Chapter 3 of Jane Eyre reveals the background of Jane Eyre, the protagonist and title character of the novel.  We learn of her social background and that of her parents, and how she was born.  Her father was a poor clergyman who married a richer woman in a higher social class.  This theme has been explored in various works of both classic and contemporary literature and art, and provides ma delightful and pleasant background to the main story.  It gives a witty nod to other works of the time that explored the higher-social-class woman and lower-social-class man romantic pairing.  This pairing reminds me of many other works:

• Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife puts Winnie, a girl with a rich father, with the greedy Wen Fu, who was poorer than Winnie's family.  It ends up a disaster.
• In the film What Happens in Vegas, starring Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz, the high-class woman is stuck with the lazy, poor, low-class man.  It brings this theme to the modern United States of America, where there are more subtle classes.
• In WALL-E, the main character, an old, ugly, garbage compressor named WALL-E, is romantically involved with a sleek, high-tech robot named Eve.
• The Japanese anime Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion explores this in a side story.  Ohgi meets Viletta while Viletta has selective amnesia and cannot remember her past.  It would have been fine, but Ohgi was a Number (an extremely low social class) while Viletta was a Baroness (an extremely high social class).  When Viletta regains her memory and realizes that she had engaged herself in a relationship with a Number, she is disgusted and abhors the relationship.  (spoiler alert!) However, she is still secretly in love, and eventually comes to accept love for what it is, marrying Ohgi in the epilogue.
• In Vergil's epic poem, the Aeneid, the main character, Aeneas, is the offspring of a mortal man and Venus, a goddess.
• In Harry Potter, Fleur Delacour is the offspring of an ordinary man and a mythological being, a Veela.

This pattern is prevalent in real life, and literature has explored this to reveal much about this type of relationship.  The opposite is also especially true.

-David M.

Jane Eyre vs. Tess

My first thoughts about choosing between these two novels were much less than ecstatic. Truthfully, as a guy, I was not to thrilled about picking between two books with female protagonists. I felt it would be hard to relate to either girl: how is it I can focus on a 400+ page novel that I am not really interested in what transformations the main character has. This bias/sextist view has been diminshed in my mind now that I have given it more clear thought and started reading the book "Jane Eyre". I have a newfound curiousity towards the book, for I realized that it is important to understand all parts of a lifestyle. Much like understanding both Democrats and Republicans, or multiple religions, I understand it is vital to know how someone who is totally different from me would deal with a certain situation. As I continue divulging into "Jane Eyre", I will read and study how she attacks and deals with her struggles and conflicts. It will only enhance my knowledge, learning about something totally new to me; therefore, making me a more complete individual.

Cameron Tagge