《简·爱》是夏洛蒂·勃朗特的成名作及代表作。小说真实地再现了小人物简·爱三十年的坎坷遭遇和勇敢追求，细腻地叙述了女主人公艰难的生存状态和复杂的心理活动，反对人性的压抑和摧残，赞扬了妇女独立自主、自尊自强的精神，是一部现实主义的作品。作品还充分表现了作者的主观理想，抒发了个人热烈的感情，在情节的构建、人物的刻画、心理的揭示和景物的描绘方面，都有着极为丰富的想象力。本书对《简·爱》作了详细的解读。本书为英文版。

Immediately popular when published over a century and a half ago, Jane Eyre has contnnuea to find appreciative audiences. This student casebook offers a unique interdisciplinary approach to the study of Charlotte Bronte's landmark novel. While it gives insightful literary analysis, it also contextualizes the novel in terms of the historical social issues it confronts. Expert commentary is supported with primary documents from legal and medical treatises, magazine articles, letters, essays and firsthand accounts. A personal biography written by Elizabeth Gaskell, an acquaintance of Bronte, offers a detailed account of the Cowan Bridge School. which Charlotte attended and fictionalized in Jane Eyre.

Introduction

1. Literary Analysis: Jane Eyre

2. Education for Victorian Girls

  FROM:

  Mrs. Sarah Trimmer, The Economy of Charity; or,

  an Address to Ladies; Adapted to the Present State

  of Charitable Institutions in England (1801)

  Frances Power Cobbe, Life of Frances Power Cobbe,

  as Told by Herself (1904)

  Hannah Lynch, Autobiography of a Child (1899)

  Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857)

  "An Enquiry into the State of Girls’ Fashionable

  Schools" (Fraser’s Magazine, 1845)

  Hannah More, Strictures on the Modern System of

  Female Education (1799)

  Thomas Gisborne, An Enquiry into the Duties of the

  Female Sex (1797)

  William Duff, Letters on the Intellectual and Moral

  Character of Women (1807)

3. The Governess in Nineteenth-Century England

  FROM:

  M. Mostyn Bird, Woman at Work: A Study of the Different

  Ways of Earning a Living Open to Women (1911)

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Thoughts on the Education of

  Daughters, with Reflections on Female Conduct in

  the More Important Duties of Life (1787)

  Advice to Governesses (1827)

  Sarah Lewis, "On the Social Position of Governesses"

  (Fraser’s Magazine, 1848)

  Anne Bronte, Agnes Grey (1847)

  Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857)

4. Madness and Victorian Women: Diagnosis and Treatment

  FROM:

  Henry Maudsley, Body and Mind (1873)

  Henry Maudsley, Responsibility in Mental Disease (1874)

  Alexander Morison, Outlines of Mental Diseases (1824)

  William Willis Moseley, Eleven Chapters on Nervous

  and Mental Complaints (1838)

  Andrew Wynter, The Borderlands of Insanity (1875)

  George Man Burrows, Commentaries on Insanity (1828)

  James Cowles Prichard, A Treatise on Insanity (1833)

  Robert Brudenell Carter, On the Pathology and

  Treatment of Hysteria (1853)

  John Haslam, Considerations on the Moral

  Management of Insane Persons (1817)

  Robert Gardiner Hill, Total Abolition of Personal

  Restraint in the Treatment of the Insane (1839)

  John Millar, Hints on Insanity (1861)

5. Inheritance and Marriage Law and Custom

  FROM:

  George C. Brodrick, English Land and English

  Landlords (1881)

  Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws

  of England (1765)

  William Alexander, The History of Women from the

  Earliest Antiquity, to the Present Time (1779)

  Sir Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland,

  The History of English Law Before the Time of

  Edward I (1898)

6. Jane Eyre: Issues in the Twenty-first Century

Index