Hallå, Göran Hägglund – du ÄR etablissemanget

skapa en länk när den finns tillgänglig på nätet!

Här:Kolumnen: Göran Rosenberg om murens fall och vårt behov av drömmar.

Arrogant snobb, storslagen diva eller uppriktig sanningssägare? Nobelpristagaren V S Naipaul väcker ofta känslor och debatt. Patrick French har skrivit en strålande biografi om den mot­strävige författaren. Jan Eklund läser ”The World Is What It Is”.

Jan Eklund

Lotta Olsson

En intervju med Alberto Manguel i DN aug 2007:

De läsande är en elit. Men en elit som vem som helst kan tillhöra. Du måste bara ha modet att gå emot det samhället tycker är viktigt. Idag har intellektuell verksamhet blivit något som hör fritiden till. Det är inte längre kärnverksamheten. Och jag upplever det som mycket farligt eftersom det förminskar oss som människor.

- Vi kommer till världen med nyfikenhet, kreativitet, redskap för att avtäcka och upptäcka världen. Sen måste vi lära oss att bli dumma, för annars skulle vi inte konsumera som vi gör.

Carole A Peppleton’s essay and lesson plan (här på bloggen)

Random House – with Teacher´s Guide

WebEnglishTeacher – lesson plan

Study Guide from Bookrags

Enotes

Cliffnotes

gradesaver / classic notes

Ordförklaringar som kan behövas i undervisningen har jag kopierat här, liksom div. material från olika källor:

Källa: Cliffnotes:

1 The House on Mango Street; Hairs; Boys & Girls; My Name

Year of the Horse Chinese designation of a specific year within a 12-year cycle, used (like sun signs in Western astrological lore) to predict things about people born in those years. This pinpoints Esperanza’s birth year as 1954.

Lisandra A feminine variation of Alessandro (Alexander); Esperanza’s choice here is arguably “stronger” than the name her parents gave her, derived from a Greek name meaning literally “defender of men”; it is also suggestive of Alexander the Great (356–323 b.c.), a famous Macedonian king and military conquerer. Also, like Magdalena (which can be shortened to “Nenny”), but unlike Esperanza, Lisandra can be shortened to a nickname—Sandy or Sandra.

2 Cathy Queen of Cats; Our Good Day; Laughter; Gil’s Furniture Bought & Sold; Meme Ortiz; Louie, His Cousin & His Other Cousin

marimbas plural of marimba, a musical instrument resembling the xylophone.

“Meme” Meme Ortiz’s nickname seems to be derived from a Spanish word—“memo”—meaning a stupid person or a fool, or perhaps from “memez,” stupidity.

“she wears dark nylons… .” style of dress and makeup that would have been considered sexually provocative

3 Marin; Those Who Don’t; There Was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn’t Know What to Do; Alicia Who Sees Mice
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4 Darius and the Clouds; And Some More; The Family of Little Feet; A Rice Sandwich; Chanclas

frijoles cooked beans; refried beans.
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salamander a limbed, tailed amphibian with a soft, moist skin.

double-dutch or “double Dutch”; a children’s game of jump rope in which two turners swing two ropes simultaneously in a crisscross pattern for the person jumping.

300 Spartans an American movie made in the 1950s about the Battle of Thermopylae (in the Persian War) where, in 480 b.c., a Persian army commanded by Xerxes destroyed a Spartan army led by Leonidas. The Spartans, who held the pass against tremendous odds, became an exemplum of bravery and physical courage.

chanclas (Spanish) plural of chancla, a type of open shoe.

“that boy who is my cousin by first communion or something el” nonsense; “first communion” is what Catholics call the occasion on which a person first receives the sacrament of the Eucharist, usually as a child of about seven, so Esperanza is probably searching for a phrase here (“first cousin once removed,” perhaps) and coming up with the wrong one, maybe suggested by the fact that she is at a party held in a church basement and celebrating a sacrament

5 Hips; The First Job; Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark; Born Bad; Elenita, Cards, Palm, Water

Tahiti one of the Society Islands, in the South Pacific; perhaps Lucy (or whoever says this) is thinking about the Polynesian dances performed by Tahitians.
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merengue a fast dance that originated in the Dominican Republic.

tembleque (Spanish) a trembling fit; “the shakes”—i.e., delirium tremens.

“Engine, engine number nine… .” a very old jump-rope rhyme.

abuelito (Spanish) a familiar diminutive of abuelo (grandfather).

está muerto (Spanish) he is dead.

Joan Crawford an American movie actress, most popular in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

“the sickness… .” Aunt Lupe’s illness; apparently Esperanza is somewhat confused about whether her aunt was ill or injured in some sort of accident; what she says about her having been swimming, and the fact that she was paralyzed, suggests that Lupe contracted polio, relatively common in the 1950s and often spread through the use of swimming pools.

The Waterbabies (really, The Water-Babies) a popular novel written for children, first published in 1863, by English novelist Charles Kingsley (1819–75).

los espíritus (Spanish) the spirits.

6 Geraldo No Last Name; Edna’s Ruthie; The Earl of Tennessee; Sire; Four Skinny Trees

“Pretty, too, …” i.e., good to look at; in Latino dialects, “pretty” is an acceptable adjective to be applied to a young man.

“cumbias, salsas, … rancheras… .” Latin dances fashionable in the middle 1960s.

kitchenettes i.e., “efficiency” apartments; small apartments consisting basically, apart from a bathroom, of a single room with a kitchenette.

babushka a headscarf folded into a triangle and tied under the chin.

Marlon Brando an American movie actor, first popular in the 1950s.

“The Walrus and the Carpenter” a “nonsense” poem from Through the Looking-Glass (a sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) by Lewis Carroll (1832–98).

45 records seven-inch recorded vinyl disks to be played on a phonograph at 45 rpm (rotations per minute); each usually has a three-to-four minute song recorded on each side.

Part Seven – No Speak English; Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut & Papaya Juice on Tuesdays; Sally; Minerva Writes Poems; Bums in the Attic

“Mamasota” “Big mama,” emphasizing the woman’s obesity.

fuchsia a purplish-red color.

“¿Cuándo?” (Spanish) “When?”

“¡Ay, caray!” (Spanish) an expression of exasperation, something like “Damn it!” or “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

Rapunzel a princess in a fairy tale of European origin, imprisoned by a witch; her hair is very long, and the prince who comes to call on her climbs up to her tower by means of her hair.

Part Eight – Beautiful & Cruel; A Smart Cookie; What Sally Said; The Monkey Garden; Red Clowns

Madame Butterfly a character in the opera Madama Butterfly, by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924).

comadres (Spanish) women friends, girlfriends (to another woman).

Rip Van Winkle a character in a tale (“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”) by American writer Washington Irving (1783–1859).

Part Nine – Linoleum Roses; The Three Sisters; Alicia & I Talking on Edna’s Steps; A House of My Own; Mango Street Says Goodbye Sometimes

“One night a dog cried … .” a traditional harbinger of death; a bird flying into a house, too, is supposed to foretell a death in the house.

