Jane Eyre By Charlotte Bronte (1816 – 1855) Essay, Research Paper

Because the publishing industry of the

early and middle nineteenth century spurned female writers, Charlotte Bronte

chose to work under the androgynous pseudonym Currier Bell.

Jane Eyre was written in the first-person,

autobiographical form, allowing Bronte to draw the reader into her heroine’s

plight. This was a successful approach, for even though critics point out

some structural flaws in the book, it has always remained a very popular

work.

Jane Eyre is also an impassioned moral

manifesto, as the Preface to the Second Edition makes clear:

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness

is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last …. The

world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed

to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling

worth – to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate

him who dares to scrutinize and expose – to raise the gilding, and show

base metal under it to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics:

but, hate as it will, it is indebted to him.