Narrative Techniques In Jane Eyre

Narrative technique

Setting

The story takes place in the early decades of the 19th century, in northern England. There are five separate locations: the home of the Reed family at Gateshead, the Lowood School, Rochester’s house Thornfield, the home of the Rivers family at Moor House and Rochester’s other house Ferndean. Each of these houses or places where Jane lives represent a certain stage in her life.

As a child, Jane lives at Gateshead with her aunt and cousins. She is not treated very well by her family, and because the house is described as dark and depressing, the setting adds to the feeling of empathy you feel as a reader for the horrible seating Jane lives in.

She then moves to the Lowood School. At first the school is described as a place where it’s always cold with bad food and bad facilities, and alo a place where the weather is bad. This goes along with the, again, bad situation where Jane is in. But both Jane’s life and the school enhance, as the bad conditions where the students live in are revealed.

At Thornfield Hall, the suspense in the story

She uses complex sentences, for example at the very beginning of the novel Jane says she’s glad she can’t take a walk with her cousins: ‘I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed’. Brontë could have used a much simpler sentence here, but by using this kind of complex sentences you can tell that the narrator, Jane, is educated, that she like to give a series of ideas in an interconnected web, instead of just short statements. Brontë also uses a lot of comparisons, she doesn’t just describe things or people, but uses comparisons so the reader can form a clear image in his