Jane Eyre

An Adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's novel for young children

by Meredith Birmingham

1999 Meredith Birmingham. All rights reserved.

Let your mind wander back to England in the year 1824, to the cold and bleak
land in the north called Yorkshire. There, in a large dreary mansion, lived an
eight-year-old girl named Jane Eyre.

Jane had no mother or father. They had died when she was little. Instead, she
lived with her aunt and three cousins. Her aunt was cruel and her cousins
were spoiled. Jane always got the blame for trouble her cousins caused.

One day her aunt told Jane to come downstairs and meet Mr. Brocklehurst.
"Jane, this is Mr. Brocklehurst. He is the headmaster of the new boarding
school you will be going to. It is a boarding school for orphans," said her aunt.
Mr. Brocklehurst was tall and thin and dressed in drab black clothes. He had a
cruel, mean look about him. Jane curtseyed politely without a word.

"And Mr. Brocklehurst, this is Jane," the aunt began. "As you can see, she is
not very pretty, and her behavior is even worse. That is why I cannot keep
her here anymore. She always blames my children for the naughty things
that she does, and I will not stand for it anymore. She must go."

Mr. Brocklehurst glared at Jane. "I can see that she is the very child of the
Devil. I will take her back to my school where we will break her spirit and
teach her obedience to her betters."

Mr. Brocklehurst took her back to his school which was call Lowood
Institution. The school building was very dark and damp and cold. Mr.
Brocklehurst introduced Jane to the other girls at the school. "This is Jane
Eyre, a new student. Her aunt tells me she is a wicked child. Therefore, no
one will be allowed to talk to her or sit beside her, lest her wicked ways make
you wicked, like you once were before you came to Lowood."

The children responded in lifeless voices, "Yes, Mr. Brocklehurst." And Jane
was made to stand in a corner for the rest of the day. That night, one child
dared to befriend Jane. Her name was Helen. It was Helen's friendship that
helped Jane survive her awful years at Lowood Institution. The school was
very cold and damp, and they were often given nothing to eat but thin
oatmeal for breakfast, broth and bread for lunch, and tea and toast for
supper. But Jane survived.

Eventually, Jane finished her schooling at Lowood Institution. She found a job
as a governess. A governess is a woman who takes care of children in their
own home. A rich man named Mr. Rochester hired Jane to look after his small
daughter. Jane was glad to get away from Mr. Brocklehurst and the dreary
Lowood Institution.

Mr. Rochester owned Thornfield Mansion, but he was never home. He spent
most of his time at his other house called Ferndean Manor. As soon as Jane
arrived, the maid introduced Jane to Adele, Mr. Rochester's daughter. The
maid also warned Jane that she must never go to the third floor of the house,
but she would not explain why. It was a very large house; at night, Jane would
sometimes hear a door banging and someone screaming. She would check on
Adele, but find her sleeping peacefully. At first, Jane was afraid of the strange
house and the people who lived there, but she got used to it.

It was nearly a year before Mr. Rochester came home to Thornfield Mansion.
He was a very strange man -- very quiet, very gruff, and very sad. He did not
seem interested in people at all. Jane felt very sorry for him and was kind to
him. They walked and talked together, and little by little his sadness lifted.

Soon they fell in love, even though he was rich and she was poor. He asked
her to marry him. They went to the church to be married, but in the middle of

the ceremony, a man burst into the church and said, "You cannot be married!
Mr. Rochester already has a wife!"

Mr. Rochester turned pale. The vicar asked, "Is this true?" Mr. Rochester shook
his head in shame, and said, "Yes. I married a woman named Bertha Mason
many years ago. I did not know her. Our families arranged the marriage. Soon
afterwards I learned my wife was insane. I have taken care of her all these
years and it has ruined my life. She lives in a locked room in my house
because as she became more insane, she became a danger to herself and
other people. She has tried to set her room on fire many times."

The vicar said he could not allow the wedding to continue. Jane was so upset
that she packed her bags and left Thornfield right away. She did not know
where she was going. She had no money and only one small bag for her
clothes. She wandered for days until she was so cold and hungry that she had
to stop at the nearest house and ask for help.

The kind people took her in and gave her food and a place to sleep. She slept
for several days and when she woke, the kind people said that she could stay
there until she found a new job. Despite the people's kindness over the next
few months, Jane was very unhappy. She missed Mr. Rochester, Adele, and
Thornfield Mansion. She often had terrible nightmares. One night she dreamt
she heard Mr. Rochester screaming, "Jane! Jane! Jane!" and she saw flames all
around him. The next morning, she knew that she had to go back to
Thornfield Mansion.

