How Jane Eyre drew on The Pilgrim's Progress
A documented line of influence: Charlotte Brontë demonstrably engaged John Bunyan’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan · 1678
EnlightenmentThe influenced
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë · 1847
The Age of the NovelRelevance
8/10
On Jane Eyre’s page
- Jane Eyre is a pilgrimage in disguise — Jane's trials and temptations follow the road Bunyan laid down, only the salvation she's after is earthly
- Brontë names Bunyan and makes Jane his reader; the novel's architecture of testing and progress is The Pilgrim's Progress secularized
- Reading Bunyan first hands you the map Brontë is working from — the journey of the soul rewritten as the journey of a woman in the world
On The Pilgrim's Progress’s page
- The template Charlotte Brontë rebuilt as a worldly novel — Jane Eyre is a secularized pilgrimage, Bunyan's structure of trials and temptations recast as one woman's journey
- Brontë alludes to The Pilgrim's Progress across her novels; Jane is, in effect, Bunyan's reader, walking his road in nineteenth-century dress
- Read Bunyan first and Jane Eyre's shape declares itself: every flight, refuge, and ordeal is a stage on the pilgrim's way