Charlotte Brontes first novel; The Professor failed to find a publisher and only appeared in 1857 after her

death. Following the experiences of her own life in an uninspired manner, the story lacks interest, and the characters are not created with the passionate insight which distinguishes her later portraits. Jane Eyre(1847) is her greatest novel. Similarities between Jane Eyre and fairy-tale have often been noted and on a very simple plot level the influence is obvious. We should thus not be too worried by the magical coincidences which allow the heroine to gain her ends so spectacularly. An element of wish-fulfilment in the story appealed to Victorian readers and still appeals, helping this to become one of the most universally popular novels in English. The fairy tales elements do not end with the plot however, and are exploited throughout the novel. Jane, whose surname is Eyre, is compared by critics (Rochester) to an elf. It is clear that in Charlotte Brontes terms the feminine spiritual element is civilizing the unprepossessing masculine one, guiding and taming him until he is fit for union with her./Jane, however, is no conventionally pretty young woman. Her creator linked Jane with herself and according to Elisabeth Gaskell told her sisters: I will show you a heroine as plain and small as myself, who shall be as interesting as any of yours.A psychoanalytic view of the both might see the masculine psyche split between the immoral but good-hearted Rochester and the rule-bound pair Mr. Brocklehurst and St. John Rivers. The latter presents himself to Janes sense of duty, and she is seriously inclined to marry him, until an incorporeal voice (that of Rochester communicating through telepathy) challenges her choice and recalls her to her deeper emotional commitment./The fiery aspects of the feminine are locked by Rochester in the attic at Thornfield in the shape of his mad wife Bertha, who makes several efforts to reveal herself and is finally disclosed on the occasion of Janes would-be marriage to her legal husband. It is no only duty which demands that Jane should leave the house. The author clearly intends us to notice that Rochester has failed to trust Jane as a fellow human; her refusal to stay should not be seen purely as an acceptance of Victorian convention. /The obvious Gothic elements in Jane Eyre are used symbolically. Symbolism has also been detected in the names of the localities through which the heroine passes: Gateshead, Thornfield, etc. In connection with this, we may recall the Brontes early attachment to The Pilgrims Progress. Jane also shows some complex pictures to Rochester, which she has drawn herself and which evoke insoluble problems of her being. These deeply revealing sketches seem to echo actual pictures drawn by Charlotte Bronte, her brother and sisters. /The search for originals in Jane Eyre became an industry soon after its publication. Thus Lowood was quickly discovered to represent Cowan Bridge school, where the authors two younger sisters had caught diseases from which they subsequently died. But Rochester has no original, though he may take some traits from Mr. Constantin Heger, the Belgian schoolmaster she met in 1832. His descent from the Byronic hero imaginations is clear. Though the Rivers sisters mirror to some extent in an idealized fashion the home personas of the Bronte sisters, they are not to be confused with the real Emily and Ann. There are many elements of visual description in Jane Eyre, some showing acute observation, like the landscape of the road to Hay on the January day when Jane first meets Rochester. Bewicks woodcuts are not far from this scene. Bewick is also present in the very first scene when Jane is hiding from her cruel cousins. The authors shortsightedness meant that she studied landscape partly through Bewick and other engravers. The coldness of the winter scenes in Bewick emphasises the loneliness of some humans, and this chimes with the Brontes interest in orphans and the tyranny of the adult world over the world of childhood. The scenes involving Mr. Brocklehurst, including those at Lowood, explore the nature of childhood resentment/.Ch. Bronte was able to use Jane Eyre as a critique of evangelical religion, which exerted some attraction for her own personality but which she rejected here as heartless and mechanical, though the sense of duty exhibited by St. John Rivers is not disparaged. He is approved as a conscientious person, but his inconclusive relationship with Rosamund is presented critically. The empty ritual of Bible reading at Lowood while Miss Scatcherd torment her victim provides a black image.Jane Eyre was on the whole well-received by the early critics, who noted its passion and warmth. The first person narrative enabled them to come close to the life experience of the underprivileged heroine and sympathy was quickly established. It is possible to see the book as a feminist text, both in the sense that the female first person is the emotional centre of the story, and also since Rochester and the other made characters are shown as inadequate. He learns through suffering, but it is not clear whether St. John Rivers is capable of learning, and Broklehurst is a stereotype. Subsidiary female characters, good or bad are generally more credible than male, though Bertha Mason is seemed externally: deviant, outraged and menacing . Jane Eyre successfully raises the woman question

high on the agenda, but it was perhaps more important still to the author to portray Jane as a champion of the human race, irrespective of gender. She clearly stands for the individual against a deforming society, a child rather than a girl only against harsh education, a servant than rather merely a governess against the bland superiority of the gentry, represented by Blanche Ingram, and sincerity against the blandishments of wealth which considers it can buy anything./However, the traditional plot, in which an oppressed orphan magically but deservedly overcomes loneliness and finds a strong partner who is finally fit to be her equal is clearly a major reason for the success of the book. It stands, among other things, as the archetypal romance, by which many subsequent novels have been influenced. The character of Jane is imbued with so much life that generations of readers have believed in her as the real author of the book. /The genuinely popular nature of the novel at one time led critics to underestimate its artistry, but in recent years its importance has been readily acknowledged.