Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte was written in the Gothic romance literary movement. The novel is in the tradition of a Gothic romance novel because of the weird occurrences that happen at Mr. Rochester’s house. The primary aim of a Gothic novel is to trace terror by manipulating mystery and a mixture of other horrors. It usually consists of a “Byronic hero” with his melodramatic past, the mad wife locked up in an attic, and various supernatural forces working.

In Jane Eyre, Edward Rochester is the Byronic hero with a surreptitious past. He is a proud mad who is temperamental and contemptuous. Mr. Rochester has defiance on his brow and agony in his heart yet he is capable of affection and warmth. After meeting Mr. Rochester for the first time, Jane Eyre noticed his “dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow.” In the end, he turns out to be a man with a horrendous past. His immoral life in Paris only adds to the mystery and revulsion of the audience.

     The lunatic wife in Jane Eyre is Bertha Rochester, a woman who Mr. Rochester was forced to marry. Bertha is locked in the attic of the manor and the peculiar sounds she makes at night plays a part in creating an atmosphere of suspense in the novel. Although Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre does not have any monsters or ghosts, her novel is a type of Gothic romance created through the use of poetic symbolism in the novel. She manages to make the deliberately Gothic romance novel more than a typecast.