* * *

http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679734772&view=tg

The House on Mango Street is a deceptive work. It is a book of short stories—and sometimes not even full stories, but character sketches and vignettes—that add up, as Sandra Cisneros has written, ”to tell one big story, each story contributing to the whole—like beads in a necklace.” That story is told in language that seems simple but that possesses the associative richness of poetry, and whose slang and breaks from grammatical correctness contribute to its immediacy. It is narrated in the voice of a young girl—a girl too young to know that no one may ever hear her—but whose voice is completely convincing, because it is the creation of a mature and sophisticated writer. For example, The House on Mango Street appears to wander casually from subject to subject—from hair to hips, from clouds to feet, from an invalid aunt to a girl named Sally, who has ”eyes like Egypt” and whose father sometimes beats her. But this apparent randomness disguises an artful exploration of themes of individual identity and communal loyalty, estrangement and loss, escape and return, the lure of romance and the dead end of sexual inequality and oppression.

The House on Mango Street is also a book about a culture—that of Chicanos, or Mexican-Americans—that has long been veiled by demeaning stereotypes and afflicted by internal ambivalence. In some ways it resembles the immigrant cultures that your students may have encountered in books like My Ántonia, The Jungle, and Call It Sleep. But unlike Americans of Slavic or Jewish ancestry, Chicanos have been systematically excluded from the American mainstream in ways that suggest the disenfranchisement of African-Americans. Although Cisneros uses language as a recurring metaphor for the gulf between Mexican-Americans and the majority culture, what keeps Esperanza Cordero and her family and friends locked in their barrio is something more obdurate than language: a confluence of racism, poverty, and shame. It may help your discussion to remind students that the ancestors of many Chicanos did not come to the United States by choice, but simply found themselves in alien territory as a result of the U.S.’s expansionist policy into country that had once been Mexican.

But although The House on Mango Street will have a particularly strong appeal to Latino students, who may never have encountered a book that speaks so pointedly to their own experience, it is a work that captures the universal pangs of otherness—what Cisneros, in her introduction to the tenth anniversary edition (published by Knopf, $18.00), has called ”the shame of being poor, of being female, of being not-quite-good-enough.” It suggests from where that otherness comes and shows how it can become a cause for celebration rather than shame. Few students, regardless of their ancestry or gender, will come away from this book without a strong sensation of having glimpsed a secret part of themselves. For, as Sandra Cisneros has written, ”You, the reader, are Esperanza…. You cannot forget who you are.”

(utdrag) Throughout The House on Mango Street, Cisneros’s narrator describes herself from two points of view: as she sees herself and as she believes others see her. We can find an example of this in ”My Name”: ”At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth.”[11] Where else in the book does Cisneros convey this dual consciousness? How does Esperanza see herself? How does she think other people perceive her?

http://www.cliffsnotes.com

About Cisneros’ Work
Brief Synopses

* The House on Mango Street

Esperanza Cordero and her parents, sister, and brothers move into a house on Mango Street, after having lived in numerous other locations in Chicago, only some of which Esperanza remembers. At least this latest house is the Corderos’ own, but in other respects, it is not the house Esperanza would have hoped for. Esperanza meets some of her neighbors—Cathy (whose family is about to move out because the neighborhood is going downhill), Lucy and Rachel (two sisters who live across the street), a boy named Tito, another named Meme Ortiz (whose family has moved into Cathy’s house), yet another boy named Louie, Louie’s cousin Marin, and Louie’s other cousin.
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Esperanza gets to know Marin a little better and learns that she is hoping to marry a boy in Puerto Rico but that she is still interested in other boys. Esperanza reflects that people who don’t live in the neighborhood are afraid to come into it, whereas those who live there feel quite safe but are afraid to go into other neighborhoods. She tells about the Vargas kids, whose father left and whose mother can’t control them, and about Alicia, who is going to the university and at the same time keeping house for her father. Esperanza and her friends hang out, looking at clouds, talking idly. A woman gives Esperanza, Lucy, and Rachel three pairs of high-heeled shoes, which they wear around the neighborhood.

Esperanza pleads with her mother to let her take her lunch to school, but when she is allowed to do so, she doesn’t enjoy it. She goes to a baptismal party for a baby cousin and dances with her uncle. She, Nenny, Lucy, and Rachel talk about getting hips, and Esperanza gets her first job, in a photo-developing store. Her grandfather dies in Mexico, her Aunt Lupe dies in Chicago, and Esperanza goes to a fortune-teller who informs her that she will have a home in the heart. At a dance, her friend Marin meets a man who is later injured in a hit-and-run accident; Marin waits in the hospital while he dies. Esperanza describes two neighborhood adults whom she finds interesting: Edna’s daughter Ruthie and a jukebox repairman named Earl. She tells about a boy—Sire—who sometimes stares at her, and talks about her relationship to four trees growing from the sidewalk in front of her house.

Then Esperanza describes two married women she knows—Mamacita, who is very fat, very homesick, and cannot speak English, and Rafaela, who is young and beautiful, and whose husband locks her in their apartment while he goes out to play dominoes with his friends. Sally, who is about Esperanza’s age, makes herself attractive to boys and young men but is mistreated by her father, who is afraid she will run away with some boy or young man. And Minerva (who also writes poems), not much older than Esperanza, has two little children and a husband who leaves her sometimes but then comes back and beats her.

When she has a house, Esperanza says, it will be a big, fine one, and she will let “bums” stay upstairs in the attic. She has decided to be independent, like a man. Her mother tells her that she herself quit school because she was ashamed of her clothes.

Sally’s father beats her so badly that her mother allows her to come and stay with Esperanza’s family, but he comes to get her, begs her to come home with him, and then beats her worse. Esperanza and Sally go to play in an overgrown and deserted garden, but Sally would rather hang out with the boys, and Esperanza embarrasses herself by trying to protect Sally, who doesn’t want to be protected. The two girls go to a carnival, and Sally leaves with a boy; Esperanza, waiting for her to return, is overpowered by several strangers and sexually assaulted by one of them.

Now Sally has married a young man she met at a school function, and he makes her stay in their house and won’t let her friends visit. Lucy and Rachel’s youngest sister, an infant, dies; at their house, Esperanza meets her friends’ three aunts (or, most likely, great aunts), who draw her aside and tell her she is special. When she leaves Mango Street, they say, she must not neglect to come back for those who can’t leave. Her friend Alicia echoes this advice when they talk on Edna’s steps. And, at last, Esperanza says that she will have a house of her own, she will someday leave Mango Street—and, sometimes, writing about it helps her make it leave her — but she will come back for the others.

Themes

Alienation and Displacement

Another important theme in both books is the individual’s feeling of alienation or displacement. Esperanza in Mango Street expresses the feeling often, saying she does not “belong” where she is and that she wishes she were from somewhere else—although Alicia assures her that she “is Mango Street” and will carry it with her when she leaves there.

