"Cliff Notes - Jane Eyre" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

surprised her intimate friends and her public alike--she got
married! Charlotte had received two marriage proposals when she
was in her twenties--one from a man she barely knew and another
from a clergyman who made no secret of the fact that he was
proposing on the rebound after being rejected by another young
woman--but she had always taken it for granted that she would
never marry. How could she hope to find a husband who'd
understand her need to write or who'd measure up to the romantic
heroes of her imagination? Oddly enough the man Charlotte
finally chose to wed was neither her literary equal nor a
brooding hero in the mold of Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester. He was
Arthur Bell Nicholls, a sober curate (assistant minister) who
had been quietly in love with Charlotte for several years before
he even knew that she was the author of the celebrated novel,
Jane Eyre. Though not an intellectual himself, Bell was
apparently quite proud to discover that the quiet middle-aged
woman he had fallen in love with was a literary genius. And
Charlotte, to the dismay and skepticism of some of her admirers,
had decided that she could combine a career as the author of
unconventional novels with a very conventional married life.

Charlotte seemed about to do just that. She was already
pregnant when, after less than a year of marriage, she fell ill
and died of tuberculosis--the same disease that had killed her
sisters and brother.

Charlotte's early death provided the drama that many of her
readers had looked for, and failed to find, in her life. Some
biographers have portrayed Charlotte as a tragic heroine, who
walked around shrouded by an aura of gloom, constantly
preoccupied by the subject of death. But when you consider the
number of early deaths in her family, it's surprising that
Charlotte worried as little about death as she did. In spite of
her withdrawn, introspective childhood, Charlotte managed to
lead a productive and fulfilled life. She completed four
novels, coped with the stress of sudden fame, and at the age of
thirty-eight decided to embark on a career as a wife and mother.
According to her biographer and friend, Mrs. Gaskell (see the
Further Reading section of this guide), Charlotte Bronte refused
to believe, almost to the end of her last illness, that she was
going to suffer the same fate as her four sisters and her
brother. When she heard her husband at her bedside praying to
God to spare her life, Charlotte's reaction was surprise. "Oh,
I am not going to die, am I?" she asked. "He will not separate
us; we have been so happy."

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JANE EYRE: THE PLOT

Jane Eyre is the story of a poor, orphaned girl's search for