The Shapes Jane Eyre Takes: Ephemeral Responses to the Book and Its Themes

Abstract

In two words, “Jane Eyre”—the name of a book and the name of a character—book and character merge, indistinguishably. When casually dropped, the name might bring to mind the tidy rectangles of mass-market paperbacks or clothbound hardbacks, or the flesh of any number of famous actresses who have played the part of Charlotte Brontë’s most famous heroine. Two dimensions become three—words are transmitted via material sources, and those material sources are interpreted through the veil of human desires. And so Brontë’s text, like a word whispered from person to person in a game of telephone, carries with ...