Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre - as illustrated by Paula Rego

One of the joys of reading a book is seeing what pictures your imagination will paint. And, of course, yours will be different to mine.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, is one of the earliest novels written from a child's perspective, and was originally published under the name Currer Bell. It is a story that conjures up both the bright and the dark.

When I first read it in my late twenties, Jane was a revelation to me. She's intelligent, witty, full of grit and with a determination to live her life regardless of both the challenges thrown at her personally and the restrictions placed on women in 19th century England generally. She would not suffer fools gladly and I loved her for it. She's a feminist icon, an anti-heroine even.

A fusion of landscapes

Writer Charlotte Brontë grew up in a small village called Haworth in West Yorkshire in the UK. It's a beautiful little place, full of contrasts.

You'll find cafe culture, festivals and plenty of bunting, as well as Yorkshire stone blackened by the smoke of the industrial revolution and often dark foreboding skies. Jane Eyre opens with the latter - 'There was no possibility of taking a walk that day… the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question.'

With its steep cobbled and narrow streets neighbouring vast moorland spaces, Brontë’s setting is at the same time claustrophobic and confining yet overwhelmingly open.

You can visit the family home at the Brontë Parsonage Museum - 'a historic, intimate space' - and then walk up onto the moor and smell the heather and watch the weather move in. You can experience both the openness and opportunity and the confinement and bleakness that made their way into Charlotte's works and those of her sisters, Emily and Anne.

This landscape infuses Charlotte Brontë's work and as a reader, we build a whole world of sights, sounds and smells, from her words. So it's fascinating when we get a glimpse into someone else's imaginary world and can look at how their interpretation is different to our own. Here’s a great example.

Paula Rego

Paula Rego was a Portuguese-British artist who produced artworks inspired by fairytale, storybooks and literature, often reflecting girlhood and feminism and her Portuguese heritage.

One set of lithographs, produced in 2002 and published in book form in 2004, gives us Jane Eyre from Paula's perspective.

'It all comes out of my head,' says Rego. 'All little girls improvise, and it's not just illustration: I make it my own.' And Rego's own Jane Eyre is a dark place. The world she conjures up is infused not just by Brontë's words but by Rego's own experiences.

'Rego has explored, in a myriad different sequences of pictures, the conditions of her own upbringing in Portugal, her formation as a girl and a woman, and the oscillation between stifling social expectations and liberating female stratagems,' says historian, writer and expert in feminism and fairytale Marina Warner. 'Rego reproduces the psychological drama in the book through distortions of scale, cruel expressiveness of gesture, and disturbingly stark contrasts of light and welling shadows.'

Rego's images were used by the UK's Royal Mail for stamps commemorating the 150th anniversary of the death of Charlotte Brontë in February 2005. At this time, the words like 'unorthodox' and 'anti-illustrations' started to be used about them (see Creative (mis)reading? Paula Rego’s Jane Eyre by Laurent Bury).

Had Rego somehow 'mis-read' the book? You decide...

Five illustrated moments from Jane Eyre

Let's look at some of Paula Rego's artworks and the passages they illustrate. We've taken the text from Jane Eyre via Project Gutenberg.

In the first chapter, an orphaned ten-year-old Jane Eyre hides herself away from her cruel aunt and bullying cousins.

A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet…

To remove her from her aunt’s home, Jane is sent away to Lowood School, run by the formidable and abusive Mr Brocklehurst. Here, Jane makes a friend in Helen Burns. One day, Burns is in trouble for not having cleaned her nails.

Burns immediately left the class, and [...] returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtsey; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns' eye...

At Lowood School, Mr Brocklehurst warns the other students against Jane, to whom he has taken a strong dislike.

"Fetch that stool," said Mr. Brocklehurst, pointing to a very high one from which a monitor had just risen: it was brought.

"Place the child upon it.' … "My dear children," pursued the black marble clergyman [...] You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse."

After eight years at Lowood (six as a student and two as a teacher), Jane takes up a role of governess at Thornfield Hall. One winter's day, she is out for a walk and helps a man whose horse has slipped on the ice. Later, she discovers this is Mr Rochester, owner of Thornfield Hall.

I could see him plainly. His figure was enveloped in a riding cloak, fur collared and steel clasped; its details were not apparent, but I traced the general points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past youth, but had not reached middle-age; perhaps he might be thirty-five. I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness.

Jane and the rest of the household staff prepare the house for Mr Rochester's return to Thornfield after a period of time away. He brings with him a party of ladies, gentlemen, maids and valets.

A joyous stir was now audible in the hall: gentlemen's deep tones and ladies' silvery accents blent harmoniously together… … Presently the chambers gave up their fair tenants one after another: each came out gaily and airily, with dress that gleamed lustrous through the dusk. For a moment they stood grouped together at the other extremity of the gallery, conversing in a key of sweet subdued vivacity: they then descended the staircase almost as noiselessly as a bright mist rolls down a hill. Their collective appearance had left on me an impression of high-born elegance, such as I had never before received.

What do you think? Do Paula Rego's illustrations match your own imaginings? Is her world of Jane Eyre darker than you thought?