Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
AP Guiding Questions Jane Eyre - Part I
- Select a character that has an experience such as a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place. Analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.
- Select a novel or play that include acts of betrayal. Then, analyze the nature of betrayal and show how it contributes to the mean of the work as a whole.
- Analyze the motives for the character’s deception and discuss how the deception contributes the meaning of the work as a whole.
- Discuss how a character in a novel or drama struggles to free himself or herself from the power of others or seeks to gain power over others. Be certain to discuss how the author uses this power struggle to enhance the meaning of the work.
- Analyze the importance of “home” to this character and the reasons for its continuing influence. Explain how the character’s idea of home illuminates the larger meaning of the work.
AP Suggested Themes Jane Eyre - Part II
- Gender Inequality
- Literary Gothicism
- Reason vs Passion
- Forgiveness
- Coming of Age
- Money vs Happiness
- Literary Romanticism
- External or physical beauty vs Internal beauty of the soul - "plain Jane"
- Victorian Social Class
- Imprisonment - The Red Room vs the Attic
- Love
- Types of Family
- Independence
- Types of Christian Religion expressed
- Patriarchal society vs Feminism