Jane Eyre's chronology - the golden age of modern literature

There’s one 19th century book in Jane Eyre, Walter Scott’s long poem Marmion (1808), “a new publication” (Ch. 32, 326)*. It’s autumn; Jane is teaching in the country school. Autumn 1808.

Suddenly, for those paying attention, the entire chronology snaps into place. This is the first and only detail that allows a precise determination of the chronology of Jane Eyre. Jane, now 19 (that summer she was “almost 19”, Ch. 29, 305), was born in 1789. Chapter 1 takes place in the winter of 1800 when Jane is ten. The main action takes place from 1807 to 1809, at which point Jane is married.

Jane says she is writing the book ten years later (Ch. 38, 396), so that’s 1819, when she is 29 or 30. That’s also Charlotte Brontë’s age while writing Jane Eyre, although Jane is, of course, 27 years older than Brontë. Jane would be 58 or so at the time of Jane Eyre’s publication in 1847. Let’s save that idea.

Lest one think I’m putting too much weight on this slight detail, I’ll point out that just a few pages later, Brontë recapitulates Jane’s entire history, from the unlucky marriage of her parents forward, (Ch. 33, 334), in the novel’s second discovery scene (the first is on Jane’s first wedding day). This is St. John revealing all he knows for the benefit of both Jane and the reader who was not collecting the clues:

“Twenty years ago, a poor curate--never mind his name at this moment—fell in love with a rich man's daughter; she fell in love with him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in ---shire.) They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap--cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night.” And onward to the novel's present moment.

Seen their grave, have you, St. John? Odd bird. Anyway, Brontë knew just what she was doing. We're in good hands here.

So let's see - when Rochester is having his fling with the French actress, it is perhaps 1796, just after the terror and before Napoleon’s coup. When Rochester asks Jane to flee with him to the south of France, it is 1808, France and England have been at war for a decade, and the whole scheme seems extremely unlikely. Perhaps this tells us something about Rochester, that he’s not serious, or that he’s serious but unrealistic. Perhaps it is an error on Brontë’s part. Or perhaps the world of Jane Eyre is different than the historical world on a few key points. That, I think, I’ll save for tomorrow.

* Marmion is “one of those genuine productions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate public of those days—the golden age of modern literature. Alas! the readers of our era are less favoured. But courage!” And so on, for quite a while. Weird passage. What on earth is Jane, or Charlotte, talking about?