A Tale of Two Hearts - Jane Eyre

A detailed Summary of A Tale of Two Hearts - Jane Eyre

While an artist uses a variety of colors and brushes to create a portrait, Charlotte Bronte used contrasting characters and their vivid personalities to create a masterpiece of her own. In her novel Jane Eyre, Bronte uses narration and her characters to portray the struggle between a society's Victorian realism and the people's repressed urges of Romanticism.

In order to discern between the Victorian and Romantic themes, Bronte selects certain characters to portray the perfect stereotype of each theme. Mademoiselle Celine Varens is the model of the Romantic attitude. Varens a "French opera-dancer" found herself as the "grande passion" of Mr. Rochester. The amour between Rochester and Varens started in a "complete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmere, diamonds, dentells, etc." and ended with Rochester "finding her out" with another man. Varens' irrationality did not only affect Rochester, but also her child: "she abandoned her child and ran away with a musician or singer." Celine Varens, a woman in a daring profession, led a life of passion, freedom and irresponsibility. Her life was ballad of adventure idolized by Romantics but frowned upon by society. Mrs. Reed is the perfect represent

"Eliza, John and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing room: she lay reclined on the sofa by the fireplace and her darlings about her..."

Humanity has produced many writers, artists and musicians, but only select individuals become masters of their art. Bronte proved in Jane Eyre that she is a master of literature. She was able to bottle two conflicting attitudes of society into the characters of her novel. Through personalities like Mrs. Reed and Celine Varens, readers were able to understand Victorian realism and the Romantic age. As the novel developed, it led readers to assume that any union between these themes is impossible. But Bronte's writing was able to make these two fighting foes combine into the single personalities of Jane and Mr. Rochester. Bronte's talents lie in her ability to present two greatly contrasting attitudes through her narrations and characters and then successfully manipulate her fictional creations to compliment each other despite their differences.

Mr. Rochester by surface was the typical Victorian gentleman. He was born of good name and owner of the Thornfield estate. He had inherited a wealth from his father, which he used to spoil his little ward Adele. Mr. Rochester has all the upper-class privileges expected: social status, luxuries and snobiness, traits of well to do Victorian characters. But unlike his counterparts such as Mrs. Reed he lacks the deep conviction of moral and conservatism. In fact he has done many things that would make Mrs. Reed blush. "I sought my ideal of a woman amongst English ladies, French countesses, Italian signoras, and German grafinnien. I could not find her." Underneath all the Victorian pageantry, Rochester has simple needs and desires that need to be satisfied. He looked for companionsh

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Approximate Word count = 1218
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels