Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Jane Eyre, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love, Family, and Independence
Social Class and Social Rules
Gender Roles
Religion
Feeling vs. Judgment
The Spiritual and the Supernatural
Summary
Analysis
Jane quickly becomes friends with Mary and Diana. They share books and conversation, Jane teaches them drawing, and they all enjoy the hardy natural landscape. A month passes in this way, but then Mary and Diana must leave for their jobs as governesses in wealthy households. The Rivers sisters tell Jane that they suspect that St. John will also leave, maybe forever, to become a missionary.
Jane finds kinship and love with Mary and Diana, as she once did with Helen and Ms. Temple. They share an emotional and intellectual bond. The Rivers sisters mirror Jane in their educations, missing parents, and governess jobs.
Themes
Quiz
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St. John, unlike his sisters, remains pensive and distant at home. Jane visits his church and hears him preach a stern sermon that leaves her feeling sad. In conversation, the two of them realize that they both feel restless but in different ways.
Like Jane, St. John is restless for a "new servitude." But he seems to serve out of a cold religious passion that does not allow for any human feelings.
Themes
Literary Devices
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St. John offers Jane a position running a small school for the poor children of his parish in Morton. The pay and lodgings are meager, but Jane is glad for the job's independence, so she accepts.
The teaching job fits Jane's personality: independent, modest, and respectable. Jane can nurture virtues, not empty social conventions, in her students.
Themes
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Soon after, a letter arrives informing St. John, Mary, and Diana that their wealthy uncle John has just died and left them nothing, with his fortune going to an unknown "other relation." They tell Jane that it was their uncle who led their father into his disastrous business failure.
The uncle turns out to be Jane's uncle, too—John Eyre. As his heir, Jane will have the opportunity to reconcile the families and repay the Rivers's charity.
Themes
Quiz
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