How Jane Eyre drew on The Gospels
A documented line of influence: Charlotte Brontë demonstrably engaged Matthew’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Gospels
Matthew · c. 85
BibleThe influenced
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë · 1847
The Age of the NovelRelevance
6/10
On Jane Eyre’s page
- Jane Eyre quotes The Gospels more than any other book, and Matthew most of all — the Sermon on the Mount is its deepest scriptural current
- Brontë wrote as a clergyman's daughter, reworking Gospel teaching directly into Jane's conscience and choices
- Reading Matthew first lets you hear the source text humming under the novel's hardest moral turns
On The Gospels’s page
- Of all scripture, it is The Gospels — Matthew above all — that Brontë reaches for most in Jane Eyre
- The Sermon on the Mount runs as the deepest current beneath Jane's moral struggles, an Anglican clergyman's daughter writing with the Gospel in her bones
- Brontë doesn't just allude; she quotes and reworks Gospel passages directly into the narrative