Four on Jane Eyre

A new course at the Princeton Adult School begins tomorrow, October 30:

Four on Jane Eyre 

4 Session(s)

Mon  7:30 - 8:30 pm,  October 30 - November 20

Over four classes we will discuss Charlotte Brontë’s first published novel, Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (1847).  Brontë rejected the style of her predecessor Jane Austen, whose fictions she compared to “a highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers—but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy—no open country—no fresh air—no blue hill—no bonny beck.”  She replaced Austen’s drawing rooms and landed estates with moors and haunted halls and gave vent to the frustrations of her circumscribed life and the passions of her nature. Jane Eyre is many things: a classic coming-of-age story, a Gothic romance, a cry against the grim opportunities for educated but poor women in the mid-nineteenth century, a tale of near-adultery, and a novel nonetheless sometimes considered a young girl’s book.  Which aspect of the novel resonates most powerfully with you? And does it strike you now as the same book you read when you were fifteen?