Independency in Charlotte Bronte's Novel "Jane Eyre"

Introduction

Charlotte Brontë is one of the greatest representatives of Realism literature, and “Jane Eyre” is the best-known novel of hers. It is partly autobiografical, because many events in the book are from her own experience. However, this is not the most autobiographical of Ch. Brontë’s novels. In “Villette” she has written more about herself.
“Jane Eyre” is a magnificent novel, full of romance, tears, joy… In one word – full of life with all its good and bad features. It is pleasure to read it, because Ch. Brontë’s language is wonderful and in some sense unique. She uses a lot of obsolete words and phrases, and this gives to the work some extra attraction. We can see what the language has been like a long time ago, for Ch. Brontë has used very many words that have been obsolete already in her time. We could say that she has been bringing some history through so many years.
The main theme in “Jane Eyre” is a story about an orphan girl who has to live on her own because no one takes care of her. On the contrary – she experiences humiliation from the side of her relatives and later also people at school. This, probably, is the main reason why she gives so much importance to independency and strives to be free. Some critics say that “Jane Eyre” appears to be the first work of feminism, but, actually, this is only one side of the coin, because it is in human nature – long to be free. In any times and any places people have felt dependent on something – whether it would be slavery or addiction to drugs, computers, etc. as it is nowadays. People can be unfree in very different ways, and sometimes, without even realising it, we depend on much more things (or people) than we can imagine.
In “Jane Eyre” by Ch. Brontë, we can see a very wide semantic field of ‘independent’, as well as many contrary meanings of this word. It makes one think that, actually, the theme of this work is independency, for it is reminding of it all the time. This Paper will try to prove that it is so.
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