When she got back to Thornfield Mansion, she saw that it had burnt down to
the ground. No one was living there. She went to the local inn, and there she
learned that Mr. Rochester's insane wife had set fire to the mansion one
night. Mr. Rochester had tried to save her but couldn't. She died and he was
injured very badly in the fire. Now he was living at his other home, Ferndean
Manor.

Jane went to Ferndean Manor right away. The maid brought Jane to Mr.
Rochester. She could see that he was very badly injured in the fire and that
he was very sad again. Jane said, "You will need a nurse. I would stay and
take care of you and Adele."

Mr. Rochester replied, "I do not need a nurse. What I want is a wife. Do you
know anyone who would want to marry a half-blind, crippled man like me?
Who would marry me, Jane?"

Jane answered, "The woman who loves you best. That is the woman who you
must marry."

Mr. Rochester was silent for a moment. "I do not know how any woman could
love me. But I will say this. I will marry the woman I love best. Will you marry
me, Jane?"

"Yes, I will marry you, Mr. Rochester."

Jane and Mr. Rochester got married, and Mr. Rochester's wounds healed. They
had a son and lived happily ever after.
Biography of Family

Patrick and Maria Bronte had six children (from oldest to youngest): Maria,
Elizabeth, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne. Soon after Patrick had been
appointed to a parish in Haworth, Yorkshire, his wife died, leaving the parson
and the young children behind (the oldest, Maria, only seven years old).
Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Emily began attending Cowan Bridge School
three years after their mother's death. Tragically, Maria and Elizabeth both
died of tuberculosis, which had infected the school. Patrick hastened to bring
Charlotte and Emily home after learning of the deaths of his two older
daughters.

Six years after the loss of her sisters, Charlotte set off for Roe Head School.
She returned a little after a year later and taught her sisters. In 1835,
Charlotte became a teacher at Roe Head, and Emily became a student there,
but she only lasted three months. She would speak to no one except
Charlotte and became very thin and pale. She was soon back at Haworth.
Anne took Emily's place at Roe Head.

In the next few years, Emily became a teacher at Law Hill School. Failure was
the result. Emily endured her position for six months; she disliked teaching
very much, and longed for the moors that surrounded her home.

In February of 1842, Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels. They stayed at the
Pensionnat Heger, where they became pupils. Madame Heger was the head
of the school. The two sisters learned French, German, music, singing,
writing, arithmetic, and drawing.

At home, Aunt Branwell had become very ill. Charlotte and Emily came home,
only to find her dead and buried. Afterwards, Emily stayed at the Parsonage,
but Charlotte went back to Brussels. She became a teacher at the Pensionnat,
but she was very dissatisfied with her students. In a letter to Branwell, she
said:

"I can discern only one or two [pupils] who deserve anything like
regard...They have not intellect or politeness or good-nature or goodfeeling..."

Madame Heger thought that Charlotte had fallen in love with her husband,
and therefore became very cold and distant towards her. Monsieur Heger
taught her German, but otherwise, had little to do with her. Early in 1844,
Charlotte came home, but continued to write to Monsieur Heger, even though
he allowed her to write to him only twice a year.

Branwell's talents seemed very promising. He was seen as the gifted one in
the family. His father had hired a painting master to teach his only son, and it
was also thought that Branwell could possibly turn out to be a poet or a
journalist. Unfortunately, Fate dictated otherwise. Branwell was to go to
London to attend the Royal Academy Schools, but he did not present himself
as planned. Instead, he roamed the streets of London, wasting his money on
alcohol. Later on, when he had failed at portrait painting and working on
railroads, he tried his hand at tutoring (the Robinson family hired him).
Branwell was dismissed because of "irregularities," as it was termed. He had
been having an affair with Mrs. Robinson. Finally, at age 31, Charlotte's only

brother died.

Meanwhile, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne had begun publishing their poetry and
novels. Charlotte had written Jane Eyre (1846), Shirley (1849), and Villette
(1853). It was not until after her death that The Professor was published in
1857. Charlotte had begun several novels, but she never finished them.
Emily's novel Wuthering Heights was published in 1847. Anne's
accomplishments included Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
(1848). All of the Bronte sisters had contributed poems to a collection of
poetry, entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846). Currer, Ellis and
Acton were the aliases assumed by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte. The
sisters lived in such times that women were not always given a fair chance in
the business world. Therefore, they assumed masculine names, so that their
books would have a better chance of being published.

