Theme of happiness in Ch. Brontè’s novel ‘Jane Eyre’

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to trace the development of the theme of happiness in relation to the development of the protagonist in the novel “Jane Eyre” by the English Victorian writer Charlotte Brontè. It is discovered that the pursuit of happiness becomes an internal impetus driving the plot of the novel, ensuring the development of the protagonist’s image and promoting such leitmotifs as creativity, love, freedom, naturalness, and fight for one’s life. Particular emphasis is placed on the search for individual components of the internal and external life that comprise the plotline of the protagonist’s pursuit of personal happiness. At the same time, it is noted that the heroine’s ideas of happiness, while essentially remaining unchanged, obtain different undertones at various stages of growing up. It is also noted that the protagonist’s ideas of happiness sharply differ from some other characters’ ideas of happiness (for example, Helen Burns). It is argued that the protagonist in Charlotte Brontè’s novel is led along the arduous journey to happiness by her natural tenacity and the model of the responsible and naturally creative behavior based on the feeling of love which is formed in the protagonist – with the development of her character – already in her childhood. The academic prerequisites for the study are numerous works on the image of the protagonist, the features of psychologism and realism in Charlotte Brontè’s work, on the one hand, and the increased interest in the problem of happiness in academia, on the other hand. The study of the image of childhood and the place that the pursuit of happiness holds in it carried out by the authors in a previous work is also an important prerequisite for this study. The novelty of this work consists in analyzing the content features of the theme of happiness in Charlotte Brontè’s famous novel.