Character Analysis: Chapters 1-11

Welcome to my blog!

Via David Clode on Unsplash

I picked up Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre mostly because I wanted to read something by Jane Austen, and Emma, the only Austen novel I knew of that I had not already read, was too long. Seriously: it’s more than a thousand pages. The reason I wanted to read something by Austen was that I had listened to Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility as audiobooks a few years ago, and I really loved them. I found the stories captivating and entertaining, and greatly enjoyed the romance, propriety, and satire of 19th century English society.

Now, though there were several gaps in my logic in choosing Jane Eyre — Charlotte Brontë, though she wrote in roughly the same period as Jane Austen, is not Jane Austen, and Jane Eyre was published more than thirty years after Pride and Prejudice — I am very happy that I did decide to read Jane Eyre. To my untrained eye, Jane Eyre is delightfully similar to Pride and Prejudice. It is set in the English countryside in the 1800s, and portrays the very proper upper class of society. Its protagonist is a smart, strong-willed girl who in many ways does not subscribe to society’s expectations. It is actually Jane’s character that I want to explore in this post, and what we learn about her from her relationships with other characters.

Jane Eyre is a coming-of-age story (or “bildungsroman,” as Google informs me), following the titular protagonist as she grows up, starting at the age of nine. So far, Jane has suffered at the hands of her benefactors (the Reeds), been sent off to a charity school for orphans in the English countryside, become a teacher at that school, taken a job as a governess for strangers many miles away, and moved to their home, Thornfield. Several of the characters she has met along the way have already served as character foils, helping us to understand certain facets of Jane’s personality. (For this discussion, I use the term “character foil,” perhaps a little loosely, to mean any character that contrasts with the protagonist).

The Reed Family

The first example of a character foil for Jane is actually four characters: Mrs. Reed and her three children, John, Eliza, and Georgiana. Mrs. Reed is the widow of Jane’s uncle, who made his wife promise on his deathbed to take care of Jane. She therefore became a very bitter benefactress, treating Jane cruelly while begrudgingly continuing to house and feed her. The Reeds are, in other words, quintessential antagonists. After John, 14, throws a book at Jane, 10, she describes her relationship with the Reed family:

“I was a discord at Gateshead Hall; I was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children… If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them. They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathize with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament… I know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child — though equally dependent and friendless — Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence more complacently” (11).

Through the information that Jane is not a “sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child,” we can infer what she is: smart, introverted, careful, plain-featured, and quiet. These inferences are supported by other sections of the text so far. Jane would rather read than play with the children (though that is also due to the fact that they torment her constantly), saying that she finds books and pictures “ever profoundly interesting” (3). She also greatly enjoys learning a variety of subjects when she goes to school at Lowood. To be fair to the Reeds, Jane is also pretty moody, saying “I wished the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen the darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamour” (55) and that she is at one point inflicted by a “morbid suffering” (18). To be fair to Jane, this is mostly due to the Reeds, and she really is very smart, understanding many essential facts of life at a young age. All of these characteristics are highlighted by the contrast between Jane and the Reeds.

Satisfyingly, Jane stands up to Mrs. Reed right before she is sent off to Lowood, telling her tormentor that “I am not deceitful; if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed” (34). This shows her strong will, as, even at ten years old, she bravely communicates her hatred to somebody who holds a lot of power over her. I think this makes Jane a very effective protagonist; the reader admires her guts and can’t help but cheer when she sticks it to Mrs. Reed. I identify with her bookishness and introversion, and find her compelling in that way as well. Thus, the character foil presented by the Reeds at the very beginning of the book introduces the reader to Jane’s essential characteristics, and convinces them to like her.

Helen Burns

When Jane arrives at Lowood, a school for orphaned girls run by the disliked and very religious Mr. Brocklehurst, she meets a timid, sickly classmate named Helen Burns. Helen is around thirteen years old, and very similar to Jane in many ways. She is bookish — Jane first meets her when she is reading a book while all the other children play in the courtyard — and smart, very interested in lessons about history. However, Helen’s attitude is fundamentally different from Jane’s, lacking confidence and believing in her own inferiority and faults.

Helen is frequently berated by certain teachers at Lowood for making mistakes in lessons or leaving her things messy. However, she believes in all cases that this treatment is deserved, telling Jane that “I am, as Miss Scatcherd said, slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things in order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot bear to be subjected to systematic arrangements” (57). Whether or not these things are true — and, from the reader’s perspective, they are not, as Helen seems very reasonable, intelligent, and polite — they show that Helen believes herself to be some sort of bad person.

This is a sharp contrast with Jane, who is indignant every time the Reeds or Mr. Brocklehurst tries to tell her something is wrong with her. Jane even says, “I heard [Helen] with wonder: I could not comprehend this doctrine of endurance; and still less could I understand or sympathize with the forbearance she expressed for her chastiser. Still I felt that Helen Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes. I suspected she might be right and I wrong” (56-57). This quote is interesting because, beyond showing that Jane is more confident in herself than Helen, it also shows that she is more immature; Jane has not learned to tolerate anything at all uncomfortable (as we saw with the fit she threw upon being locked in a room at the Reeds’ house in Chapter 2). She also acknowledges that she feels Helen might be more wise than she, even though Helen’s meekness seems unreasonable; Helen seems to have a certain level of life experience that Jane lacks. Their relationship in this section of the book is very useful to the reader in understanding Jane’s relative immaturity, but also the degree to which she already thinks complex thoughts. Understanding Jane's characteristics as a child will be important as she gets older as the book goes on.

Tragically, Helen dies of consumption during Jane’s first year at Lowood, and Jane is left without her first friend. This marks a sort of turning point in Jane’s life, though, and she comes into her own as a student and person, excelling in school and then becoming a teacher at the age of 16. Two years later, Jane has so much confidence that she seeks employment outside of Lowood, saying “now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, abated those who had courage to go forward into its expanse and seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils,” and that “now I felt that it was not enough: I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty” (90). It is important for the reader to note this personal growth, as the book has skipped some eight years into the future to tell Jane’s story as an adult. A lot of this growth is probably due to the guidance of Miss Temple, a teacher at Lowood who was exceptionally kind to Jane. After this positive influence, not only is Jane still opinionated and smart, but she has a formal education and more confidence in herself. Basically, the world is Jane’s oyster, and she has never been a more likable character. 

We do meet some other new characters during this section; Jane travels to Thornfield, where she meets Mrs. Fairfax, the manager of the estate, Adela Varens, the child she has been hired to tutor, and hears tell of Mr. Rochester, the benevolent owner of Thornfield. However, we do not know a great deal about any of these characters yet, so I will save an analysis of their traits for a future post. 

One last thought before I go — I think Jane's character being so free-willed (though still constrained by society in some ways) is significant because of the time period in which this book was written, and because it was written by a female author. I think there were few male authors in the mid-1800s who would have written female characters quite as spunky and compelling as Jane, so I really appreciate that aspect of this book so far. 

Works Cited 

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. Woodstock, Beekman Publishers, 1980.

Butler, Sian. Log over Body of Water near Trees Painting. Unsplash, 6 Dec. 2018,
    unsplash.com/photos/rW3YuxncFIM. Accessed 16 Feb. 2021.

(For future reference, the book is also cited in the sidebar)