A Critical Investigation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre by Marxist Perspective, Essay Example

Introduction

A talented novel usually generates a variety of interpretations, and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is not an exception. The novel is dramatic in a sense that it shows the cruelty and social promiscuity of class system, which does not choose its victims intentionally but strikes everyone, who cannot withstand its pressures. Jane Eyre is the figure which makes classes and wealth irrelevant: her journey between classes and the grief and sorrows she encounters on her way to happiness shape her personality and make her unique and strong. While Rochester belongs to a higher social stratum, Jane is torn between different social positions, but that she can finally find her happiness with Rochester confirms wealth as a reliable and actually, desirable supplement any person would wish to have in addition to one’s individual characteristics and personal achievements.

Since the very beginning of her novel, Bronte tries to prove the social and economic irrelevance of class and wealth for the development of one’s personality. The fact that Jane has to experience constant moral humiliation on the side of Aunt Reed prepares her to the realities of class division. “All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sister’s proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always brow-beaten, always accused, forever condemned? Why could I never please?” (Bronte 11). Although Bronte tries to imply that Jane’s inability to fight the circumstances is in her being an orphan, the answer to Jane’s question is quite simple: she is poor, and for this simple reason all pressures and sorrows of life turn against her. Although being an orphan “allows her to evaluate other characters on their actions and personalities rather than on their economic status and physical appearance” (Reese), everything is different with those around Jane, for they are used to see class and wealth as the determining characteristic of one’s social acceptability and recognition. For these reasons, the incident in the red room looks like an allegory of Jane’s social and economic confinement. She cannot go beyond the limits of her social class, which makes her dependent on others and others’ decisions, including those of Aunt Reed.

Jane’s experience at Lowood reveals her true character. Compared to Helen, who boasts to practice the principles of Biblical humiliation, Jane is not willing to tolerate the sufferings she is imposed on by her teachers. Helen says that “it is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you – and, besides, the Bible binds us return good for evil” (Bronte 55). Certainly, Helen does teach Jane not to judge by appearances, and she represents a great example of self-commitment and patience, but where would have those two girls been if not for their poverty? At Lowood, “she is mixed with a mass of other poor girls and forced to live in a harsh environment” (Reese), which, of course, trains her endurance, but without having money, without belonging to at least a middle class, and without having reasonable income, none of those girls would have a single chance for success in life, even against their excellent, almost perfect, individual skills and knowledge. When, finally, Jane meets Rochester, these class distinctions become even more obvious. Even if the feeling between Jane and Rochester is pure and mutual, the discussed class confinement creates a huge social gap between them.

In the transition from homelessness to middle class Jane Eyre supports an idea of class and wealth being good supplements to one’s individual character and achievements. As a homeless person, she almost dies of hunger, and nowhere else in this story is the role of class and wealth as vivid as at the point of Jane’s homelessness. Although Charlotte Bronte’s major aim is to show gradual human growth and moral evolution through hardships, she cannot escape showing the role of class and social prejudice as related to poverty. “Once more I took off my handkerchief – once more I thought of the cakes of bread in the little shop. Oh, but a crust! For but one mouthful to allay the pang of famine!” (Bronte 348). Jane’s homelessness and loneliness are the direct results of what is hypothesized in this paper – that wealth and class are reliable and even desirable supplements of one’s individual achievements. Her immediate change upon inheriting her uncle’s wealth and her gradual return to normal life only confirm this truth. From being a homeless person, she turns out to be a well-established woman. She reunites with Rochester, which would have been impossible because of Jane’s poverty. Probably, class and wealth are irrelevant when it comes to the development of Jane’s character, and probably, that she had to travel from one social class to another made her morally and spiritually mature. But as Bronte also shows, all these features lose their relevance in the face of poverty and hunger. One cannot trade these features to buy a piece of bread. One cannot be happy in marriage unless both a husband and a wife have similar social status. Social class can be irrelevant to the extent that is associated with one’s personality, but upon becoming a part of the surrounding world, and trying to achieve individual and social success, social class and wealth become relevant and even desirable supplements to one’s personal achievements.

Conclusion

That Jane Eyre finally finds her happiness with Rochester shows class and wealth as relevant, and even desirable, supplements to one’s personal successes and achievements. From being an orphan, through homelessness, and up to becoming a well-established middle-class woman, Jane Eyre grows morally and spiritually and at the same time, confirms the relevance of wealth in one’s life. Bronte shows Jane as the personality who was lucky to go through hardships and to grow morally and spiritually, but it is also obvious that without inheriting her uncle’s wealth, these moral and spiritual benefits would not help Jane survive and find her happiness in life.

Works Cited

Bronte, C. Jane Eyre. G. Munro, 1864.

Reese, R. “Class Status in Jane Eyre.” 2004. CaSaWoMo. 27 September 2009. http://www.casawomo.com/essays/class-status-in-jane-eyre