Use of Allusion in Jane Eyre
ALLUSION IN JANE EYRE
This paper will focus on the use of allusion that Bronte has made in her novel Jane Eyre. The novel is written in first person. The novel has in it elements of the gothic. The gothic novel is an amalgamation of romance and terror. The tradition started with Horace Walpole’s novel ‘the castle of Otronto’. Bronte uses elements of this tradition in Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre digresses from the other novels, written over a four-year period, largely because of Bronte's use of images, symbols, and allusions. In marked contrast, Jane Eyre is filled with allusions and citations: thirty-seven from the Bible, eleven from Shakespeare, and references to or citations from more than twenty writers ranging from Vergil to Sir Walter Scott. The novel’s autobiographical leanings can be observed in aspects of characterization. First of all, she is, like Charlotte Bronte herself, a very well-read young woman. Secondly, the Biblical quotations and allusions are quite understandable in the context of an almost, at times, oppressively religious atmosphere. The story does deal, to a large extent, with the struggle between human passion and Christian duty. But something more important arises from the Biblical and Shakespearean allusions. In the second and third parts of the novel Bronte clearly associates her somewhat typically Gothic lovers with three other pairs of men and women from the past: Adam and Eve, Samson and Delilah, and Lear and Cordelia. Some critics have pointed out the individual analogues, but no one has shown that together they form a pattern or motif of male/female pairings. As a matter of fact, these three pairs should signal, to some readers at least, that Bronte is associating the individual, particular confrontation between Jane and Rochester with the universal, archetypal confrontation between the sexes. Thus, the
This paper will focus on the use of allusion that Bronte has made in her novel Jane Eyre. The novel is written in first person. The novel has in it elements of the gothic. The gothic novel is an amalgamation of romance and terror. The tradition started with Horace Walpole’s novel ‘the castle of Otronto’. Bronte uses elements of this tradition in Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre digresses from the other novels, written over a four-year period, largely because of Bronte's use of images, symbols, and allusions. In marked contrast, Jane Eyre is filled with allusions and citations: thirty-seven from the Bible, eleven from Shakespeare, and references to or citations from more than twenty writers ranging from Vergil to Sir Walter Scott. The novel’s autobiographical leanings can be observed in aspects of characterization. First of all, she is, like Charlotte Bronte herself, a very well-read young woman. Secondly, the Biblical quotations and allusions are quite understandable in the context of an almost, at times, oppressively religious atmosphere. The story does deal, to a large extent, with the struggle between human passion and Christian duty. But something more important arises from the Biblical and Shakespearean allusions. In the second and third parts of the novel Bronte clearly associates her somewhat typically Gothic lovers with three other pairs of men and women from the past: Adam and Eve, Samson and Delilah, and Lear and Cordelia. Some critics have pointed out the individual analogues, but no one has shown that together they form a pattern or motif of male/female pairings. As a matter of fact, these three pairs should signal, to some readers at least, that Bronte is associating the individual, particular confrontation between Jane and Rochester with the universal, archetypal confrontation between the sexes. Thus, the