Let's now test your memory from the previous lesson!

What place does Brontë use for the setting of this novel?

What is atmosphere?

Why did Brontë use the pseudonym Currer Bell?

What terrible tragedy occurred when Brontë was a pupil at school?

How was Brontë employed?

The Novel's Setting

﻿Welcome to our next lesson of Jane Eyre. In today's lesson, we are going to be learning more about the novel's main character, Jane. Now, I must say, of all the characters in all the books that I've ever read, Jane Eyre stands out. She is a wonderfully powerful, passionate, and colourful character with an astounding psychological and emotional complexity and depth. Having read this novel, I feel as if I know Jane in the same way as I know an old friend. I hope you feel the same way about Jane by the time that we finish this book. Let's now learn more about the novel's fascinating main character. For today's lesson, you will need an exercise book or paper, and a pen. If you do not have this equipment, press the pause button on your video now. Go and collect this equipment and then we will begin our lesson. Let's begin with a recap from our last lesson. How would you describe the novel's presentation of the Yorkshire countryside? Option one, wealthy, option two, comfortable, option three, warm, or option four, bleak and barren. Press the pause button on your video now and tell the screen the right answer. I will now tell you the right answer, which is, of course, option four. The Yorkshire countryside is presented as a bleak and barren landscape in our novel. In other words, it's very cold. It's rather empty. It's desolate, creating this very gloomy atmosphere. Okay, now some of you may have chosen one of the other options. You may have chosen option one, the Yorkshire countryside is wealthy. I would disagree with option one. As you're going to see in this novel, there are some wealthy people who live in the Yorkshire countryside, but there are also many poor people who live in this area. You may have chosen option two, it's comfortable. I would once again suggest that the Yorkshire countryside isn't very comfortable, as we saw in our quotation analysis last week or last lesson. The Yorkshire countryside is in fact a rather hostile, and the winter time, very cold environment. And that is why I would also disagree with option three. I would not describe the Yorkshire countryside as a warm place. Well done if you got that right. I will now describe what we're going to learn in today's lesson. First of all, we are going to learn about protagonists. We will then learn about eponymous heroes or heroines. We will then learn about the Bildungsroman genre. And then we will learn about Victorian society's treatment of orphans. Let's begin. First, let's learn about protagonists. Now, here's a question. What does that word protagonist mean? Well, a protagonist is the main character in a story. Ebeneezer Scrooge is the protagonist of a "Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. Katniss is the protagonist of the "Hunger Games" series by Suzanne Collins. Here's another protagonist. Harry Potter. Harry Potter is the protagonist of the "Harry Potter" series by JK Rowling. Oliver Twist is the protagonist of "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens. And of course, Jane Eyre is the protagonist of "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte. As you can see, that word protagonist means main character. So Jane Eyre is the main character of our novel. Jane Eyre is the protagonist of our novel. Let's now test your memory. A P is the main character of a story. Press the pause button on your video now and tell the screen the right answer, filling in the word in blank. Off you go. I will now tell you the right answer. A protagonist is the main character of a story. Well done if you've got that right. Okay. Let's now learn about eponymous heroes/heroines. Now, a hero is an admirable male protagonist, an admirable male main character. That word admirable means someone that you would admire, someone who's likely to... Someone who's likely to be noble and brave and have qualities that make you respect them. And a heroine is an admirable female protagonist. Now, an eponymous hero or heroine is a hero or heroine whose name is used as the title of the story. So Jane Eyre is an eponymous heroine because her is the title of our novel. An eponymous heroine or hero is a hero or heroine whose name is used as the title of the story. Okay, let's now test your memory. Which two of these options are not eponymous heroes or heroines? Press the pause button on your video now and tell the screen the right answer. The right answers are, of course, option two and option four. Option two, Ebeneezer Scrooge, is not an eponymous hero because his name is not the name of the book, and that is the same with Katniss. Katniss's name is not used as the title of "The Hunger Games." Well done if you got that right. Let's now learn about the Bildungsroman genre. Now, a genre refers to a category of different stories. If you think about all the movies out there, each movie or each story belongs to a different genre. We have thrillers and romance movies and horror movies and mysteries. It's the same with books. Each book belongs to a different genre. Each book belongs to a different category. Now, what is the Bildungsroman genre all about? Well, to understand this, we must know a little bit about the plot of "Jane Eyre." At the beginning of "Jane Eyre," Jane is a child, and she goes on many adventures and has many experiences and faces many challenges, until at the end of the story, she is a mature woman. The plot of "Jane Eyre" follows Jane as she grows up. This is a typical Bildungsroman story. A Bildungsroman story is a story that follows a character as they grow up and mature. So, at the beginning of "Jane Eyre," Jane is young