Examples Of Charlotte Bronte's Family In Jane Eyre

Jessica Jones Mateo
Engl 3820
Jane Eyre Essay
April 23, 2013 Bront’s Family or Fiction: Did Charlotte BrontWrite about her Family in Jane Eyre? In the novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront wrote about wish fulfillment. In the novel, Jane is never satisfied. She always needs more, more respect, more money, more in life. Another theme as Freud would say is that of the “Daydreaming poet.” This is where the adult dreams for more, but he would say that for females it is the longing for sexual matters not ambition. This is not true for Jane. Charlotte wrote also about two families that are in one way connected directly to Jane, the Rivers and the Reeds. In the first chapter Jane introduces the readers to her family. The first one introduced
is her hateful, spoiled cousin John Reed. He continually beats Jane and no one comes to her rescue. The one time Jane fights back she is punished and told that she is less than a servant:” No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep.” said the lady’s maid.(Bronte 24) This is the start to Jane wanting more. She wants to be treated like the Gentleman’s daughter that she is, but her father gambled her money away and she now depends on her mother’s brother’s family after her uncle has died. She is lead to believe that they are her only hope to survive:
And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it is your place to be humble… (Bront 25) Charlotte uses her fictional families as a disguise for her real family. John Reed has remarkable resemblances to Charlotte’s brother Bramwell Bront. He was spoiled for being the only boy. He mistreated his sisters just like John Reed does in Jane Eyre. In the novel, Jane says that John Reed was a bully. This is not the only reference to Charlotte’s family.
Jane’s female cousins were not much better. Although Charlotte and her sisters got along well Charlotte was not as close to them as she was to her older sister who died. She included that relationship too. In the novel Jane is sent to a boarding school for the poor. This is a disguise for what happened to the Bront sisters. They were sent to a boarding school for the daughters of the clergy. It was a charity school. The girls at the school were treated very badly and some became very sick even died. Unfortunately two of Charlotte’s sisters were in the latter group. Charlotte wrote a friend for Jane into the part where Jane is at the school. This friend is like a sister to Jane and helps her through the transitions to the school. Her name was Helen. Other characters that represent Charlotte’s sisters are Georgiana and Eliza, Jane’s Reed cousins, and the Rivers sisters Mary and Diana. Charlotte does not portray her family in a very good light. The Reed sisters are vain and selfish, but charlotte does give some complements to the girls. Eliza devotes her life to the church after her mother’s death, and Georgiana is called the most beautiful of the sisters. Charlotte repairs this view of her sisters in the Rivers sisters. Mary and Diana are very nice and generous to Jane. They open their home and help Jane when she is
ill. The Rivers sisters are simpler and kinder than that of the Reed sisters. They treat Jane as an equal rather than as a person who is lower than the maid. Later in the novel, Jane reveals that they are indeed her first cousins on her mother’s side. She is given an inheritance by her uncle Mr. Eyre. Jane finds out that the Rivers are her cousins and she was left their inheritance. She splits the money with them. She later lies to Rochester telling him that she only got 5,000 £. She is still rich but could get into a lot of legal trouble because after they are married Rochester is over her money. The money giving of the money is a way to repair the misgivings she uses to portray her real family.