Jane Eyre in the Bluebeard’s Castle: The Folktale Plot in Ch. Brontë’s Novel

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to show how Ch. Brontë explores plots of popular folktales and includes them in the structure of her famous novel Jane Eyre in order to create a more stylistically accomplished text. The famous Bluebeard plot is shown to form the core of the Thornfield part of the story, yet Brontë creatively re-imagines the tale in order to provide a deeper analysis of her characters, distinguish her point of view from that of her narrator, and mock the contemporary readings of the tale, which concentrated primarily upon the falsehood of female curiosity and thus failed to reveal the meaning of the story. Refs 13.