Disaster struck in October of 1848, when Emily fell sick with tuberculosis. In
December of 1848, Emily's coffin was laid in the same vault as that of her
mother and brother. Anne soon followed her sister to the grave, after she was
consumed by the same relentless disease that had deprived her mother,
brother, and three sisters of their lives.
The only remaining members of the Bronte family were Patrick and Charlotte.
Charlotte was very deeply grieved at the loss of her companions. Writing
restored her energy. In Shirley, she explained her feelings:

"...who cares for imagination? Who does not think it a rather dangerous,
senseless attribute - akin to weakness - perhaps partaking of frenzy - a
disease rather than a gift of the mind?
Probably all think it so, but those who possess - or fancy they possess - it. To
hear them speak, you would believe that their hearts would be cold if that
elixir did not flow about them; that their eyes would be dim if that flame did
not refine their vision; that they would be lonely if this strange companion
abandoned them. You would suppose that it imparted some glad hope to
spring, some fine charm to summer, some tranquil joy to autumn, some
consolation to winter, which you do not feel. An illusion, of course; but the
fanatics cling to their dream, and would not give it for gold."

Charlotte also wrote to her publisher, when she was announcing the

completion of Shirley:

"Whatever now becomes of the work, the occupation of writing it has been a
boon to me. It took me out of dark and desolate reality into an unreal but
happier region."

In a later letter to the same publisher, she wrote:

"The faculty of imagination lifted me when I was sinking, three months ago...I
am thankful to God, who gave me this faculty; and it is for me a part of my
religion to defend this gift and to profit by its possession."

During this time, her father's curate, the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, had
been spending a great deal of time with Patrick and Charlotte. It was not long
before he proposed, and Charlotte accepted. They were married on the
morning of Thursday, June 29, 1854. One year after the marriage, Charlotte
died. The cause of her death was tuberculosis, and it is thought that
complications in early pregnancy hastened the process.

Patrick Bronte ended up outliving his wife and six children. His only
companion was Charlotte's husband, who looked after Charlotte's father, in
compliance with Charlotte's last wishes. Patrick, at age 84, was the last of his
family to die.
Five Fascinating Facts about the Bront Sisters
BY INTERESTINGLITERATURE APRIL 21, 2014 BOOKS CLASSICS ENGLISH
LITERATURE FUN FACTS LITERATURE ON THIS DAY TRIVIA VICTORIAN
LITERATURE WRITERS WRITING
Charlotte Bront was born on this day, 21 April, in 1816. She was the eldest
of the three Bront siblings who became famous authors, so we thought wed
take this opportunity to celebrate the Bront sisters and their work in another
instalment of our Five Fascinating Facts series. If you enjoy this post, you
might also want to see how you fare with our 10 Classic Victorian Novels
Everyone Should Read.

1. The sisters first volume of poems sold just two copies. Poems by Currer,
Ellis and Acton Bell (1846) sold a total of two copies when first published.
However, it was the failure of this poetry volume that convinced the sisters to
turn their attention to writing novels: the following year Wuthering Heights,
Jane Eyre, and Agnes Grey were all published. In a letter of March 1845,
Charlotte had written, I shall soon be 30 and I have done nothing yet. I
feel as if we were all buried here. The sisters subsequently adopted their
androgynous pseudonyms Currer Bell for Charlotte, Ellis Bell for Emily, and
Acton Bell for Anne because they suspected their work would receive
adverse reviews if it appeared under a female name (compare George Eliot
and George Sand). Interestingly, Bront wasnt their original surname: their
father was named Brunty but he thought this sounded too Irish (sure enough,
the Bront sisters were all of Irish stock), so he altered it to Bront after one
of Horatio Nelsons titles, Duke of Bronte. What better way to offset the
Irishness of your original surname than by paying tribute to the English hero
of the hour?

2. Emily paid 50 to have Wuthering Heights published. Although it went on

to become a worldwide bestseller and is now perhaps the most famous of all
the Bront novels (its between that novel and Jane Eyre), the novel failed to
find a publisher and so Bront paid for the novel to be published, to offset
against potential losses to the publisher. Sure enough, the novel was a
commercial failure at the time and Emily died, just one year after its
publication, believing it had been a flop and would soon be forgotten. (In
2007, a rare first edition of the novel sold at auction for 114,000.) Now, of
course, the novel is one of the most widely read Victorian classics, and is
immortalised in numerous ways, not least in Kate Bushs 1978 hit single of
the same name. Interestingly, Emily Bront and Kate Bush share a birthday,
July 30th.

