The excellent news that on Monday, 8 June 2020, the Thammasat University Library will once again admit readers, following national COVID-19 prevention policies, may inspire some TU students to look at some books where the theme of starting over or beginning again is important.

Among such novels in the TU Library collection are Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini; Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho; and The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan.

All of these books have been the basis for theses and academic research articles. Even more popular as a subject for academic research is Jane Eyre, a novel by the English author Charlotte Brontë, writing with the pen name Currer Bell, published in 1847. The name Brontë is pronounced something like BRON-TAY.

The story tells of Jane Eyre, a young orphan being raised by Mrs. Reed, a wealthy and unkind aunt. When Jane is sent away to school, she finds it is a difficult place as well, although she manages to make a good friend there. Unfortunately, her friend dies of tuberculosis, in part due to the unpleasant living conditions at the school.

Jane eventually becomes a teacher at the school, before she hired as a governess to teach a French girl. Her employer, named Rochester, proposes marriage to her, but Jane is informed that he is already married. She leaves her job and after many problems, finds other employment teaching at a charity school. One day, her uncle dies and leaves her a large inheritance. She returns to rediscover Rochester and they eventually start their relationship again and marry.

The novel is set in the north of England, sometime in the early 1800s.

Influence

In addition to many film adaptations, Jane Eyre has also produced much critical comment, including this observation by the literary history Walter Allen. The TU Library owns several books by Professor Allen:

It is perhaps the index of Charlotte’s achievement, however, that she needs to be read in adolescence; come to her work after that and a considerable act of imagination is called for before she can be read with sympathy. 

Walter Allen, The English Novel (1954)

Here are some famous quotations from Jane Eyre:

• Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns. These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is — I repeat it — a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.

Preface, 2nd edition (1847)

• I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick.

Jane to Mrs. Reed (Ch. 4)

• If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust; the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should — so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.

Jane to Helen Burns (Ch. 6)

• It is not violence that best overcomes hate — nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury. … Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how he acts — make his word your rule, and his conduct your example. … Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.

Helen Burns to Jane (Ch. 6)

• It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary…

Jane (Ch. 12)

• I don’t think, sir, that you have a right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.

Jane to Mr. Rochester (Ch. 14)

• I envy your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure — an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?

Mr. Rochester to Jane (Ch. 14)

• I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.

Jane to Mr. Rochester (Ch. 23)

• I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

Jane (Ch. 27)

• I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified.

Ch. 34

• God did not give me my life to throw away.

(Ch. 35)

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)