New approaches

Abstract

In chapter two of this book I looked, albeit briefly, at Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. I now want to take a sceptical look at some of the things I said about it; in particular, I want to examine some of the concealed assumptions that shaped my reading of the novel. But why bother? Isn’t it rather self-indulgent in a book about how to study novels to start looking back at things I have already said? There is, however, a point to the exercise. The earlier chapters of this book are written as if one can look at a work of fiction in an almost objective way, detecting a pattern in a passage and then relating it to a sense of the work as a whole. But these chapters are less straightforward than they seem; what is, perhaps, not immediately obvious is that I am nudging you in certain directions all the time. I am encouraging you, as my reader, to feel that certain things are worth mentioning and that other things are less important, encouraging you to pursue certain details, and encouraging you to accept certain assumptions about the effect and achievement of novels as a whole.