'A Poem in a Foreign Language'?: Jane Eyre, the King James Bible and the Modern Reader

It is frequently said that modern readers' lack of knowledge of the Bible must 'impoverish' their response to nineteenth-century novels. In this paper, I argue that modern readers who cannot identify specific biblical allusions nevertheless respond to the memorable rhythms and vivid i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Brontë studies : journal of the Brontë Society 2012-11, Vol.37 (4), p.312-317
Main Author: Stoneman, Patsy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bible
Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre
modern reader
style
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Summary:It is frequently said that modern readers' lack of knowledge of the Bible must 'impoverish' their response to nineteenth-century novels. In this paper, I argue that modern readers who cannot identify specific biblical allusions nevertheless respond to the memorable rhythms and vivid imagery of the King James Bible, which have passed into everyday usage, treasured, repeated and adapted through time because they shape and heighten recurring human emotions. Charlotte Brontë's knowledge of the Bible was so thorough as to amount to a 'mother tongue', and in this paper, drawing on scholarly analyses of the Bible and of Charlotte Brontë's prose, I demonstrate that the characteristic style of Jane Eyre, especially in moments of high emotion, echoes biblical forms of sentence structure, vocabulary and imagery, and I argue that specific allusions to the Bible are less important in her work than the powerful emotional force carried by a biblical style.
ISSN:1474-8932
1745-8226
DOI:10.1179/1474893212Z.00000000037