Individualism versus Cultural Traditions

Both of these themes—that of love-as-power and that of alienation—seem to proceed from the third and larger theme of the individual’s conflict with a tradition that is both cultural and familial. Almost every female character in both books experiences the intensely potent force of this tradition influencing her to follow her Latino family tradition into marriage, when she would cease to “belong” to her father and begin to “belong” to her husband. Most of those who do not resist this force are portrayed as unhappy in the world they inhabit, from Esperanza’s mother, who is “self-alienated” to the extent that she has not been able to utilize her artistic gifts and interests,

Love as Power

The theme of love as power is most apparent in some of the “Woman Hollering Creek” stories, but it appears even in Mango Street, in the lives of Esperanza’s acquaintances and in her own youthful experience. Rafaela, Minerva, Mamacita, and Sally—after her marriage—are all overpowered by their husbands, physically or otherwise, as a matter of course. Whatever the relationship between her own parents, it seems that Esperanza sees a normal love-and-marriage relationship as one in which the man holds and exercises complete power over “his” woman. The only alternative, she believes, would have the woman holding complete power. In “Beautiful and Cruel” she decides that she prefers that option, but a possible relationship in which power is held equally by both partners, a more-or-less equal give-and-take relationship, or even one in which power is not a major factor (or weapon) seems not to occur to her. Interestingly, the love-equals-power relationship is figured here in several instances as visual gaze: Boys stare at Marin, and she boldly returns the gaze; Sire looks at Esperanza, and she affects not to be frightened; women who have been disempowered (or who have never had any power) look out through a window at what they cannot have.

The House on Mango Street is divided into 44 separately titled sections averaging about two-and-one-half pages each. Each of these sections might stand alone; together they work as a novel.

The first four chapters have little or no plot action and minimal—although valuable—exposition: We learn the names of the speaker and her siblings and something about their ages and birth order (Kiki is the youngest of the four, he and Carlos are “best friends”—so it’s a safe guess that Carlos, too, is younger than Esperanza—and Nenny is younger as well, so Esperanza must be the eldest). We learn something about the family’s ethnicity and socio-economic status. But most of what happens in these first four chapters is our introduction to Esperanza.

As the narrator, Esperanza speaks to her audience (the reader) with a total absence of self-consciousness. To whom is Esperanza speaking/writing? Although sometimes she records feelings and impressions in a manner that suggests a private journal or diary, more often she includes information that a diarist (especially a child) would probably deem unnecessary. She will occasionally address other characters directly, but for the most part, what she says and the way she says it suggests that the hearer/reader she has in mind is someone like herself, a girl her own age who does not know her but who understands what she is saying because the two are simpático. In other words, she seems consciously or unconsciously to be addressing the “best friend” she has not yet met.

What Esperanza tells directly about herself here is relatively little; what she tells indirectly is a good deal more informative. First of all, she is at this point a child, although in certain ways, she is older than her years. She still gets in bed with her parents for comfort; she enumerates small differences among family members that prove each is an individual. Part of her self-identity is as an older sister. She feels responsible for guiding Nenny, although there is a lack of sympathy between her and her sister.

Esperanza is also childish in what she selects to tell: not her parents’ names, for example, but only Papa and Mama; not their occupations (something only adults consider important), but how their hair looks. Her disappointment in the “new” house is childish; she tells us very little about it but does not hide her resentment that it is not something better. She is naïve enough to have hoped for her parents’ dream house and childish enough to reveal her disappointment, despite her realization that this is probably not just a temporary move for the family and her attempt to sound sophisticated about that realization.

In at least one way, however, Esperanza is already the woman she will become. She values her strength and her independence (her identification with her great-grandmother); she is someone who makes her own decisions and refuses to be a follower (unlike Nenny, who will become just like the Vargas kids if allowed to play with them). Even the fact that she volunteers very little about herself is indicative of her independence: She keeps her own counsel. Esperanza sees herself as somewhat mysterious. If she could, she would re-baptize herself as “something like Zeze the X,” someone unusual, exotic—and masked.

As readers, we should remember that Esperanza’s real name (chosen by her parents, fictionally, but chosen by Cisneros actually) has value not only as a device for revealing what this protagonist doesn’t like: the sad, old-fashioned Mexican associations it has for her; its passive, “feminine” sound (unlike “Zeze the X”); its harsh consonants when spoken in English; the impossibility of its being shortened into a nickname. Translated into English, Esperanza tells us, her name means “hope,” and of course that is basically what it means. But it shares its Latin root with the English words “spirit” and “aspiration” (something more than mere “hope”: ambition, daring, strong desire), both of which, like the Spanish word “esperanza,” derive from a word meaning breath. The spirit that animates this protagonist is what distinguishes her. Until she has a “best friend,” she says (meaning, until she is able to choose a friend, as she cannot choose her family, for being a child is by definition being unable to choose), she will be like a balloon on a tether, unable to rise with the spirit that fills her.

Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street: Experiencing Poetical Prose

(Essay and Lesson Plan)Carole A. Poppleton
cpopplet [at] mica.edu
Maryland Institute, College of Art (Baltimore, MD, USA)

What does it mean to have ”lazy hair” or hair that ”smells like bread?” How can a name be ”muddy” or sound as if it were made out of ”tin?” What do front porch steps ”all lopsided and jutting like crooked teeth” look like? How can a pair of small black dogs ”leap and somersault like an apostrophe and comma?”

As English and ESL teachers we want to assist our international students with acquiring the skills to communicate effectively in their target language; however, we also realise that there is so much more to language mastery than the memorisation of vocabulary and sentence patterns or knowledge of grammar and punctuation rules. Most of us also want our students to be familiar with the beauty and power of English, with the possibilities of words and phrases to evoke emotions and create sensory impressions. By incorporating literature into the ESL classroom – poetry, drama, fiction- we can assist our L2 learners with the nuances and creativeness of their new language.

In a recent college-level literature course I used Sandra Cisneros’ book The House on Mango Street (Vintage Books, 1989). This class was comprised of twelve students (average TOEFL 550) representing five countries. Our special focus for this course was the term the ”American Dream.” Through a variety of readings and perspectives, we tried to come to a deeper understanding of this mercurial concept. Even though Cisneros’ novel addresses pertinent issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and social class (general themes we were exploring in the course), it proved to be far more of a linguistic tool, helping my class to understand language on a variety of sensory levels. In this text we moved beyond what was being said (the story) to study carefully and to feel how it was being said (the style).

The power of this novel lies not only in the story of Esperanza, a worldly yet naive Latino girl struggling to grow up in Chicago’s poverty-stricken south side, but also in the fresh, poetic and very imaginative language employed. The text is written in a series of short, interlocking vignettes that trace the maturation of Esperanza and allow us, the reader, to view the world through her keenly observant eyes. Like a colorful kaleidoscope, the story spins and whirls around Esperanza and her world, full of diversity, texture, and meaning.

Prior to reading the text I employed some pre-reading strategies. As a class we discussed aspects of Latino culture in America, growing up in an impoverished neighborhood and cultural gender biases. Students were also asked to think about how this novel related to the theme of the course, the American Dream.

Because of the level of this course, students were familiar with key literary terms like narrator, plot, metaphor, simile, and symbolism. Our class met once a week for three hours, so students were expected to read the novel before our meeting and to take notes and compose questions to bring to class discussions. As a homework assignment, I also had students draw certain aspects of the text. By counting off numbers in class, students were assigned drawing ”homework.” They were asked to draw images from factual evidence found in the text, like the house on Mango Street, Mamacita crawling out of the taxi, or Esperanza dancing with her uncle. My goal was to examine close-reading skills and to see how images from the written word translated into the visual. I wanted to make Cisneros’ words, the scenes from the novella, jump to life.

Most students connected immediately to Cisneros’ ”approachable” style, and the use of short, boldly entitled chapters (most are only one or two pages) really helped to keep readers focused. By having thematic topics broken into ”bite-size chunks,” students felt more comfortable with the novel experience and less intimidated by the printed page. Each brief chapter acted as a window into Esperanza’s world, Mango Street, and allowed us to become familiar with her as she narrated stories about her neighborhood.

