The Economic Effect Of Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte is one of the greatest realistic novelists in the nineteenth century and Jane Eyre is regarded as Bronte's masterpiece. Since its publication, volumes of criticisms have been concentrating on the novel's structure, symbolism and autobiographical elements and its characterization. In recent years, feminist study on Jane Eyre is booming. A close study reveals, however, few critics have mentioned the economic elements in Jane Eyre and few scholars have made a systematic study of its economic elements in the novel.Therefore this thesis aims to reason out the economic elements' influence in Jane Eyre by exploring the economic elements in Jane's childhood, Jane's education, Jane's independence, Rochester and Bertha's marriage and Jane and Rochester's love. It turns out that economic elements play a determinant role in all of these events.This finding provides a new perspective to the study of Jane Eyre. Jane's great pain can be explained from the contradiction of her dependent economic status and her independent mind. In addition, many people's fates are greatly affected by the economic elements in this novel. That is to say, the finding also proves that economic elements are penetrating in Jane Eyre.