Fairy Tale Bildungsroman: Charlotte Brontë’s Deployment of Fairy Tale Tropes and Narrative Logic in Jane Eyre

Abstract

A study of the generic links between the bildungsroman and the fairy tale as the conventions of both are used and subverted in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. The dependence upon and rewriting of archetypal roles in the fairy tale and the novel is especially of interest, most importantly in the characterization of Jane and her narrative voice.