and naive. That word naive describes someone who's a little bit immature and doesn't really understand the world very well. She goes on many challenges, experiences many adventures, and faces many dangers, and by the end of the novel, she has become an older and wiser mature woman. Let's know test your understanding of this idea. Which storyline belongs to the Bildungsroman genre? Option one, an old man decides to change his ways. Option two, a kind-hearted boy has many adventures. At the end of the story, he is still the kind-hearted boy he was at the beginning. Option three, a boy joins secondary school and becomes increasingly immature and badly-behaved. Or option four, an immature boy goes on a long journey. As a result of his many adventures, the boy matures into a wise man. Press the pause button on your video now and tell the screen which storyline belongs Bildungsroman genre. Off you go. And I'll tell you the right answer, which is, of course, option four. Option four is a Bildungsroman genre. The story begins, and we have an immature boy. So he's very young and he's immature. He goes on a long journey and the story follows him as he goes through many adventures and matures into a wise man. This journey from immaturity to maturity, from youth to maturity, is typical of a Bildungsroman story. Now, some of you may have chosen option one, an old man decides to change his ways. The reason that we cannot describe this story as a Bildungsroman story is because the man is old right throughout the story. It's not a story about someone growing up. Bildungsroman stories usually begin and centre upon a child and describes how the child grows up. Some of you may have chosen option two, a kind-hearted boy has many adventures. At the end of the story, he is still the kind-hearted boy he was at the beginning. The reason that this cannot be described as a Bildungsroman genre story is because this boy doesn't actually change. He doesn't mature throughout the story. He does not become a man. He's exactly the same at the end of the story as he was at the start. And some of you may have chosen option three, a boy joins secondary school and becomes increasingly immature and badly-behaved. Now, this story is not about someone growing up and becoming more mature and developing as a person. It's quite the opposite. It's actually about someone becoming more immature, and therefore, option three cannot be described as a Bildungsroman story because these type of stories, Bildungsroman stories, follow characters as they become more mature. Well done if you got that right. Okay, you've now got four questions. I want you to go through each of those four sentences. I want you to fill in the words that are in blank, and tell the screen the full sentences. You don't need to write these down. Just tell the screen the right answers. Press the pause button on your video now. Off you go. Okay, let's take a look at our answers. Number one, the main character in the story is called the protagonist. Number two, if the hero/heroine shares the same name as the title of the story, they are an eponymous hero or heroine. Number three, "Jane Eyre" is an example of the Bildungsroman genre. And number four, a Bildungsroman narrative follows a character as they grow up and mature. Well done if you got that right. We're finally going to learn about Victorian society's treatment of orphans. Now, the text we're about to read contains reference to orphans and the death of a child's parents. For some people, this will be a sensitive topic. If that applies to you, you may want to do the rest of this lesson with a trusted adult nearby who can support. Jane Eyre is an orphan. Now, let me explain to you what an orphan is. An orphan is a child whose parents have died. So both of Jane Eyre's parents have passed away. They've both died. Now, orphans in Victorian Britain often endured very difficult lives. The government did not provide orphans with the same sort of support that they would receive today. There was roughly three different things that happened to many orphans. So, many of them were forced to live on the streets. Britain's towns and cities would be filled with many of these children living on the streets, begging for food and often looking for shelter. As you can imagine, this was a very dangerous and unpleasant life for these poor children. Now, other orphans were a little bit more fortunate. Some orphans were accepted into school for poor children, and these schools often provided food and accommodation and education for these children and saved them from a desperate life on the streets. Unfortunately, many of these schools were often underfunded, too. They did not have enough money, and many of these children still had to live in awful conditions in these schools. Other orphans were adopted into new families. Now, sometimes this could go very well. Orphans were sometimes adopted into a family that took care of them. If you've read "Oliver Twist," you may remember that he's adopted into Mr. Brownlow's family, and Mr. Brownlow's a very kind man who takes great care of Oliver, but other orphans were adopted into families that did not take care of them, and unfortunately, Jane Eyre is an example of this second type of orphan. As you're going to see, Jane Eyre is adopted into a family at the beginning of our novel that really did not take much care of her at all. Jane Eyre is actually adopted by her aunt's family. Now, her aunt's family are called the Reeds, and as you will see in our next lesson, the Reed family treats Jane Eyre very badly indeed. Okay. Let's begin. Let's now test your memory of what I've just taught. Where is Jane living at the beginning of the novel? Option one, Jane is living as an orphan. Jane is forced to live on the streets. Option two, because she is an orphan, Jane is accepted into a school for poor children. Option