Essay Plans
Essay Question 1:
In what ways does the writer of your text use time?
You should range across the text to explore how time is manipulated, the role
it plays in the novel as a whole, and the broader generic context.
[32]
Paragraph One:
Topic Sentence - Bronte makes use of time in the way the novel begins with Jane as a poor
governess and of lower social status making her unequal to Rochester.
Key Quotes - "You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Reed: she
keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poor-house."
Analysis - I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first
recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence
had become a vague sing-song in my ear; very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible.
(1.2.14-16)
Key Quotes - ‘I shall myself look out for employment and asylum for
you’ "I believe she thought I had forgotten my station, and yours, sir."
Analysis Mrs Fairfax believes that social class and its rules should be followed. This was a
common belief in Victorian society. However, Rochester's response of "Station! Station! - your
station is in my heart" illustrates Brontë's true feelings about social class and her attempts to
challenge it.
Critical evaluation - In a letter from 1839 she wrote that “a private governess has no
existence, is not considered as a living rational being, except as connected with the
wearisome duties she has to fulfil” (Gaskell, ch. 8, 243).
Bronte’s Intention - Jane’s relationship with Rochester is one of inequality and would be seen
as impossible during the Victorian era when marriages between classes was unheard of.
Paragraph Two:
Topic Sentence - However, as Jane and Rochester get to to know each other over time,
Jane is presented as an equal in the way that she intellectually challenges Rochester .
Rochester valued intelligence and understanding over anything else, and so did Jane. They
saw each other as equals in this regard and knew that the rest didn’t matter. This is what
makes Jane Eyre a remarkable book.
Key Quotes - Foreshadowed during their first meeting when Rochester has to lean on her in
order to get back to his horse.
‘go up home and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend's threshold.'
“No matter — a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the distance.” [Rochester
acknowledges Jane’s intelligence]/‘I am no bird …I am a free human being with an
independent will’/‘I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been
buried with inferior minds’/"For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I have his
force to influence, and his spell to attract: I mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings
in common with him".
Analysis - Jane has been the Other throughout her life. At Lowood she is able to adapt and
suppress part of her nature so that she fits in. But once the restraining influence and example
of Miss Temple are gone, Jane's passionate nature re-asserts itself; in other words, she reverts
, to being the Other. In Rochester, she meets someone as passionate as she is, as imaginative
as she is. Having met a kindred spirit, she no longer feels like the Other. She asserts the
similarity of their natures several times,
Key Quotes - When Rochester orders Jane to speak, her smile is "not a very complacent or
submissive smile either" and she sits silent. He apologizes, "I don't wish to treat you like an
inferior"; however, not wanting to give up his advantages, he quickly adds, "I claim only such
superiority as must result from twenty years' difference in age and a century's advance in
experience" (p. 135). Jane agrees to allow him "to hector" her (hector means to bully with
words) because he forgot that she was his employee/dependent/inferior (pp. 136-7).
Analysis - Jane holds her own in their conversations; you may even think she comes out
ahead in their game or power struggle. She responds intelligently to his comments. (what is
Bronte suggesting about equality between men and women within relationships?)
Paragraph Three:
Topic Sentence – By the end of the novel, Jane manages to step over overcome the factors
which have entrapped her and find happiness on her own terms as an independent
woman
Key Quotes – ‘I must be aided, and by that hand’
Analysis – Rochester’s loss of property and his injuries have weakened him - convenience of
losing his first wife and Jane has risen in the word through stroke of luck in her inheritance -
balancing out their gendered positions - what does this convey about equality?
Key Quotes – I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own mistress.”
Analysis -Jane views herself as an equal to Rochester, as she has five thousand pounds to her
name. The repetition of ‘I’ illustrates Jane’s independence. She is her ‘own mistress’ and
nobody can tell her what to do.
Key Quotes – ‘Reader, I married him’ (not ‘we were married)
Analysis -Rochester and Jane have established a relationship bases on mutual dependence.
Bronte’s Intentions – Consider how novel is actually conventional – Jane must follow the
social conventions in order to maintain her respectability which is the only commodity she
has – is Jane living a life as restricted as any of the other young middle class women who
play a part in the novel – Diana and Mary Rivers - marry well because they have money and
freedom to marry for love?
Key context
• In the Victorian era, women's wealth and dowry determined who they should marry. •
Through marriage, the husband would receive the dowry, making the woman
dependent on the husband.
• Social class determined marriage, as people tended to marry partners within their
own social class.
• Women were in a particularly vulnerable position, as men and their families tended to
choose a suitable wife on the basis of the woman's dowry, a sum of money that the
male received from the bride's family through marriage.
Essay Question 2:
In what ways does the writer of your text use settings?
You should range across the text to explore how use of settings contributes to
the structure of the narrative, the function it plays in the novel as a whole, and
the broader generic context.
