This study was conducted to examine thoroughly the fairy tale aspects of Jane Eyre which focuses on Jane's rational decision and behavior which is an important foundation on gender equality realization. Jane Eyre came out in Victorian England in 1847....
This study was conducted to examine thoroughly the fairy tale aspects of Jane Eyre which focuses on Jane's rational decision and behavior which is an important foundation on gender equality realization. Jane Eyre came out in Victorian England in 1847. It was Industrial Revolution period so there were serious physical and mental sufferings among children, women and girls. Under this situation, children and women seek comfort from fairy tale's heroes. So, many people enjoy reading those stories or keep a fairy tale's fantasy in their hearts. Bronte's novel Jane Eyre could attract reader's attention with a special meaning that has a fantasy to affect novel's feature.
Jane Eyre bears a strong relationship to fairy tales in terms of allusion, parallel, characterization, and overall plot structure. In addition to gothic novels, fairy tales greatly inspired Charlotte Bronte's creation of the novel. Perhaps the most distinctive character type of fairy tales that the author introduced to her novel was an innocent child as a victimized heroine, which was successfully incarnated in Jane Eyre. In creating the novel, Bronte was working within the heritage of Romanticism which celebrated ballads, folklore and fairy tales. More specifically, she succeeded in adding fairy tales to color a serious novel of passion. Significant fairy tale elements contained in the novel include the followings: wicked stepmother and fairy godmother figures; the universal Cinderella success story in which the heroine overcoming the social competition of mean stepsister figures marries the aristocratic figures; the pattern of journeys in which the heroine returns to her starting point; and happy endings.
Bronte's first major allusion to fairy tales in Jane Eyre can be found in child's view of the surrounding world. The reader's attention is also drawn into parallels between Jane Eyre and the Bluebeard. Bluebeard, Gulliver's Travels, Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella can be related to the novel. The enduring appeal of Jane Eyre resides in the fact that intense personal daydreams conform to fairy tale patterns in storytelling which are universally satisfying. So, when we face Jane Eyre, we get to experience mystery and strong impression also even feels the delight and fear. And we become absorbed in a boundless dreamland.
Even though Jane Eyre was drawn into many parallels between Cinderella, there's a clear definition in creating the character. In Cinderella, a heroine Cinderella was passively just awaiting to be rescued and changed, but doesn't completely act. But Jane has a positive choice and action that has a dramatic effect to change her and other people. So, Jane Eyre break from a typical prince-Cinderella structure and showed us the independent feminists. Bronte also emphasized how to control feelings and get the rational patterns of behavior to survive with identity establishment in those societies as a female. She presents a perfect union how two people enter into a new relationship based on rational in a realistically equal condition. Also, she makes people keep a thing carefully about their dreams and hopes of a creative and beautiful fancy fairy tale world, contrastively at that time, in a devastated industrial society.