"Jane Eyre": Blending Apparently The Opposites -The "Realistic" With "Romantic" Elements In The Story.
Submitted by FFE on 07/10/2008 11:54 PM
- Category: American History
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"Jane Eyre": Blending Apparently The Opposites -The "Realistic" With "Romantic" Elements In The Story.
This paper will try to show how two apparently antagonistic concepts such as Romanticism and Realism blend together in the story and while so doing it they enhance the quality of it.
Among one of the most important theoretical premises of realism with regard to the artistic production, is that one stating that art should "portray
things as they really are, in the sense of portraying objectively and concretely the observable details of actual life."
Following the aforementioned premise, Jane Eyre's text becomes a reflection, a self-mirroring form of the mid-19th-century Victorian reality by means of which its contemporary (19th-century) readers saw both themselves and their society reflected.
Such extent is achieved by references to romantic imagery of landscape; the moon; references to the weather; the image of the British empire and the aristocracy having plantations in Jamaica, or properties in Madeira.
Distinct features of aristocracy's way of life is also accurately portrayed, for instance, gathering at Thornfield for a party and for a time of leisure (before this event, Rochester himself has "gone to the Leas; Mr. Esthon's place ...he is very likely to stay a week or more: when these fine, fashionable, people get together, they are so surrounded by elegance and gaiety .... they are in no hurry to separate." ); social patterns (the differences and inter-relation between social classes -Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester and Blanche Ingram-; characters (their social position and role in life -except for Jane Eyre (who becomes a governess, typically, a profession of the time); the aristocratic women, Blanche Ingram, Eliza and Georgiana Reed, etc., dedicated to leisure, while middle class women dedicated to housekeeping (Bessie), but both restricted to the home sphere while men are dedicated to business: Mr. Rochester, Mr John Eyre of Madeira, Mr. Brocklehurst), their speeches and institutionally approved...
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