The theme of home and family in Jane Eyre

Without any living family that she is aware of, throughout the course of the novel Jane searches for a place that she can call home. Home is depicted not just as a place where you live but somewhere you feel safe but, also have relationships and understanding with the people you live with.

 Significantly, houses play a prominent part in the story.  The novel's opening finds Jane living at Gateshead Hall, but this is hardly a home. At Gateshead, she feels ostracized and exiled; Mrs. Reed and her children refuse to acknowledge her as a relation, treating her instead as an unwanted intruder and an inferior. Afraid that she will never find a true sense of home or community, Jane feels the need to belong somewhere, to find “kin,” or at least “kindred spirits.”

Shunted off to Lowood Institution, a boarding school for orphans and destitute children, Jane finds a home of sorts, although her place here is ambiguous and temporary. In Helen Burns, Jane finds the “kindred spirit” that Jane was in search of however, their friendship is short-lived. The school's manager, Mr.Brocklehurst, treats it more as a business than as school and Miss Temple is the only teacher that Jane feels connected to. Mr Brocklehurst’s emphases on 

discipline and on spartan conditions at the expense of the girls’

health make it the antithesis of the ideal home.

According to George P.Landow, the setting of Thornfield is much more personal than the two preceding settings at Gateshead and Lowood because of the connection Jane makes to Rochester and the connection Rochester has to Thornfield.  Anticipating the worst when she arrives, she is relieved when she is made to feel welcome by Mrs. Fairfax. Jane felt as though Thornfield was not alive unless Rochester was presentwhich is strongly connected to how Jane felt lonely and down because when he was not there. This connection between character and setting reflects the complex mood of Thornfield depending on whether Rochester is there or not. When he is away , the mood is somber and desolate to depict the longing that Jane has for Rochester and the loneliness she feels in the huge, empty house. When he is present, the mood changes to exciting and intimate because of the strong feelings that Jane has toward him and the liveliness that she associates with the house. This shows that it is not just the place but, the people that reside in it that make a place feel like a home.  However, the revelation — as they are literally on the verge of marriage — that he is already legally married — brings her dream of home crashing down.

                                                     
Fleeing Thornfield, she literally becomes homeless and is reduced to begging for food and shelter. The opportunity of having a home presents itself when she enters Moor House, where the Rivers sisters and their brother, the Reverend St. John Rivers, are mourning the death of their father. We see that when the housekeeper at first shuts the door in her face, Jane has a dreadful feeling that "that anchor of home was gone. She soon speaks of Diana and Mary Rivers as her own sisters, and is overjoyed when she learns that they are indeed her cousins. She tells St. John Rivers that learning that she has living relations is far more important than inheriting twenty thousand pounds. However, St. John Rivers' offer of marriage cannot sever her emotional attachment to Rochester. The last chapter begins with the famous simple declarative sentence, "Reader, I married him,”. Jane Eyre can be seen as the quest of an orphan girl for a home and in the end, she finds a place of belonging, her family and a home.