The first part of the two hour and forty-five minute class was spent in collaborative learning groups to build confidence in interpretation before discussing ideas in the larger group (about 50 minutes). I passed out index cards that contained questions pertaining to the text that I wanted addressed in class discussion. Each card asked students to move from a concrete visual image that could be supported by the text to a more abstract concept that would require the synthesis of ideas and stimulate critical thinking. Each group used a critical approach to interpret the story: tapping into their abilities to visualize the language; looking carefully at evidence from the book; drawing upon collective imagination; articulating abstract concepts that are not easily defined.

GROUP 1 – Please write your answers on a separate sheet of paper to be given to me

1. Describe Esperanza. Can you find specific places in the book where she is described physically? Emotionally?
2. What kind of girl do you think she is? What are her feelings, hopes, dreams, fears?
3. How might she define the ”American Dream?”

GROUP 2 – Please write your answers on a separate sheet of paper to be given to me

1. Describe Esperanza’s family. What do we know about her mother, father, brother and sister? Can you find places in the book where they are discussed?
2. What kinds of dreams do you think Esperanza’s parents have for their children?
3. How would they define the ”American Dream?”

GROUP 3 – Please write your answers on a separate sheet of paper to be given to me

1. Describe the house on Mango Street and the neighborhood around it. Who lives there?
2. Who are Esperanza’s friends?
3. Most of the people in the neighborhood are Latino (of Spanish heritage) and they are poor. Based on the book, what have you learned about Latino culture? About American culture?

These collaborative groups were arranged carefully, trying to strike a complementary balance between students’ levels, abilities and nationalities. They had ample time to discuss, find relevant proofs within the text, and exchange ideas about what they had read and interpreted. During this group time I floated, eavesdropping and trying to stay as silent as possible for this was their time with the text. Most students responded favorably to the characters and story and were eager to exchange ideas. Some questions did not have exact answers and thus demanded that students collaborate and use their own notes and ideas to deduce and to infer information. For example, one chapter, Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark, tells us more about papa’s character than his appearance, so students must ”create” him based on what they have learned. They begin to build visual images based upon a verbal context, thus making for a richer and more sophisticated reading experience.

As the groups began to wind down, we pulled our materials together and reconvened in a circle to share what we had discovered. Once the class was reassembled, students were asked to show the artwork they had completed as homework (about 30 minutes). I had created the drawing topics by having at least two students respond to each assignment. For instance, I asked two students to recreate the character of Esperanza on the page, two to draw her friends, Rachel and Lucy, two to explore the diverse neighborhood on Mango Street, etc. Where in the text, or which scene, they chose to draw for illustration was left up to the individual. Needless to say, there were some highly original, creative and fun responses, ranging from pen and ink sketches to full color acrylic renderings. We laid them out on the floor and took turns commenting on the style, technique and accuracy of each, referring to the text to look for evidence. Everyone enjoyed seeing another person’s creative mind at work, and this aspect of the lesson allowed us all a few minutes of ”down time” in which we could switch from academic mode to something a bit more frivolous. After sharing their artwork, students were ready to address the next level of discussion.

The groups were then asked to discuss the questions they had tackled together (about 60 minutes). Each group of four posed their questions to the rest of the class, waited for responses, discussed possible points of view, and then clarified their own answers. What was so rewarding was that each small group had, in essence, become a kind of ”expert” on its topic and was really ready to share ideas because the members felt confident. The students were teaching one another what they had discovered from the text, and I found that I was only there to listen, learn and assist with any difficult concepts.

It was very exciting for me as a teacher to watch the microcosm of a small group grow, adapt, and become comfortable within the larger environment. The students felt confident that they had read and understood an entire novel and that they were able to critique it for each other. Almost everyone had a favorite chapter or character and most were eager to share their findings. Many even discovered and brought to discussion Cisneros’ unique ability to write poetic prose. (For examples, please refer to the introductory paragraph; all these questions were student generated in the class.) If a passage were particularly well liked, someone would read it aloud, pointing out the words or phrases that pleased the ear or conjured up striking images. Through this novel my student were actually enjoying the English language on a variety of levels: smelling it, tasting it, and seeing it.

Did every student understand every aspect of this novel? Was every vocabulary word defined? No, of course not, but those were not our goals. What was learned was how to ”unpack” a story, to experience it on as many levels as possible … to hear words for their beauty, to visualize them for their images, and to recreate images via our own creative process. In the wake of this multifaceted discovery process, learning most assuredly occurs. Still, the ”teacher” voice inside of me wondered whether students had fully grasped some of the deeper themes addressed in this text. Since the bulk of our class time was spent learning collaboratively and looking carefully at the use of language, I was thrilled to learn later that, yes, most students had interpreted some of Cisneros’ issues.

Along with reading and discussing literature, students in this course were also responsible for responding in essay style to two readings they selected. They would bring their papers to class on the assigned day (with enough copies for all class members) and present their papers aloud to the group. I found these readings to be especially fruitful, as each student really had a ”voice”, and some of the ideas raised were exciting, provoking even more in-depth discussion. The students were learning about style and creativity from one another, and the presentations allowed them a safe environment in which to practice oral skills.

Excerpts from Students

The following excerpts are from two students, one from Taiwan, the other from Bulgaria, who chose to write about The House on Mango Street. These students brought their response papers to class on this day, and we spent the last 40 minutes reading and discussing them as a class. Without any prompting from me, it is evident that these young writers are trying to emulate Cisneros’ style. These students have discovered that literature can be used as something to write about and that it can be a powerful writing model as well; reading literature assists with voice, style, syntax and language. These two representative essays are packed with poetic style, and both authors explore the subtleties of language using symbolism, metaphors and similes. It is also clear that both authors understood the book thematically as well. The Taiwanese student honed in on the theme of immigrants and how people can feel ”uprooted” or ”transplanted.” He wrote about what the mango tree symbolises for him — a living, growing entity bound by a clay pot. The second author, a sophomore, opted to focus upon the complex world, both internal and external, where Esperanza lives, a world where status, wealth and race are issues. Her style is clearly influenced by the novel.

From The Taste of Mango Fruit (Taiwanese student)

There is mango tree in my parents garden. The mango tree belongs to the little garden, the little garden belongs to a little one floor apartment, and the little apartment belongs to my dear parents. The mango tree lives with our family for a long time. Every summer we enjoy the mango fruits from it. Only a few fruits we can eat because the mango tree is raise in a big pot not ground. ”Why?” ”In the near future, all of us will go back to our homeland.” My grandmother told us children in my childhood. ”Where is our homeland, grandmother?” ”It is mainland China.”

From Hunger for Real Life (Bulgarian student)

A real life is expensive! It is comfort and safety which immigrants can not have. It is a privilege. It is hard to get in. Everyone’s dream is to have a ”real house,” a ”real name,” a ”real man.” It is Sandra Cisneros’s too … Her book is constructed like a necklace made of stones. Each story has its own charm, weight and bitterness. But when strung together I can feel the complete description of their presence.
I suppose that for a language teacher who loves her subject there is nothing more gratifying than to see her students start to love it, too. By exposing students to engaging, interesting works and by letting them have fun with the experience, we are teaching them about their target language as well as exposing them to the rich and diverse cultures, which reside in America. If they enjoy the experience, they will keep reading and thinking! I know a reading has been a success when students ask, ”Do you know any other books by this person?” and when their own writing begins to reflect an awareness of the power and beauty of words.

