JANE EYRE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

DESCRIPTION: Bronte’s novel about a shy, quiet governess who becomes a tutor in a great house and falls in love with its lonely and mysterious master is one of the great classics of English literature. Unique in its attention to the thoughts and feelings of a female protagonist, Jane Eyre was ahead of its time as a proto-feminist text. When it was published in 1847, however, Bronte was attacked by critics for what they felt was the anti-Christian sentiment in her unflinching critique of the oppressions of Victorian society.



Charlotte's first manuscript, The Professor, did not secure a publisher, although she was heartened by an encouraging response from Smith, Elder & Co. of Cornhill, who expressed an interest in any longer works Currer Bell might wish to send. Charlotte responded by finishing and sending a second manuscript in August 1847. Six weeks later Jane Eyre: An Autobiography was published. It tells the story of a plain governess, Jane, who, after difficulties in her early life, falls in love with her employer, Mr. Rochester. They marry, but only after Rochester's insane first wife, of whom Jane initially has no knowledge, dies in a dramatic house fire. The book's style was innovative, combining naturalism with gothic melodrama, and broke new ground in being written from an intensely evoked first-person female perspective. Charlotte believed art was most convincing when based on personal experience; in Jane Eyre, she transformed the experience into a novel with universal appeal.



Jane Eyre had immediate commercial success and initially received favorable reviews. G. H. Lewes wrote that it was "an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit," and declared that it consisted of "Suspiria de Profundis!" (sighs from the depths). Speculation about the identity and gender of the mysterious Currer Bell heightened with the publication of Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell (Emily) and Agnes Grey by Acton Bell (Anne). Accompanying the speculation was a change in the critical reaction to Charlotte's work, as accusations were made that the writing was "coarse", a judgment more readily made once it was suspected that Currer Bell was a woman. However, sales of Jane Eyre continued to be strong and may even have increased as a result of the novel developing a reputation as an "improper" book.