It's actually rather amusing seeing how many romance cliches Bronte subverts, even though she was writing a good many, many years before the contemporary romance industry was formed.
Bronte was riffing on a good many Gothic cliches, lots of which got turned into contemporary romance cliches -- she said to her sisters that her heroine would be "poor and plain as herself," altho Woolf says it is impossible to believe in Jane's plainness (heh). Jane is unpious, stubborn, rebellious, and passionate. The "good" heroine (sort of like Melanie in Gone with the Wind) is Helen Burns, a model child (with a model heartrending Victorian death) who was based on one of Charlotte's older sisters (the parts about school and a lot of the governess bits are based on Charlotte's personal experience, and IIRC her paintings are Jane's, Charlotte thinking at one point she would be an artist til she ruined her eyes copying engravings). The "good" heroine would necessarily marry St. John Rivers (whose words end the book), too. It was quite daring of Bronte to present Brocklehurst as a heartless hypocritical prig and St. John as pretty much equally so.
The Brontes go in for a lot more social criticism than is generally thought -- Charlotte's later novel Shirley is a deliberate attempt at a sort of Eliotesque larger social canvas, altho not being Eliot it comes off v oddly (but interestingly). I think one of Jane's best lines is when she thinks, well, I'm an orphan, why not run off to the South of France -- who will care? And her response is, not family (she doesn't have any), nor friends, nor God -- she will care; she is responsible for herself, and she's looking out for herself.
I didn't like Rochester because of all the blah blah teasing spoil the flower really an indestructible gem wtf-ever, guy. It made me want to poke him.
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Bronte was riffing on a good many Gothic cliches, lots of which got turned into contemporary romance cliches -- she said to her sisters that her heroine would be "poor and plain as herself," altho Woolf says it is impossible to believe in Jane's plainness (heh). Jane is unpious, stubborn, rebellious, and passionate. The "good" heroine (sort of like Melanie in Gone with the Wind) is Helen Burns, a model child (with a model heartrending Victorian death) who was based on one of Charlotte's older sisters (the parts about school and a lot of the governess bits are based on Charlotte's personal experience, and IIRC her paintings are Jane's, Charlotte thinking at one point she would be an artist til she ruined her eyes copying engravings). The "good" heroine would necessarily marry St. John Rivers (whose words end the book), too. It was quite daring of Bronte to present Brocklehurst as a heartless hypocritical prig and St. John as pretty much equally so.
The Brontes go in for a lot more social criticism than is generally thought -- Charlotte's later novel Shirley is a deliberate attempt at a sort of Eliotesque larger social canvas, altho not being Eliot it comes off v oddly (but interestingly). I think one of Jane's best lines is when she thinks, well, I'm an orphan, why not run off to the South of France -- who will care? And her response is, not family (she doesn't have any), nor friends, nor God -- she will care; she is responsible for herself, and she's looking out for herself.
I didn't like Rochester because of all the blah blah teasing spoil the flower really an indestructible gem wtf-ever, guy. It made me want to poke him.