Reading around the character

Before things get too intensive in the run up to exams, try and make time to gen up on some secondary sources. This is the kind of wider information that will show you understand how the texts you have studied fit into the culture of their time. For example:

Jane Eyre – an extraordinary child

The thing about Jane is that she is a far richer child character than had appeared in literature previously. Children were rarely attributed with much psychological depth in the narratives of the seventeenth century and even in many nineteenth century novels functioned mainly as two dimensional subjects who served merely to affect the protagonist.

If you go to the Charlotte Brontë and childhood page you can see that there were conflicting ideas about the innate innocence or sinfulness of children. In that novel, Brocklehurst is convinced that Jane is a wicked child in need of reform, though both he and Mrs Reed mistakenly believe in the purity and innocence of their own little darlings!

The idea of the innocence of childhood was given impetus by the Romantics, but they too didn’t quite appreciate that an infant might be neither fully good nor fully evil, rather a rounded individual capable of personal choice and morality.

The first person narrative of Jane Eyre gave the story from a different angle – that of a young girl who was quite capable of perceiving injustice in the treatment meted out to her by adults. She calmly assessed those around her and made moral judgements about herself and them, in a way that simply had not happened in novels before.

Today we are entirely up to speed with the idea that children have their own innate ‘voice’ – lots of U.S. sitcoms are devised from the perspective of the child protagonist, whilst entire holiday centres focus on it (think Disney resorts).

It is only when you place Brontë’s central character against the background of her times that you see how distinctive, even shocking, her original portrayal was. Briefly mention that in a relevant exam answer and you’ll be on your way to an A grade!