Closing

This is a wonderful novel to teach to international students! Also, there are numerous, web sites that can be incorporated into the lesson plan and/or used for preparation of the lesson.

References

• Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage Books, Inc. 1989.
• Stern, Susan L. ”An Integrated Approach to Literature in ESL / EFL.” English Teaching Forum Vol. XXV:4 (Oct. 1987): 47-55.
• Tate, Gary. ”A Place for Literature in Freshman Composition.” College English Vol. 55:4 (March 1993) 317-321.

Key Facts
full title · Jane Eyre
author · Charlotte Brontë (originally published under the male pseudonym Currer Bell)
type of work · Novel
genre · A hybrid of three genres: the Gothic novel (utilizes the mysterious, the supernatural, the horrific, the romantic); the romance novel (emphasizes love and passion, represents the notion of lovers destined for each other); and the Bildungsroman (narrates the story of a character’s internal development as he or she undergoes a succession of encounters with the external world)
language · English
time and place written · 1847, London
date of first publication · 1847
publisher · Smith, Elder, and Co., Cornhill
narrator · Jane Eyre
climax · The novel’s climax comes after Jane receives her second marriage proposal of the novel—this time from St. John Rivers, who asks Jane to accompany him to India as his wife and fellow missionary. Jane considers the proposal, even though she knows that marrying St. John would mean the death of her emotional life. She is on the verge of accepting when she hears Rochester’s voice supernaturally calling her name from across the heath and knows that she must return to him. She can retain her dignity in doing so because she has proven to herself that she is not a slave to passion.
protagonist · Jane Eyre
antagonist · Jane meets with a series of forces that threaten her liberty, integrity, and happiness. Characters embodying these forces are: Aunt Reed, Mr. Brocklehurst, Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester (in that he urges Jane to ignore her conscience and surrender to passion), and St. John Rivers (in his urging of the opposite extreme). The three men also represent the notion of an oppressive patriarchy. Blanche Ingram, who initially stands in the way of Jane’s relations with Rochester, also embodies the notion of a rigid class system—another force keeping Jane from fulfilling her hopes.
setting (time) · Early decades of the 19th century.
setting (place) · The novel is structured around five separate locations, all supposedly in northern England: the Reed family’s home at Gateshead, the wretched Lowood School, Rochester’s manor house Thornfield, the Rivers family’s home at Moor House, and Rochester’s rural retreat at Ferndean.
point of view · All of the events are told from Jane’s point of view. Sometimes she narrates the events as she experienced them at the time, while at other times she focuses on her retrospective understanding of the events.
falling action · After Jane hears Rochester’s call to her from across the heath, she returns to Thornfield and finds it burned to the ground. She learns that Bertha Mason set the fire and died in the flames; Rochester is now living at his home in Ferndean. Jane goes to him there, rebuilds her relationship with the somewhat humbled Rochester, and marries him. She claims to enjoy perfect equality in her marriage.
tense · Past-tense; Jane Eyre tells her story ten years after the last event in the novel, her arrival at Ferndean.
foreshadowing · The novel’s main instances of foreshadowing focus on Jane’s eventual inheritance (Chapter 33) from her uncle John Eyre. In Chapter 3, Jane tells Mr. Lloyd that her aunt has told her of some “poor, low relations called Eyre,” but she knows nothing more about them. Jane first receives hints of her uncle’s existence in Chapter 10 when Bessie visits her at Lowood and mentions that her father’s brother appeared at Gateshead seven years ago, looking for Jane. He did not have the time to come to Lowood, she explains, and he subsequently went away to Madeira (a Portuguese island west of Morocco) in search of wealth. Foreshadowing again enters into the novel in Chapter 21, when, returning to Gateshead to see her dying Aunt Reed for the last time, Jane learns that her uncle had written to her aunt three years earlier, reporting that he had been successful in Madeira and expressing his desire to adopt Jane and make her his heir; her aunt had deliberately ignored the letter out of spite. Another powerful instance of foreshadowing is the chestnut tree under which Rochester proposes to Jane. Before they leave, Jane mentions that it “writhed and groaned,” and that night, it splits in two, forecasting complications for Jane and Rochester’s relationship (Chapter 23).
tone · Jane Eyre’s tone is both Gothic and romantic, often conjuring an atmosphere of mystery, secrecy, or even horror. Despite these Gothic elements, Jane’s personality is friendly and the tone is also affectionate and confessional. Her unflagging spirit and opinionated nature further infuse the book with high energy and add a philosophical and political flavor.
themes · Love versus autonomy; religion; social class; gender relations
motifs · Fire and ice; substitute mothers

Plot Overview
Jane Eyre is a young orphan being raised by Mrs. Reed, her cruel, wealthy aunt. A servant named Bessie provides Jane with some of the few kindnesses she receives, telling her stories and singing songs to her. One day, as punishment for fighting with her bullying cousin John Reed, Jane’s aunt imprisons Jane in the red-room, the room in which Jane’s Uncle Reed died. While locked in, Jane, believing that she sees her uncle’s ghost, screams and faints. She wakes to find herself in the care of Bessie and the kindly apothecary Mr. Lloyd, who suggests to Mrs. Reed that Jane be sent away to school. To Jane’s delight, Mrs. Reed concurs.
Once at the Lowood School, Jane finds that her life is far from idyllic. The school’s headmaster is Mr. Brocklehurst, a cruel, hypocritical, and abusive man. Brocklehurst preaches a doctrine of poverty and privation to his students while using the school’s funds to provide a wealthy and opulent lifestyle for his own family. At Lowood, Jane befriends a young girl named Helen Burns, whose strong, martyrlike attitude toward the school’s miseries is both helpful and displeasing to Jane. A massive typhus epidemic sweeps Lowood, and Helen dies of consumption. The epidemic also results in the departure of Mr. Brocklehurst by attracting attention to the insalubrious conditions at Lowood. After a group of more sympathetic gentlemen takes Brocklehurst’s place, Jane’s life improves dramatically. She spends eight more years at Lowood, six as a student and two as a teacher.
After teaching for two years, Jane yearns for new experiences. She accepts a governess position at a manor called Thornfield, where she teaches a lively French girl named Adèle. The distinguished housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax presides over the estate. Jane’s employer at Thornfield is a dark, impassioned man named Rochester, with whom Jane finds herself falling secretly in love. She saves Rochester from a fire one night, which he claims was started by a drunken servant named Grace Poole. But because Grace Poole continues to work at Thornfield, Jane concludes that she has not been told the entire story. Jane sinks into despondency when Rochester brings home a beautiful but vicious woman named Blanche Ingram. Jane expects Rochester to propose to Blanche. But Rochester instead proposes to Jane, who accepts almost disbelievingly.
The wedding day arrives, and as Jane and Mr. Rochester prepare to exchange their vows, the voice of Mr. Mason cries out that Rochester already has a wife. Mason introduces himself as the brother of that wife—a woman named Bertha. Mr. Mason testifies that Bertha, whom Rochester married when he was a young man in Jamaica, is still alive. Rochester does not deny Mason’s claims, but he explains that Bertha has gone mad. He takes the wedding party back to Thornfield, where they witness the insane Bertha Mason scurrying around on all fours and growling like an animal. Rochester keeps Bertha hidden on the third story of Thornfield and pays Grace Poole to keep his wife under control. Bertha was the real cause of the mysterious fire earlier in the story. Knowing that it is impossible for her to be with Rochester, Jane flees Thornfield.
Penniless and hungry, Jane is forced to sleep outdoors and beg for food. At last, three siblings who live in a manor alternatively called Marsh End and Moor House take her in. Their names are Mary, Diana, and St. John (pronounced “Sinjin”) Rivers, and Jane quickly becomes friends with them. St. John is a clergyman, and he finds Jane a job teaching at a charity school in Morton. He surprises her one day by declaring that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left her a large fortune: 20,000 pounds. When Jane asks how he received this news, he shocks her further by declaring that her uncle was also his uncle: Jane and the Riverses are cousins. Jane immediately decides to share her inheritance equally with her three newfound relatives.
St. John decides to travel to India as a missionary, and he urges Jane to accompany him—as his wife. Jane agrees to go to India but refuses to marry her cousin because she does not love him. St. John pressures her to reconsider, and she nearly gives in. However, she realizes that she cannot abandon forever the man she truly loves when one night she hears Rochester’s voice calling her name over the moors. Jane immediately hurries back to Thornfield and finds that it has been burned to the ground by Bertha Mason, who lost her life in the fire. Rochester saved the servants but lost his eyesight and one of his hands. Jane travels on to Rochester’s new residence, Ferndean, where he lives with two servants named John and Mary.
At Ferndean, Rochester and Jane rebuild their relationship and soon marry. At the end of her story, Jane writes that she has been married for ten blissful years and that she and Rochester enjoy perfect equality in their life together. She says that after two years of blindness, Rochester regained sight in one eye and was able to behold their first son at his birth.