three, because she is an orphan, Jane is adopted by her aunt into the Reed family. Or option four, Jane lives happily with her parents. Press the pause button on your video now and tell the screen the right answer. I will now tell you the right answer, which is, of course, option three. Because she is an orphan, Jane is adopted by her aunt into the Reed family. Well done if you got that right. Okay, let's now continue to improve your writing. We're going to practise adding appositives again. So an appositive, as I explained before, is a phrase that is used to provide extra detail in a sentence. So we've got a sentence here. Jane, blank, lives with the Reed family. Now I want you to add an appositive giving more detail about Jane. Remember to separate this appositive with a comma on either side. Press the pause button on your video now, and write down a sentence using an appositive giving more detail about Jane in your book or on your paper. Off you go. Let me give you a few examples of the sort of sentences you could have written. Jane, the novel's protagonist, lives with the Reed family. Look at the way I've got commas on either side of this phrase. Jane, who is an orphan, lives with the Reed family. And Jane, the novel's eponymous heroine, lives with the Reed family. Now that you've seen these examples, I want you to take a look at your own sentence. Make sure that your sentence has a comma on either side of the appositive, as you can see in these three examples. If you feel like you would like to improve your sentence, maybe you're missing a comma or maybe like to improve the wording of the sentence, press the pause button on your video now and improve your sentence. Off you go. Let's now have a go at turning sentence fragments into sentences. Now, as you may remember, we use these questions to help us write more detailed sentences. Who, what, when, where, how, why. We don't always need to use all of these questions. We just use a few to help us write a really good, detailed sentence. Here's our sentence fragment, is adopted with her... Is living with her adopted family. We could use this sentence fragment and these questions to write a really good, detailed sentence. So I'm going to ask myself who question first. Who is living with her adopted family? It is, of course, Jane Eyre. Now, I could also ask another who question with this sentence fragment, asking who is Jane Eyre's adopted family? It is, of course, the Reeds. So far we have, Jane Eyre is living with her adopted family, the Reeds. But I could ask another question as well. When? When is Jane Eyre living with her adopted family, the Reeds? It is, of course, at the beginning of the novel. I could add that, too, to add more detail to my sentence, but I've got another question, too. Why? Why is Jane Eyre living with her adopted family, the Reeds, at the beginning of the novel? It is, of course, because of parents have died. Press the pause button on your video now and use these notes and the sentence fragments to write a really good, detailed sentence in your book or on your paper. Off you go. Here's our exemplar sentence. At the beginning of the novel, Jane Eyre is living with her adopted family, the Reeds, because her parents have died. As you can see, everything in green is answering the who question, everything in pink is answering the when question, and everything in purple is answering the why question. If you want to have a longer time to look at how I've written that sentence, press the pause button on your video now. Let's now do another few sentence fragments. Turn the sentence fragments into sentences. Number one, often lived on the streets, and number two, sometimes attended schools for poor children. Use these questions to help you expand these sentences. Complete these two sentences in your book or on your page. Now, just remember, you don't need to use all of the questions, just a few of them to help you write a really good, detailed sentence. Off you go. Let's now take a look at some exemplars. Often lived on the streets. This is what I've written. Throughout the Victorian era, orphans often lived on the streets because there was little support for these unfortunate members of society. Question number two, sometimes attended schools for poor children. Having been forced onto the streets after the death of their parents, orphans sometimes attended schools for poor children in order to receive shelter and accommodation. Now, you might now take a look now at the sentences that you've written. You might think to yourself that you like to improve them based upon these two exemplars. If you'd like to improve your sentences, press the post button on your video now. Off you go. Here's our credits for today's lesson. This is where I've got all of my images from, and that brings us to the end of today's lesson. We have now finished our unit introducing our story. Next lesson, we will actually begin reading our novel. I cannot wait. We're going to begin with chapter one and join young Jane Eyre as she is being bullied by her tyrannical cousins, the Reeds. I am looking forward to it. I know that you are looking forward to it. I'll see you next lesson. And before you leave, make sure you complete the end-of-lesson quiz. I'll see you next time.

Let's now test your memory from this lesson!

What word do we use to describe the admirable main character of a story?

Why can Jane be described as the novel's eponymous heroine?

What is an orphan?

Why is Jane living with the Reeds at the start of the novel?

What are the names of Charlotte Brontë's sisters who died from tuberculosis?

The Protagonist

Contains subject matter which individuals may find upsetting.

In this lesson, we will learn about the main character of our novel, 'Jane Eyre'.

Lesson overview:The Novel's Protagonist

Core Content

Content guidance

Supervision Level

Jane Eyre: