浅析夏洛蒂寄托在《简爱》中的爱情观.doc

A comparison between Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre 牡丹江师范学院 2011级英教7班 2011123013 丁 心 Jane Eyre draws heavily on Charlotte Bronte’s personal life experience, and therefore it is close to life. This is an important reason for the success of the novel. From Jane Eyre, we can see Charlotte Bronte and other common women’s life of that time and their strong desire for freedom and equality of sexes. We can compare Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre in three aspects: boarding school life, governess experience, and marriage. In 1824, charlotte and her two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent to the Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters’ school. Conditions were bad over there, and it was not long before both Maria and Elizabeth became ill enough to be sent home, where they both died of consumption in the spring of 1825. Charlotte’s father brought her and her younger sister Emily, who had recently joined them at the school, back home as soon as the other girls became ill. But Charlotte witnessed this tragic episode and never forgot what the school had been like. So in Jane Eyre, we can see her account of Helen Burns’ death, Jane’s good friend in the charity school Lowood, who dies in Jane’s arms of consumption. In 1835, Charlotte returned to Roe Head School as a governess. In 1838, Charlotte left Roe Head School. In 1839, she accepted a position as a governess in the Sidgewick family, but left after three months and returned to Haworth. In 1841, she became governess in the White family, but left once again, after nine months. Charlotte was very familiar to governess’ life because of her personal governess experience, so she chose a governess for her heroine. This profession offers a tenuous, low social status to which unmarried daughters of ‘respectable’ families that lacked financial resources to support life. Governesses usually lived in the homes of wealthy families and educated their daughters not only in academics and the arts, but the social graces as well. However, gov