Friday, February 27, 2009

Jane Eyre



Of late, I’ve been reading several novels, one of which is ‘Jane Eyre’ that I got interested in. The story was written by Charlotte Borntë and first published in 1990.
Jane Eyre is a poor, plain, and simple girl whose life is full of hardship and misery. Losing of parents since she was born, she became an orphan and had to live with her aunt, Mrs Reeds, who and whose children dislike her and always treat her worse than a maid without a reason. She is always scolded at and punished. At the age of eight, when her aunt wants to get rid of her, she is sent away to a charity school where she has to live on herself without support from a family. Although the living there is quite poor (less food, less clothes, strict rules…), she likes it since it’s much better than where she is from. She learns the knowledge and manages to survive. She stays there for ten years. After that, she leaves the school and works as a governess of a girl in Thornfield House, where she meets her true love, Mr. Rochester, around 40 years old, the owner of the house. They are in love with each other. However, the secret of Mr. Rochester breaks off their marriage. Taking us by surprise, Mr. Rochester has got a mad wife who is locked inside the house. His wife inherits the madness from her family, and Mr. Rochester never knows it until they are married and live together. Mr. Rochester had been very sad and is always in bad temper. He has always been looking for someone who he can truly love. When he meets Jane, he knows she is the one. Therefore, he proposes marriage to Jane, and she agrees. On the day of her marriage, Jane knows the secret and leaves the house with sadness and helpless no matter what Mr. Rochester says. She has no where to live and she has no job. When she is dying of hunger, she is rescued by a family consisting of two sisters and a brother. Later, they find out that they are cousins when their uncle, John, who is also Jane’s uncle, dies and leaves Jane with $20,000. She divides the treasure into four and shares with her cousins who have saved her life. She is proposed to marry by her cousin, but she refuses him because deeply in her heart, Mr. Rochester fully occupies. Therefore, she goes back to Thornfield House to see him. Unexpectedly, when she is there, the House is never there; it’s just a pile of rock and ruin. Everything is burnt down by a fire caused by Mr. Rochester’s mad wife. Mr. Rochester, who managed to save all people in the house from fire, is badly injured. Sadly, he has lost one of his legs and becomes blind; still, he couldn’t manage to save his wife who jumped from the window and died. In the end, Jane comes back to Mr. Rochester, marries to him, and serves him because she knows he is the only one she loves and loves her. Luckily, one of his eyes is able to see again after years of treatment. They have got a child and live happily ever after.
I love this story much since it teaches us to struggle for life, to look for happiness by ourselves, to forgive and forget, and to think positively even we are facing a problem. Of course, there are many things that we can learn solely from a novel, and it’s also the reason that I like reading it. I hope all of you start to love novels and learn the moral it tries to give to us.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This is a fantastic story i supposed cuz i have researched a lot regarding the Bronte sister biography, and i have planned to read it on my next vacation!