Literary criticism

Question 1

Marxist

Answer 1

He tries to shower JE with jewels and makes an attempt to bring her into his class. She is uncomfortable with this.

There seems to be an imbalance of power within their relationship – he seems to disregard her low class and poverty. Jane, despite being worthy of appreciation, is always in servitude

Question 2

Psychoanalytic

Answer 2

Controlled yet passionate nature – a suppressed id

Bertha – symbolic of unresolved identities of Rochester and Jane

Signifies menstruation for the first time – the danger of the room can be seen as signifying her new sexuality

Question 3

Postcolonial

Answer 3

As a woman she is also a member of a colonized group, but as a specifically British woman, she is a colonizer.

Bertha represents British fears of both foreigners and women. The “blood-red” moon, a symbol of women’s menstrual cycles, is reflected in her eyes, suggesting her feminine, sexual potency. Unlike Jane, Bertha refuses to be controlled

Question 4

The Spectator, 1847

Answer 4

The reader cannot see anything loveable in Mr Rochester, nor why he should be so deeply in love with Jane Eyre; so that we have intense emotion without cause

Question 5

Quarterly review, 1848

Answer 5

We are painfully alive to the moral, religious, and literary deficiencies of the picture and such passages of beauty and power as have quoted cannot redeem it

Question 6

The English Novel, 1954

Answer 6

Rochester’s mutilation is the symbol of Jane’s triumph in the battle of the sexes

Question 7

The heroine is cast…

Answer 7

amongst the thorns and brambles of life

Question 8

utterance from the depths…

Answer 8

of a struggling, suffering, much enduring spirit

Question 9

show that external beauty…

Answer 9

is inferior to loveliness of heart