Chapter 38

Question 1

Voice / narrative perspective:

Answer 1

Reader, I married him - Bronte has Jane address the reader to bind us in our relationship with Jane, making it feel reciprocal (she involves us) and therefore stronger.
We are all the more invested in Jane and therefore care more about the societal issues she’s faced.
Voice is of present day Jane updating us on her own and others’ lives - sense of epilogue/finality/resolu-tion
‘As for…’
‘My Edward and I then are happy’ - PRESENT TENSE- after all the struggles of the past, a joyful present exists.

Question 2

Character:

Answer 2

Satisfied. Has triumphed over struggles and forged own life and loving marriage and family.
Loving and good wife ‘perfect concord’ -live in harmony and peace together.
Fully satisfied and happy with life and choices?

Question 3

Structure:

Answer 3

Jumps to adult Jane’s voice in the present - sense of satisfied resolution and all is well.
Juxtaposition ‘my edwards and I are happy’ - ‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!’ while Jane and Rochester’s spiritual, god-approved union delights them, St John dies painfully and alone - the consequences ofliving for God and not allowing any good human emotion in?

Question 4

Genre:

Answer 4

Reader, I married him - ‘Autobiography’ - making Jane real makes the issues real.
Addressing the reader binds us in our relationship with her, making it stronger and feel reciprocal.
This sentence sums up her defiance in the face of all her struggles to have triumphed in forging her own path.
Bildungsroman ending - character has grown up, all things resolved
and living happily ever after. Or is she?

Question 5

Context:

Answer 5

PROTO FEMINIST
I married him - female agency not conventional female as prise to be won.
Is ending on the word Jesus a way to signal the novel’s virtue to the Victorian readership, making the subversive/challenging elements of the story more palatable?
Is ending on the words of a tyrannical ‘avalanche’ and ‘iceberg’ of a man done to signal to the reader that there are still problems with the patriarchy? Just because things worked out in fiction for Jane, doesn’t mean the world has been rid
of dominating, abusive patriarchy. Balancing the triumphant ‘reader I married him’ from the start of the chapter.