Romance
Before the Victorian era, Jane Austen wrote literary fiction that influenced later popular fiction, as did the work of the Brontë sisters produced in the 1840s. Brontë's love romance incorporates elements of both the gothic novel and Elizabethan drama, and "demonstrate[s] the flexibility of the romance novel form."[43]
Gothic
The Gothic genre uses a combination of supernatural features, intense emotions, and a blend of reality and fantasy to create a dark, mysterious atmosphere and experience for characters and readers. Jane Eyre is a homodiegetic narrator, which allows her to exist both as a character and narrator in the story world, and her narration establishes an emotional connection and response for the reader.[44] This intentional, narrative technique works in tandem with Gothic features and conventions. Jane and the reader are unaware of the cause behind the "demoniac laugh--low, suppressed, and deep" or "a savage, a sharp, a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall," though the reason comes from Bertha Mason. The element of the unknown works in conjunction to the possibility of the supernatural. The intensity of emotions and reactions to Gothic conventions can solely exist in the protagonist's imagination. Instances that a protagonist interprets to be their imagination turns into reality. Jane's experience in the red room represents an aspect of Gothic conventions as Jane feels fear towards being punished in the red room because she believes and imagines that her dead uncle haunts the room.
The Gothic genre uses the Gothic double: a literary motif, which is described as the protagonist having a double, alter ego, or doppelgänger interpreted between Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason, where Bertha represents the other side of Jane and vice versa.[45] The commonly used Gothic literary device, foreshadowing, creates an environment filled with tension, ominousity, and dread. After Jane agrees to marry Rochester, a horse-chestnut tree in an orchard is struck by lightning, splitting the tree in half. The lightning strike is ominous and foreshadows Jane and Rochester's separation.
The Gothic Genre in tandem with Murphy's the "New Woman Gothic" establishes an opportunity to go against the Romantic's concept that the antagonist is usually a villainous father.[46] The Gothic genre allows there to be a complex consideration of who or what hinders Jane's happiness. The barriers Jane experiences, whether related to social class, societal and cultural norms, Bertha Mason, or Rochester, have antagonistic elements.
Bildungsroman
The Bildungsroman representation in Jane Eyre uses romantic elements that emphasizes the journey of one pursuing the discoveration of one's identity and knowledge.[47] Jane Eyre desires the thrill and action that comes from being an active individual in society, and she refuses to allow the concept of gender and class to hinder her.
The Bildungsroman was primarily viewed through the male life progression, but feminist scholars worked to counteract the male norm of bildungsroman by including the female development.[48] Experiences that deem a female narrative to be bildungsroman would be the female protagonist discovering how to manage living in a restricting society.[49] The novel's setting exists in English society of the early 19th century, and with that time setting comes specific restrictions women dealt with during that time—such as, the law of coverture, lack of rights, and restricted expectations placed on women. Jane Eyre does not specifically and directly deal with the restrictions of, for example coverture, but her character does exist in a society where coverture exists, which inadvertently impacts social and cultural norms and expectations. Progression in the bildungsroman does not necessarily occur in a linear, binary line. Many narratives that implement the bildungsroman does so through the protagonist's maturity development, which is represented through the protagonist's experiences from childhood to adulthood, such progression exists well in conjunction with the novel's narrative technique set as an autobiography. Temporally, the beginning of the novel begins with Jane at age ten and ends with Jane at age thirty, but Jane's maturity development goes beyond her age. For example, Jane's emotional intelligence grows through her friendship with Helen Burns as Jane experiences and processes the loss of her friendship with Helen.
Many times, the 19th century female bildungsroman can be interpreted that the heroine's growth of self and education comes in the prospective context of marriage, especially when, in the context of 19th century womanhood, a wife experiences new knowledge in the private sphere of her role. Jane develops knowledge and experience regarding a romantic journey before her almost marriage to Mr. Rochester, a physical, spiritual, and financial knowledge during her time with St. John, and lastly, with her marriage with Mr. Rochester at the end of the novel.[50] Jane's search of excitement and understanding life goes beyond her romantic journey.[51] In the text, Jane's childhood beliefs about religion, as seen in her interactions with Mr. Brocklehurt, shifts considerably in comparison to her friendship with Helen in Lowood as a child and in her martial and missionary reject to St. John as an adult woman.
