Self-Identity In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” borrows the name of the novel’s central character, Jane Eyre. The Victorian and Roman inspired narrative documents Jane’s time of being an orphaned girl at Gateshead suffering under the unjust rule of her biased aunt, her experience as an underprivileged student at an all girl’s school for other orphans, and Jane’s employment as a governess. Charlotte Brontë carefully weaves the essential theme self-identity through “Jane Eyre” as a crucial component in the development of Jane as a person and the conclusion of her story. Moreover, Jane Eyre and her journey through Gateshead, Lowood, and Thornfield concisely represent Jane and how she identifies herself as someone who cannot accept injustice or bias, but whose moral conviction is strong enough to prevent these ideals from overshadowing what Jane knows to be right. To begin, Gateshead is a primary location in the novel that begins to instill within Jane that sense of self-identity. After being struck with a book at the hands of the cold John Reed, the resulting scuffle imprisons Jane within the Red Room. The solemnity of the dreary room gives Jane time to fester with the thoughts that flood her mind, thoughts such as: “All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference….all the servant’s partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well.” (9) The Red Room puppeteers these thoughts from the fed-up Jane and becomes the catalyst for Jane’s self-identity and her blossoming maturity; it displays her unwavering position on the Reeds and their injustice and, by extension, her distaste towards injustice or bias of any kind.
Gateshead, Lowood, and Thornfield are all essential locations utilized to help Jane gain a sense of identity within