Jane Eyre

Abstract

With Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë found her true means of expression, the poetic novel. It was the form ideally suited to her. It was not in her power to express herself fully in verse, for metre seemed to shackle rather than to liberate her inspiration. In the flexible prose of the novel she could use that capacity for observation and often trenchant critical judgement which was part of her nature, and at the same time combine them with the imaginative genius which was her unique gift. Jane Eyre, the first of her works in which she fully succeeded in achieving this fusion, represented something new in the history of the English novel. But its very originality mitigated for long against a just critical assessment of all its qualities.