letters. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1998. A useful and well-edited collection of letters with biographical context supplied.
Gerin, Winifred. Charlotte Bronte: The Evolution of Genius. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967; Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1991.
Peters, Margot. Unquiet Soul: A Biography of Charlotte Bronte. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975.
Winnifrith, Tom. The Brontes and Their Background: Romance and Reality. London: Macmillan, 1973.
Winnifrith, Tom. A New Life of Charlotte Bronte. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.
CRITICISM
Abel, Elizabeth, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland, eds. The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983. Much useful information about Jane Eyre as a bildungsroman, with a look at its sources in folk stories and fairy tales of female development.
Alexander, Christine. The Early Writings of Charlotte Bronte. Oxford: Black-well, 1983. The best study of the juvenilia to date.
Allott, Miriam, ed. The Brontes: The Critical Heritage. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974. An invaluable casebook for understanding the history of the critical reception of the Brontes' work.
Beaty, Jerome. Misreading Jane Eyre: A Postformalist Paradigm. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996. A fascinatingly complex analysis of Jane Eyre by an eminent critic; for the more advanced student.
Bjork, Harriet. The Language of Truth: Charlotte Bronte, the Woman Question, and the Novel. Lund, Sweden: Gleerup, 1974. A resource for understanding the historical context of women's social position in Bronte's time and its influence on Jane Eyre.
Boumelha, Penny. Charlotte Bronte. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990. A reliable and well-rounded study for the beginning student.
Eagleton, Terry. Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontes. London: Macmillan, 1975. Eagleton's study is from the historical-materialist point of view and provides a different perspective on the Bronte canon.
Ewbank, Inga-Stina. Their Proper Sphere: A Study of the Bronte Sisters as Early-Victorian Female Novelists. London: Edward Arnold, 1966. Considers the Brontes in the light of Victorian beliefs and conventions.
Gregor, Ian, comp. The Brontes: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970. This useful collection brings together important critical essays written before 1970; for the beginning student of the Brontes.
Maynard, John. Charlotte Bronte and Sexuality. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. This study focuses on the meaning of sexuality as an important element in Bronte's work.
Michie, Helena. The Flesh Made Word: Female Figures and Women's Bodies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Critical work that focuses on women's bodies in narrative texts; sheds a different light on Jane Eyre.
Poovey, Mary. Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Important study that considers Jane Eyre in light of the historical position of the governess in Victorian Britain.
Ratchford, Fannie. The Brontes' Web of Childhood. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941. The first study of the Brontes' juvenile writing, and still a classic in criticism.
Weisser, Susan Ostrov. A "Craving Vacancy": Women and Sexual Love in the British Novel, 1740-1880. London and New York: Macmillan and New York University Press, 1997. A study of class conflict between middle-and upper-class women and its role in shaping sexual and romantic ideology in the British novel, including Jane Eyre.
WORKS CITED IN THE INTRODUCTION
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. The Life of Charlotte Bronte. London: J. M. Dent, 1960. First published in 1857 after Bronte's death, a work that has become a classic in the history of biographical writing, though it is not entirely accurate or objective.
Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Important and groundbreaking feminist study of the Brontes, among others.
Illouz, Eva. Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.
Jackson, Stevi. "Women and Heterosexual Love: Complicity, Resistance and Change." In Romance Revisi
ted, edited by Lynne Pearce and Jackie Stacey. New York: New York University Press, 1995, pp. 49-62.
Moglen, Helene. Charlotte Bronte: The Self Conceived. New York: W. W. Nor-ton, 1976.
Moser, Thomas. "What Is the Matter with Emily Jane?" Nineteenth-Century Fiction 14 (June 1962), pp. 1-19.
Nudd, Donna Marie. "Rediscovering Jane Eyre through Its Adaptations." In Approaches to Teaching Bronte's Jane Eyre, edited by Diane Long Hoeveler and Beth Lau. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1993, pp. 139-147.
Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
a See Donna Marie Nudd's "Rediscovering Jane Eyre through Its Adaptations," in Approaches to Teaching Bronte's Jane Eyre, edited by Diane Long Hoeveler and Beth Lau, New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1993, and "Inspired by Jane Eyre," in this edition on p. 539.
b In plot elements of Jane Eyre, we can also see the influence of folk tales such as Cinderella and Bluebeard, in which a dark sexual predator exercises murderous eroticism and violates the sanctity of marriage.