Throughout Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte demonstrates how she has been influenced by one of her greatest childhood literary heroes, Lord Byron. Byron’s work was widely read and discussed in his lifetime by the English literary elite as well as the aspiring middle class. By
the time Bronte published ‘Jane Eyre’ in 1848, Byron’s work had been disseminated to the masses, making it less attractive to the upper
classes; and romanticism had been replaced by the trend toward realism in Victorian literary circles. Comparing the heroines of ‘The Corsair’
to those of ‘Jane Eyre’ demonstrates Bronte’s use of Byronic characters and themes. The corsair’s wife, Medora, is recognizable as
Blanche Ingram, while his potential mistress, Gulnare, has much in common with Jane. Once Bronte establishes these characters in the
Byronic tradition, she alters the well-known narrative. By doing so, she disturbs Victorian norms regarding gender and class, and leaves
behind her childhood hero, Lord Byron.
Bronte, in her juvenile writing, emulated Byron and tried to imitate his portrayal of gender relations. Many Bronte biographers
note her character Zamorna as evidence of this. Juliet Gardiner describes him as “…a Byronic aristocrat who was soon supplied with two
wives, (and) a panoply of mistresses…”
Caroline Frank writes that women who knew Byron, including his wife Annabella Millebank, “ruined their lives” trying to reform the satanic
lover (58). Charlotte Bronte became a literary icon by succeeding. While many post-Byronic Victorian authors tried to write their way out
of the poet’s shadow.(3)
(1)Regarding the Byronic hero, it exhibits several characteristic traits, and in many ways he can be considered a rebel.
The Byronic hero does not possess "heroic virtue" in the usual sense; instead, he has many dark qualities. With regard to his intellectual
capacity, self-respect, and hypersensitivity, the Byronic hero is "larger than life," and "with the loss of his titanic passions, his
pride, and his certainty of self-identity, he loses also his status as [a traditional] hero" (Thorslev 187).
He is usually isolated from society as a wanderer or is in exile of some kind.Byron's Manfred, a character who wandered desolate mountaintops, was physically isolated from society, whereas Childe Harold chose to "exile" himself and wander throughout Europe. Although Harold remained physically present in society and among people, he was not by any means "social."
Often the Byronic hero is moody by nature or passionate about a particular issue. He also has emotional and intellectual
capacities, which are superior to the average man. These heightened abilities force the Byronic hero to be arrogant, confident, abnormally
sensitive, and extremely conscious of himself.Often the byronic hero is characterized by a gultiy memory of some unnamed sexual crime.Due to these characteristics, the Byronic hero is often a figure of repulsion, as well as fascination.When Byron died at the age of thirty-six in 1824, Bronte was but eight years old. Bronte's youthful age, however, did not preclude Byron and his works from having a profound effect on her and her writing; indeed, the "cult" of Lord Byron flourished shortly after his death "dominating [the Brontes'] girlhood and their young womanhood".
Bronte's allusion to Byron's immensely popular work "The Corsair," which was published in 1814, suggests that Jane
Eyre was set sometime after this date. Since Jane and Blanche are technically rivals for Rochester and Jane politely dislikes Blanche,
Bronte's placement of this allusion into Blanche's reply implies that on one level Bronte may not have thought highly of certain works by
Byron or "Byronic" characters.
(2)Jane Eyreas a byronic heroine can be seen as primarily conventional, there are three characteristics which provide the
strongest examples of Jane Eyre as a Byronic heroine her refusal to repent, her intellectual and emotional superiority, and her rejection
of value systems and moral codes. An equally important characteristic of a Byronic hero is that of superior intellectual and emotional capacity. Millicent Bell points out that Jane is "threateningly intelligent, forthright to the point of bluntness, submitting herself mentally to no one, not even when she finally does improbably win a man's love. Her unsubmissiveness, her independence is her social fault". Her willingness to serve the deserving Rochester, which is clearly indicated in this passage, is not slavish, but instead it indicates Jane's compassionate nature; she is not at all the characteristically dark, brooding, and mysterious Byronic heroine. But despite the weak appearance of a Byronic heroine, Jane's character ultimately does not escape the conventional. Jane is most happy when she is serving others.
