some familiarity with the French language, Adèle’s less-complicated dialogue often goes untranslated. 

• What to do: Let your class know beforehand that small phrases of French will appear periodically as they read. Tell students that Adèle is a child, and that her dialogue is easy to follow using context clues or an online translator. 

Phrenology and Victorian Pseudoscience: At certain points throughout the text, characters mention the “physiognomy” of a given individual or the personal qualities that facial features express. One example is in chapter 29, in which St. John makes assumptions about Jane’s history and character based solely on the features of her face. Such scenes are due to the popularity of phrenology in the 19th century, a now-debunked pseudoscience which theorized that the characteristics and tendencies of individuals are externally represented in their facial features. An incredibly socially dangerous theory, phrenology has since been disproven by the tenets of modern science. 

• What to do: A brief lesson on various strange Victorian pseudoscience phenomena is educational, fun, and works to distance more impressionable students from the danger of outmoded theories. From poisonous make-up to seances with the dead, the prim and proper Victorians were wild in their own way.

Rochester in Disguise: A strange and inconsistent part of the novel is chapter 19, in which Rochester dresses up as an old fortune-telling gypsy woman from a traveling gypsy camp come into the area. These “gypsies” were most likely Romani, a nomadic culture often subject to discrimination and stereotyping throughout history. 

• What to do: Ask students their impressions of this chapter—was it humorous, surprising, weird? Explain the social-historical background of Rochester’s costume, and discuss the subtle yet serious dangers inherent in this style of racialized humor. 

Alternative Approaches to Teaching Jane Eyre

While the main ideas, character development, and discussion questions above are typically the focal points of units involving this text, the following suggestions represent alternative readings that may enrich your students’ experience and understanding of the novel. 

The Novel as Commentary on Social Class: On her journey, Jane encounters individuals from all class backgrounds, from the richest to the poorest. The Reeds are a wealthy family, yet each member is either morally corrupt at worst or seriously flawed at best; Miss Ingram is high-caste, beautiful, and accomplished, yet her character has only greed and contempt for the lower class. The Rivers are in difficult financial straits yet generously open their doors to Jane in her time of need; members of the serving class such as Bessie and Hannah seem rude and crass at first but are revealed to have good, caring hearts. For Jane and Rochester, a major troubling factor in their love story is the enormous divide between them when it comes to money and status. Discuss with students Jane Eyre’s capacity as a social critique on class division, a reading often overlooked in favor of its more popular readings as a bildungsroman and romance. 

• For discussion: What message do you think Jane Eyre conveys regarding themes of social class and money? What relationships can you see between people’s status and money versus their moral and personal characters? Are Jane and Rochester rebelling against class-based inequality by marrying as equals, or are they ultimately adapting or conforming to these social mores with the advent of Jane’s inheritance? 

The Madwoman in the Attic: As no work of Gothic fiction is complete without its “monster,” Jane Eyre’s “monster,” Bertha Mason, is a severely mentally-ill Caribbean woman despised and imprisoned by her British husband. This problematic fact of the text is too often overlooked and unaddressed, yet Jane Eyre’s Bertha has preoccupied feminist and colonial literary critics for decades. During the Victorian period, about a quarter of the globe’s land surface was under British rule. Note that Bertha is a Jamaican creole woman, and that her marriage to Rochester was arranged as a reciprocal exchange of status for fortune between two families. Focus on the novel with respect to Bertha’s character and story rather than Jane’s and the injustices which appear in portraying Bertha as a “monster.” 

• For discussion: How is Bertha a foil to Jane? What do we know about Bertha’s backstory and origins, and how does the text describe her appearance and character? What do we know about Jane’s origins, and how does her POV describe her appearance and character? How might readers’ view of Bertha be shaped by the novel’s subjective first-person narration? How might this character speak to the history of the novel’s era? 

Comparative Analysis with Film Adaptation: This approach is a great way to foreground to students that a film adaptation of a novel is an interpretation of a text, not a stand-in for the text itself. As a class, watch the 2011 adaptation of Jane Eyre. You might show the film part-by-part alongside the novel as you progress through reading it or have a celebratory “movie day” once you’ve finished the text. 

• For discussion (text vs. film): How does the film “translate” the novel’s representations of scene and character from page to screen? Based on descriptions in the original text, what are the ways that the film constructs components such as imagery, tone, and mood? Do you find these methods effective? Why or why not? 
• For discussion (POV): Jane Eyre is a novel narrated entirely in the first-person. Do you see this carrying on into the film at all? What do you think are some of the advantages and disadvantages of adapting a book that so heavily relies on first-person narration? 
• For discussion (plot sequence): For plot progression, the novel begins with Jane’s childhood and ends with her marriage. The film, however, begins in medias res: the plot sequence starts with Jane’s running away from Thornfield and builds up the background as to how she ended up in this predicament throughout. Why do you think the filmmakers might have made this choice? Do you find it an effective diversion from the original text?