Analysis of Major Characters
Jane Eyre
The development of Jane Eyre’s character is central to the novel. From the beginning, Jane possesses a sense of her self-worth and dignity, a commitment to justice and principle, a trust in God, and a passionate disposition. Her integrity is continually tested over the course of the novel, and Jane must learn to balance the frequently conflicting aspects of herself so as to find contentment.
An orphan since early childhood, Jane feels exiled and ostracized at the beginning of the novel, and the cruel treatment she receives from her Aunt Reed and her cousins only exacerbates her feeling of alienation. Afraid that she will never find a true sense of home or community, Jane feels the need to belong somewhere, to find “kin,” or at least “kindred spirits.” This desire tempers her equally intense need for autonomy and freedom.
In her search for freedom, Jane also struggles with the question of what type of freedom she wants. While Rochester initially offers Jane a chance to liberate her passions, Jane comes to realize that such freedom could also mean enslavement—by living as Rochester’s mistress, she would be sacrificing her dignity and integrity for the sake of her feelings. St. John Rivers offers Jane another kind of freedom: the freedom to act unreservedly on her principles. He opens to Jane the possibility of exercising her talents fully by working and living with him in India. Jane eventually realizes, though, that this freedom would also constitute a form of imprisonment, because she would be forced to keep her true feelings and her true passions always in check.
Charlotte Brontë may have created the character of Jane Eyre as a means of coming to terms with elements of her own life. Much evidence suggests that Brontë, too, struggled to find a balance between love and freedom and to find others who understood her. At many points in the book, Jane voices the author’s then-radical opinions on religion, social class, and gender.
Edward Rochester
Despite his stern manner and not particularly handsome appearance, Edward Rochester wins Jane’s heart, because she feels they are kindred spirits, and because he is the first person in the novel to offer Jane lasting love and a real home. Although Rochester is Jane’s social and economic superior, and although men were widely considered to be naturally superior to women in the Victorian period, Jane is Rochester’s intellectual equal. Moreover, after their marriage is interrupted by the disclosure that Rochester is already married to Bertha Mason, Jane is proven to be Rochester’s moral superior.
Rochester regrets his former libertinism and lustfulness; nevertheless, he has proven himself to be weaker in many ways than Jane. Jane feels that living with Rochester as his mistress would mean the loss of her dignity. Ultimately, she would become degraded and dependent upon Rochester for love, while unprotected by any true marriage bond. Jane will only enter into marriage with Rochester after she has gained a fortune and a family, and after she has been on the verge of abandoning passion altogether. She waits until she is not unduly influenced by her own poverty, loneliness, psychological vulnerability, or passion. Additionally, because Rochester has been blinded by the fire and has lost his manor house at the end of the novel, he has become weaker while Jane has grown in strength—Jane claims that they are equals, but the marriage dynamic has actually tipped in her favor.
St. John Rivers
St. John Rivers is a foil to Edward Rochester. Whereas Rochester is passionate, St. John is austere and ambitious. Jane often describes Rochester’s eyes as flashing and flaming, whereas she constantly associates St. John with rock, ice, and snow. Marriage with Rochester represents the abandonment of principle for the consummation of passion, but marriage to St. John would mean sacrificing passion for principle. When he invites her to come to India with him as a missionary, St. John offers Jane the chance to make a more meaningful contribution to society than she would as a housewife. At the same time, life with St. John would mean life without true love, in which Jane’s need for spiritual solace would be filled only by retreat into the recesses of her own soul. Independence would be accompanied by loneliness, and joining St. John would require Jane to neglect her own legitimate needs for love and emotional support. Her consideration of St. John’s proposal leads Jane to understand that, paradoxically, a large part of one’s personal freedom is found in a relationship of mutual emotional dependence.
Helen Burns
Helen Burns, Jane’s friend at Lowood School, serves as a foil to Mr. Brocklehurst as well as to Jane. While Mr. Brocklehurst embodies an evangelical form of religion that seeks to strip others of their excessive pride or of their ability to take pleasure in worldly things, Helen represents a mode of Christianity that stresses tolerance and acceptance. Brocklehurst uses religion to gain power and to control others; Helen ascetically trusts her own faith and turns the other cheek to Lowood’s harsh policies.
Although Helen manifests a certain strength and intellectual maturity, her efforts involve self-negation rather than self-assertion, and Helen’s submissive and ascetic nature highlights Jane’s more headstrong character. Like Jane, Helen is an orphan who longs for a home, but Helen believes that she will find this home in Heaven rather than Northern England. And while Helen is not oblivious to the injustices the girls suffer at Lowood, she believes that justice will be found in God’s ultimate judgment—God will reward the good and punish the evil. Jane, on the other hand, is unable to have such blind faith. Her quest is for love and happiness in this world. Nevertheless, she counts on God for support and guidance in her search.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Love versus Autonomy
Jane Eyre is very much the story of a quest to be loved. Jane searches, not just for romantic love, but also for a sense of being valued, of belonging. Thus Jane says to Helen Burns: “to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest” (Chapter 8). Yet, over the course of the book, Jane must learn how to gain love without sacrificing and harming herself in the process.
Her fear of losing her autonomy motivates her refusal of Rochester’s marriage proposal. Jane believes that “marrying” Rochester while he remains legally tied to Bertha would mean rendering herself a mistress and sacrificing her own integrity for the sake of emotional gratification. On the other hand, her life at Moor House tests her in the opposite manner. There, she enjoys economic independence and engages in worthwhile and useful work, teaching the poor; yet she lacks emotional sustenance. Although St. John proposes marriage, offering her a partnership built around a common purpose, Jane knows their marriage would remain loveless.
Nonetheless, the events of Jane’s stay at Moor House are necessary tests of Jane’s autonomy. Only after proving her self-sufficiency to herself can she marry Rochester and not be asymmetrically dependent upon him as her “master.” The marriage can be one between equals. As Jane says: “I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. . . . To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. . . . We are precisely suited in character—perfect concord is the result” (Chapter 38).

