Jane Eyre Class Opinions

Abby Leonard

English Lit 5A

December 6, 2014

Bell

Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, she reveals many of her feelings of the social class structure in Victorian London, using Jane as the medium. Jane bounces through the classes going from poor to wealthy throughout the book. This allows Bronte to comment on the class structure as Jane moves throughout classes at the time of the book. Her feelings toward the poor, the rich, and any in between are given though Jane’s perspective. Bronte’s feelings of the rich are that they are confident and at times cruel people to those below them and that the lower classes are most of the time powerless to stop it.

When Jane is first introduced she is an orphan living as the ward of the Reeds, her relatives by way of her dead uncle. They have three children, John, Eliza, and Georgiana, none of whom like her at all. John is especially cruel toward Jane calling her foul names and at times resorting to physical violence. At one point Jane has had enough and calls John “... a murderer — you are like a slave driver-you are like the Roman emperor!” (11). She is comparing John Reed to the likes of the very cruel, arrogant or confident people who believe they are above everyone else. In this instance, Bronte is using Jane’s words to show her feelings on the upper class of society. Bronte feels that the rich, who John Reed represents, are confident and at times cruel people who do not care for the wellbeing of the poor, who Jane represents. The confidence and cruelness idea in the quote comes from how the people she mentions, Roman emperor, slave drivers, and murderer, are fearless in their actions, and also very cruel in their methods of ruling over others, like the rich in Jane Eyre do. After moving from the Reeds to Lowood, she ends up at Thornfield with a job as a governess.

Jane arrives at Thornfield and begins to spend a lot of time with Rochester after they are introduced. Rochester then leaves Thornfield, and while he is gone, Jane reflects on her feelings for Rochester and how she feels that due to societal pressures they are not appropriate. She thinks to herself that she is not in his class or order and that she should not love him, because he would not want her or her love due to class (155). Bronte uses Jane here to state again how many think the rich are arrogant and look down on the poor, but also how this affects the poor and what they believe. Jane believing that Rochester would never love her due to class is a social conditioning by the rich to make them seem more above the fray than they really are, and this is one way the class relationship had affected the poor, in a non monetary way. When Jane asks Rochester, “Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?...”(238), she is implying that Rochester looks down on the lower classes and she shows the poor think the rich look down on them and don’t truly see who they are. When Jane asks Rochester if because she is poor that he thinks she is heartless she shows that to her the rich do not really perceive the poor as people. Her idea of being plain also goes with how beauty is a sign of being rich in the book.

When Rochester brings home the rich guests from the city, Jane notices how beautiful all the rich women are, and compares herself, the poor person, to them. When she sees Blanche Ingram she thinks that her picture of her was spot on with “The noble bust, the sloping shoulders, the graceful neck, the dark eyes and black ringlets were all there;—but her face? Her face was like her mother’s; a youthful unfurrowed likeness: the same low brow, the same high features, the same pride. ” (164). The noble bust and graceful neck in the quote are both ways that Jane associates beauty with being rich and powerful in society. They are things that Jane does not have, and that she sees as being upper class, making herself not. Also Jane throughout the book by many characters is called plain, when she is poor which helps her associate beauty with the rich. She finds Rochester very handsome, and his staff not so much, and her views on this reflect Bronte’s view on how beauty is a sign of being rich. Her perception of herself, does not change much from when she becomes rich later in the book, but her confidence does.

Throughout the book, Bronte’s feelings on the rich and their interactions with the lower class are expressed through Jane and how she goes through life. As Jane moves up in the social classes her confidence and feelings toward those below her change. When she is first poor, she is not very confident and finds her self very plain and unattractive, unlike the rich. She also sees the cruelty and arrogance some of the rich carry, which Bronte shows her feelings on through the Reeds and her time at Lowood. As she grows to be rich by the end of the novel she is very confident in herself and her marriage to an equally as rich Rochester. She earlier in the book would not have been as confident before the money as is seen. Bronte shows that her feelings toward the rich are that they are confident, and at times arrogant and cruel when dealing with the lower classes, by using Jane’s life and her social progression.