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   kc4u Teacher
   College - Senior

   eNotes Editor

   Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroamn. So, quite obviously, it deals with the character-development of Jane from Gateshead to Thornfield and beyond. It is the journey of a little girl, transforming into a full-fledged woman and the development of the moral faculty is of course a part of it though to reduce the novel to just a moral quest would be a bit of a simplification.

   The two central moral choices for Jane involve Rochester and St. John Rivers respectively. When on the eve of her marriage with Rochester, she comes to know about Bertha, it is a complex moral choice for her--whether to go by her romantic passion or judge Rochester's moral character in a dispassionate light and be on the side of truth. She goes for the truth and this is a philosophically oriented ethico-rational decision on her part.

   The more difficult choice comes with Rivers because it is a choice between the individual and the universal humanitarian project where the conventional moral axiom would accept River's offer of going to India and serve as a missionary. But, once again, Jane takes a boldly individualistic decision with a return to Rochester. At the end of the novel, we have a Jane, who has literally earned her happiness and dictates terms with her rather helpless husband in a radically subversive marriage.

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   Posted by kc4u on Tuesday November 3, 2009 at 3:11 AM