Religion
Throughout the novel, Jane struggles to find the right balance between moral duty and earthly pleasure, between obligation to her spirit and attention to her body. She encounters three main religious figures: Mr. Brocklehurst, Helen Burns, and St. John Rivers. Each represents a model of religion that Jane ultimately rejects as she forms her own ideas about faith and principle, and their practical consequences.
Mr. Brocklehurst illustrates the dangers and hypocrisies that Charlotte Brontë perceived in the nineteenth-century Evangelical movement. Mr. Brocklehurst adopts the rhetoric of Evangelicalism when he claims to be purging his students of pride, but his method of subjecting them to various privations and humiliations, like when he orders that the naturally curly hair of one of Jane’s classmates be cut so as to lie straight, is entirely un-Christian. Of course, Brocklehurst’s proscriptions are difficult to follow, and his hypocritical support of his own luxuriously wealthy family at the expense of the Lowood students shows Brontë’s wariness of the Evangelical movement. Helen Burns’s meek and forbearing mode of Christianity, on the other hand, is too passive for Jane to adopt as her own, although she loves and admires Helen for it.
Many chapters later, St. John Rivers provides another model of Christian behavior. His is a Christianity of ambition, glory, and extreme self-importance. St. John urges Jane to sacrifice her emotional deeds for the fulfillment of her moral duty, offering her a way of life that would require her to be disloyal to her own self.
Although Jane ends up rejecting all three models of religion, she does not abandon morality, spiritualism, or a belief in a Christian God. When her wedding is interrupted, she prays to God for solace (Chapter 26). As she wanders the heath, poor and starving, she puts her survival in the hands of God (Chapter 28). She strongly objects to Rochester’s lustful immorality, and she refuses to consider living with him while church and state still deem him married to another woman. Even so, Jane can barely bring herself to leave the only love she has ever known. She credits God with helping her to escape what she knows would have been an immoral life (Chapter 27).
Jane ultimately finds a comfortable middle ground. Her spiritual understanding is not hateful and oppressive like Brocklehurst’s, nor does it require retreat from the everyday world as Helen’s and St. John’s religions do. For Jane, religion helps curb immoderate passions, and it spurs one on to worldly efforts and achievements. These achievements include full self-knowledge and complete faith in God.

Social Class
Jane Eyre is critical of Victorian England’s strict social hierarchy. Brontë’s exploration of the complicated social position of governesses is perhaps the novel’s most important treatment of this theme. Like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Jane is a figure of ambiguous class standing and, consequently, a source of extreme tension for the characters around her. Jane’s manners, sophistication, and education are those of an aristocrat, because Victorian governesses, who tutored children in etiquette as well as academics, were expected to possess the “culture” of the aristocracy. Yet, as paid employees, they were more or less treated as servants; thus, Jane remains penniless and powerless while at Thornfield. Jane’s understanding of the double standard crystallizes when she becomes aware of her feelings for Rochester; she is his intellectual, but not his social, equal. Even before the crisis surrounding Bertha Mason, Jane is hesitant to marry Rochester because she senses that she would feel indebted to him for “condescending” to marry her. Jane’s distress, which appears most strongly in Chapter 17, seems to be Brontë’s critique of Victorian class attitudes.
Jane herself speaks out against class prejudice at certain moments in the book. For example, in Chapter 23 she chastises Rochester: “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.” However, it is also important to note that nowhere in Jane Eyre are society’s boundaries bent. Ultimately, Jane is only able to marry Rochester as his equal because she has almost magically come into her own inheritance from her uncle.

Gender Relations
Jane struggles continually to achieve equality and to overcome oppression. In addition to class hierarchy, she must fight against patriarchal domination—against those who believe women to be inferior to men and try to treat them as such. Three central male figures threaten her desire for equality and dignity: Mr. Brocklehurst, Edward Rochester, and St. John Rivers. All three are misogynistic on some level. Each tries to keep Jane in a submissive position, where she is unable to express her own thoughts and feelings. In her quest for independence and self-knowledge, Jane must escape Brocklehurst, reject St. John, and come to Rochester only after ensuring that they may marry as equals. This last condition is met once Jane proves herself able to function, through the time she spends at Moor House, in a community and in a family. She will not depend solely on Rochester for love and she can be financially independent. Furthermore, Rochester is blind at the novel’s end and thus dependent upon Jane to be his “prop and guide.” In Chapter 12, Jane articulates what was for her time a radically feminist philosophy:
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 for their sex.

Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Fire and Ice
Fire and ice appear throughout Jane Eyre. The former represents Jane’s passions, anger, and spirit, while the latter symbolizes the oppressive forces trying to extinguish Jane’s vitality. Fire is also a metaphor for Jane, as the narrative repeatedly associates her with images of fire, brightness, and warmth. In Chapter 4, she likens her mind to “a ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring.” We can recognize Jane’s kindred spirits by their similar links to fire; thus we read of Rochester’s “flaming and flashing” eyes (Chapter 25). After he has been blinded, his face is compared to “a lamp quenched, waiting to be relit” (Chapter 37).
Images of ice and cold, often appearing in association with barren landscapes or seascapes, symbolize emotional desolation, loneliness, or even death. The “death-white realms” of the arctic that Bewick describes in his History of British Birds parallel Jane’s physical and spiritual isolation at Gateshead (Chapter 1). Lowood’s freezing temperatures—for example, the frozen pitchers of water that greet the girls each morning—mirror Jane’s sense of psychological exile. After the interrupted wedding to Rochester, Jane describes her state of mind: “A Christmas frost had come at mid-summer: a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hay-field and corn-field lay a frozen shroud . . . and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead. . . .” (Chapter 26). Finally, at Moor House, St. John’s frigidity and stiffness are established through comparisons with ice and cold rock. Jane writes: “By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind. . . . I fell under a freezing spell”(Chapter 34). When St. John proposes marriage to Jane, she concludes that “[a]s his curate, his comrade, all would be right. . . . But as his wife—at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked—forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital—this would be unendurable” (Chapter 34).

Substitute Mothers
Poet and critic Adrienne Rich has noted that Jane encounters a series of nurturing and strong women on whom she can model herself, or to whom she can look for comfort and guidance: these women serve as mother-figures to the orphaned Jane.
The first such figure that Jane encounters is the servant Bessie, who soothes Jane after her trauma in the red-room and teaches her to find comfort in stories and songs. At Lowood, Jane meets Miss Temple, who has no power in the world at large, but possesses great spiritual strength and charm. Not only does she shelter Jane from pain, she also encourages her intellectual development. Of Miss Temple, Jane writes: “she had stood by me in the stead of mother, governess, and latterly, companion” (Chapter 10). Jane also finds a comforting model in Helen Burns, whose lessons in stamina teach Jane about self-worth and the power of faith.
After Jane and Rochester’s wedding is cancelled, Jane finds comfort in the moon, which appears to her in a dream as a symbol of the matriarchal spirit. Jane sees the moon as “a white human form” shining in the sky, “inclining a glorious brow earthward.” She tells us: “It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart—“My daughter, flee temptation.” Jane answers, “Mother, I will” (Chapter 27). Waking from the dream, Jane leaves Thornfield.
Jane finds two additional mother-figures in the characters of Diana and Mary Rivers. Rich points out that the sisters bear the names of the pagan and Christian versions of “the Great Goddess”: Diana, the Virgin huntress, and Mary, the Virgin Mother. Unmarried and independent, the Rivers sisters love learning and reciting poetry and live as intellectual equals with their brother St. John.

Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Bertha Mason
Bertha Mason is a complex presence in Jane Eyre. She impedes Jane’s happiness, but she also catalyses the growth of Jane’s self-understanding. The mystery surrounding Bertha establishes suspense and terror to the plot and the atmosphere. Further, Bertha serves as a remnant and reminder of Rochester’s youthful libertinism.
Yet Bertha can also be interpreted as a symbol. Some critics have read her as a statement about the way Britain feared and psychologically “locked away” the other cultures it encountered at the height of its imperialism. Others have seen her as a symbolic representation of the “trapped” Victorian wife, who is expected never to travel or work outside the house and becomes ever more frenzied as she finds no outlet for her frustration and anxiety. Within the story, then, Bertha’s insanity could serve as a warning to Jane of what complete surrender to Rochester could bring about.
One could also see Bertha as a manifestation of Jane’s subconscious feelings—specifically, of her rage against oppressive social and gender norms. Jane declares her love for Rochester, but she also secretly fears marriage to him and feels the need to rage against the imprisonment it could become for her. Jane never manifests this fear or anger, but Bertha does. Thus Bertha tears up the bridal veil, and it is Bertha’s existence that indeed stops the wedding from going forth. And, when Thornfield comes to represent a state of servitude and submission for Jane, Bertha burns it to the ground. Throughout the novel, Jane describes her inner spirit as fiery, her inner landscape as a “ridge of lighted heath” (Chapter 4). Bertha seems to be the outward manifestation of Jane’s interior fire. Bertha expresses the feelings that Jane must keep in check.
The Red-Room
The red-room can be viewed as a symbol of what Jane must overcome in her struggles to find freedom, happiness, and a sense of belonging. In the red-room, Jane’s position of exile and imprisonment first becomes clear. Although Jane is eventually freed from the room, she continues to be socially ostracized, financially trapped, and excluded from love; her sense of independence and her freedom of self-expression are constantly threatened.
The red-room’s importance as a symbol continues throughout the novel. It reappears as a memory whenever Jane makes a connection between her current situation and that first feeling of being ridiculed. Thus she recalls the room when she is humiliated at Lowood. She also thinks of the room on the night that she decides to leave Thornfield after Rochester has tried to convince her to become an undignified mistress. Her destitute condition upon her departure from Thornfield also threatens emotional and intellectual imprisonment, as does St. John’s marriage proposal. Only after Jane has asserted herself, gained financial independence, and found a spiritual family—which turns out to be her real family—can she wed Rochester and find freedom in and through marriage.

Context
Charlotte Brontë was born in Yorkshire, England on April 21, 1816 to Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë. Because Charlotte’s mother died when Charlotte was five years old, Charlotte’s aunt, a devout Methodist, helped her brother-in-law raise his children. In 1824 Charlotte and three of her sisters—Maria, Elizabeth, and Emily—were sent to Cowan Bridge, a school for clergymen’s daughters. When an outbreak of tuberculosis killed Maria and Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily were brought home. Several years later, Charlotte returned to school, this time in Roe Head, England. She became a teacher at the school in 1835 but decided after several years to become a private governess instead. She was hired to live with and tutor the children of the wealthy Sidgewick family in 1839, but the job was a misery to her and she soon left it. Once Charlotte recognized that her dream of starting her own school was not immediately realizable, however, she returned to working as a governess, this time for a different family. Finding herself equally disappointed with governess work the second time around, Charlotte recruited her sisters to join her in more serious preparation for the establishment of a school.

Although the Brontës’ school was unsuccessful, their literary projects flourished. At a young age, the children created a fictional world they named Angria, and their many stories, poems, and plays were early predictors of shared writing talent that eventually led Emily, Anne, and Charlotte to careers as novelists. As adults, Charlotte suggested that she, Anne, and Emily collaborate on a book of poems. The three sisters published under male pseudonyms: Charlotte’s was Currer Bell, while Emily and Anne wrote as Ellis and Acton Bell, respectively. When the poetry volume received little public notice, the sisters decided to work on separate novels but retained the same pseudonyms. Anne and Emily produced their masterpieces in 1847, but Charlotte’s first book, The Professor, never found a willing publisher during her lifetime. Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre later that year. The book, a critique of Victorian assumptions about gender and social class, became one of the most successful novels of its era, both critically and commercially.
Autobiographical elements are recognizable throughout Jane Eyre. Jane’s experience at Lowood School, where her dearest friend dies of tuberculosis, recalls the death of Charlotte’s sisters at Cowan Bridge. The hypocritical religious fervor of the headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst, is based in part on that of the Reverend Carus Wilson, the Evangelical minister who ran Cowan Bridge. Charlotte took revenge upon the school that treated her so poorly by using it as the basis for the fictional Lowood. Jane’s friend Helen Burns’s tragic death from tuberculosis recalls the deaths of two of Charlotte’s sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who succumbed to the same disease during their time at Cowan Bridge. Additionally, John Reed’s decline into alcoholism and dissolution is most likely modeled upon the life of Charlotte Brontë’s brother Branwell, who slid into opium and alcohol addictions in the years preceding his death. Finally, like Charlotte, Jane becomes a governess—a neutral vantage point from which to observe and describe the oppressive social ideas and practices of nineteenth-century Victorian society.
The plot of Jane Eyre follows the form of a Bildungsroman, which is a novel that tells the story of a child’s maturation and focuses on the emotions and experiences that accompany and incite his or her growth to adulthood. In Jane Eyre, there are five distinct stages of development, each linked to a particular place: Jane’s childhood at Gateshead, her education at the Lowood School, her time as Adele’s governess at Thornfield, her time with the Rivers family at Morton and at Marsh End (also called Moor House), and her reunion with and marriage to Rochester at Ferndean. From these experiences, Jane becomes the mature woman who narrates the novel retrospectively.
But the Bildungsroman plot of Jane Eyre, and the book’s element of social criticism, are filtered through a third literary tradition—that of the Gothic horror story. Like the Bildungsroman, the Gothic genre originated in Germany. It became popular in England in the late eighteenth century, and it generally describes supernatural experiences, remote landscapes, and mysterious occurrences, all of which are intended to create an atmosphere of suspense and fear. Jane’s encounters with ghosts, dark secrets, and sinister plots add a potent and lingering sense of fantasy and mystery to the novel.
After the success of Jane Eyre, Charlotte revealed her identity to her publisher and went on to write several other novels, most notably Shirley in 1849. In the years that followed, she became a respected member of London’s literary set. But the deaths of siblings Emily and Branwell in 1848, and of Anne in 1849, left her feeling dejected and emotionally isolated. In 1854, she wed the Reverend Arthur Nicholls, despite the fact that she did not love him. She died of pneumonia, while pregnant, the following year.

from Sparknotes June 15, 2008

Himlen har landat
på ett grässtrå,
därför darrar det.

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