The Victorian period was a time of literary splendour that brought some of the major poets in the history of English poetry, such as
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold or the Brownings. However, every period comes to an end and it was the end of the 19th century which
brought the end of this Victorian literary period. As we can see, the decline of the Victorian poetry caused a time of literary chaos and
lack of direction. However, this doesn’t mean that there was no poetic production in the Edwardian period. This patriotic sense meant
that, “with the exception of John Davidson, Edwardian poets are almost exclusively concerned with rural rather than urban subjects and
landscapes”. Considering the situation of poetry up to this point, we can see that Byron’s influence in Edwardian poetry is not very clear,
but we can perceive some kind of influence in the exaltation of nature. Byron was one of the first poets who dealt with this contacts
and identification with the Devil (in fact the Byronic Hero is closer to a demoniac being rather than an angelic one). And we can see his
influence present in some of James Elroy Flecker poems.
Another signal of Byron’s influence on James E. Flecker is the orientalism present in his poetry. As Lord Byron did, Flecker travelled to Athens, as well as other oriental countries and, in the same way that Byron gave account of his impressions on his travels in ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ and the four oriental tales James Elroy Flecker also wrote some poems with his thoughts about his travels, from which the most famous one is the book of poems ‘The Golden Journey to Samarkand’.In 1914, the Great War began, and a new generation of poets arose, becoming known as the ‘War poets’. There were two kinds of poets: those who had a patriotic vision of war as something heroic; and those who rejected it showing in their poems the horrors of war. Although it became obvious that was this second vision of war the one which was closer to reality, we need to focus now on the first group of poets, as they were highly influenced by Romanticism.
In order to finish this influence of Lord Byron and Romanticism in the first decades of the 20th century, I will make reference to one of
the most important novels written during this period: Orlando: A Biograpy, by Virginia Woolf. This novel, first published in 1928 (9
years after the Great War finished), portraits a main character that shows some characteristics of the Byronic Hero, which proves that the
shadow of Byronism still influences Modernism.
Talking about the thirties we can say that form the beginning of the 20th, poetry has been acquiring many forms. By the 1930s it
was regarded as Modernist poetry both in its form and its content. In general, it was characterized by the extensive use of free verse and
for the fact that the main poets left aside the romantic idea of an unproblematic poetic ‘self’ directly addressing an equally
unproblematic ideal reader or audience.
Regarding about the forties, the United Kingdom was at war, and a new generation of war poets appeared in response. The main movement in post-war 1940s poetry was the New Romantic group that included Dylan Thomas, George Baker, W. S. Graham, Kathleen Raine, Henry Treece and J.F. Hendry. These writers saw themselves as in revolt against the classicism of the nes country poets. They turned to such models as Jame Joyce, and helped their own poetry to emerge as a recognisable force.
Regardind the apocaliptic movement we can say that they were a group of of poets in the UK in the 1940s, taking their name from the
anthology The New Apocalypse (1939), which was edited by J. F. Hendry and Henry Treece. There followed the further anthologies The White
Horseman (1941) and Crown and Sickle (1944).
Probably most poetry readers at 1940s extremist poetry now would see it ludicrously perverse, and certainly as poetry of and for a group or clique of poets completely disconnected from any common reader. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that it arose directly from the
popular and successful poetry of Thomas himself.And finally, regarding the new romantic group, we find that ir was another movement of the forties called the “New Romantic”. It was postulated to cover some British poets between the “Auden group” and the 1930s movement. This was the most important post-war gorup and the authors that belong to this group, saw themselves as “in revolt against the classicism”
1.http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/434/charweb/CHARACTE.htm
2. http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/434/charweb/JANEASBY.htm
3. http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/434/charweb/sevareid3.htm