In the words of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It the life in your years.” It doesn’t matter how long you live or how rich you are; what matters is whether or not you really lived. In the graphic novel version of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Jane learns what it means to live, not for her family, her friends, her beloved; she learns to live for herself, to stand up for herself, to be herself. The ever present tragic tone of the novel propels Jane Eyre, the story’s namesake protagonist, to explore both herself and the world to develop herself from the broken and abused orphan she was to the strong and persistent woman she became.
In the first section of the novel, an overall vengeful mood pervades. Jane is characterized as an abused little girl with a lot fight still in her system, showing a consistent theme that one shouldn’t give up without a fight. The abuse and neglect that Jane faced as a child pushed her into a mental state of defense, where should
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Miss Eyre is shown spending the last moments of Helen’s life with her, showing off both a tender side to Jane and a theme of loss and death. The novel’s dreary setting is furthered with fog-borne pestilence and later Helen’s untimely death. The spring at Lowood was bleak as “[m]any girls, already smitten, went home only to die, [while] [s]ome died at the school, and were buried quietly” (35). Surrounding the young Jane Eyre was death and suffering; it was most certainly gloomy. For being so immature, losing classmates, especially your closest and only friend, would be rather difficult for Jane, giving credence to the theme of loss and death. Loss and death aren’t exactly the cheeriest of topics, so the gloomy nature of these chapters fits perfectly and gives insight to what Jane would be feeling. Overall, Jane Eyre’s loss of Helen matches and reinforces the mood of gloom