Bronte23. The earliest known instance of the phrase Wild West appears in a
novel by Charlotte. Her 1849 novel Shirley also helped to popularise Shirley
as a girls name. Before Bronts novel, Shirley was exclusively a boys name
(derived from the surname Shirley), but when Bront used it for her female
protagonist, the name gained popularity as a girls name. Talking of Charlotte,
there was no madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre: Bertha Mason/Rochester
was confined to a room on the third floor of the house, which was the room
below the attic. So Gilbert and Gubars landmark 1979 work of feminist
literary criticism should perhaps be renamed as The Madwoman in the ThirdStorey Room!

4. Emily Bronts dog mourned her death. It is said that Emilys dog, Keeper,
followed her coffin to the grave when she died in 1848 and, for weeks after,
moaned and howled outside her bedroom door. Dogs in Wuthering Heights,
you may recall, dont fare too well: Heathcliff hangs Isabella Lintons dog from
a tree (the Lintons dog had earlier injured Cathy when she and Heathcliff had
ventured over to Thrushcross Grange).

5. Emily once had to put out her brother, Branwell, when he set fire to his
bedclothes. The fate of Branwell has been much discussed in the history of
the Bront sisters: his alcoholism helped to inspired the drunken husband
Arthur Huntingdon in Annes novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), while
there is a rumour that he died standing up, leaning against the mantelpiece,
just to prove that it could be done.
Mary Anne Evan was born on 22nd November 1819 to a local farming family
in South Farm on the Arbury Estate in Warwickshire, England. Considered as
one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, Mary Anne opted pen name
George Eliot that now holds high esteem among the critics of English
literature. Explaining her choice of a male pen name she said that this was to
ensure her work is taken seriously.

Since her early age Eliot was very fond of reading, this together with her
intelligence compelled her father to support Eliots education. She started her
formal education in 1824. On completion of her school Eliot returned to her
family home Griff House on the Arbury Estate. Being impressed by her
performance in school, Eliots father bought her many books and hired a tutor
as he wanted her to continue her studies. Her fathers vital role in estate
management won her access to the library of Arbury Hall. This aided her
classical education which found its impression on Eliots work. One other
influence that is observed in her writings is religion.

At the age of 21, Eliot started questioning her Christian faith. This was the
time when she embarked on a period of great change when she moved to
Foleshill, near Coventry, with her father. The closeness to Coventry society
gave her an opportunity to become part of Coventrys intellectual circle

where she developed acquaintance with a number of freethinking

intellectuals like Charles and Cara Bray. She also met John Chapman with the
help of Brays. Chapman later became publisher of Eliots first translation
Life of Jesus in 1846, and her first employer in 1850 when she moved to
England after the death of her father. Chapman had bought Westminster
Review Journal and Eliot joined it as assistant editor. She played a main role in
running the journal and made many contributions in the form of essays and
reviews. Here she started trying her pen in non-fiction genre. Many of her
articles were published anonymously.

In 1852 Eliot met George Henry Lewes, a prolific author, philosopher, and
critic; who is credited to be a great deal of support for her. Later they became
lovers and lived together until the demise of Lewes. This relationship was a
source of criticism for both Lewes and Eliot as they never memorialized their
union legally. Lewes encouraged Eliot to continue writing fiction. Her first
complete novel Adam Bede which was a great success and triggered
suspense in the readers was published in 1859. People wanted to know about
this George Eliot who writes with bitter and cunning intellect. There were
many imposters who claimed to be the author; however in the end Marry
Anne Evan stepped forward and declared herself as George Eliot. She later
said that she did not want her reputation to precede her work and thus chose
a male pen name. After the success of Adam Bede she continued publishing
many successful novels for next fifteen years. Her readers praised her
illustration of rural society; this also became one of the reasons for her
instant success as her readers could relate their lives with Eliots writings.
She died on 22nd December 1880 and left behind a legacy of literary work to
benefit many generations of writers, critics and novelists.
Five interesting facts about George Elliot
1) Eliot's scandalous personal life clouded her reputation even after her
death. Despite her literary achievements, Eliot was not allowed a memorial
stone in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner. She finally received recognition
there in 1980, one hundred years after her death.

2) When Eliot's first novel became a huge success, several people claimed to
have written the novel. Eventually, Eliot came forward to state that she is the

rightful author.

3) When the reading public discovered that Eliot was a woman, they didnt
know whether to condemn her for being an arrogant woman who thought she
could write...or praise her for writing so well.

4) It has been suggested that Herbert Spencer, a famed British philosopher,

had an affair with Eliot and then broke up with her. Afterward, he wrote an
essay on the repugnancy of ugly women. All of Eliots friends knew whom he
was writing about.

5) For over thirty years, Eliot lived with philosopher George Henry Lewes,
although they never married and Lewes already had a wife.