The Isolation of Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre in its first few chapters is much about the isolation felt by Jane in her first eighteen years and how it can affect the way in which she sees the world. Jane’s first station in life is to be forcefully adopted by a woman who despises her and give her the barest minimum of comforts and necessities in life. Mrs. Reed looks at her ward as the lowest kind of responsibility that she promised her husband that she would take on after his death, “Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had, I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her; but how could she really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her, after her husband’s death, by any tie? (7)” Jane seems to understand her station early on in her life. The only kind of affection or solace that Jane can find is in Bessie and Miss Abbot who do not lend their sympathies toward her either. Her isolation is identified and accepted at a young age and Jane must make up her mind to accept it and strive within it. When she is taken to Lowood, it is Jane’s first real experience in a place that acknowledges her being a person worth affection. Even though Mr. Blockhurst tries his best to uncover that she is a liar as Mrs. Reed told him, Jane is given the benefit of the doubt and is introduced to her first friend Helen Burns. The death of Helen affect Jane as it is the first loss that she witnesses. With her friend gone, Jane progresses her story to her eighteenth year when she leaves Lowood for a job at Thornfield. Here, Jane finds her student Adèle almost as isolated as her younger self was. Adèle is the charge of Mr. Rochester who shows little affection towards the girl and gives her the basic needs of life with little attention to her actual studies or interests. Jane’s life at Thornfield is quiet and isolated just as the rest of her life has been. An interesting turn of events though, is that she no teaches a child with a life structure very much like her own. Her lifelong isolation may lead Jane to the decisions that she makes within the rest of the novel and more importantly, her closeness of situations with Adèle, if she chooses acknowledge it, may have an effect on the way that she treats her student. Isolation, in any form, will be what drives this novel as it is the only clear thing that is understood by the protagonist.

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. London: Service & Paton, 1897. E-book.