Analyzing Adele Varens Through Sketches and Art

Adele Varens
age 7
(France)

I chose this image to represent Adele Varens at age 7 because the sketch is a portrait of a french bourgeois pre-teenage daughter painted in 1778. Adele would have been living in France around this time, and due to her mother profession, an opera singer, it seems highly likely that her attire would have been that of the middle class.

Adele Varens
age 14
(England)

I chose this painting to represent Adele Varens at age 14, because  high society english portrait artist, George Romney painted it in1787 of a young girl who shared Adele's situation. The woman, described as "Miss Constable" was almost certainly a member of the upper class in England; similarly to Adele, through her adoptive father Mr. Rochester. Additionally the woman, with her masses of curly hair and comely face, closely resembles how adele is described in the novel. Jane Eyre observes that Adele was "Quite a child... slightly built, with a pale, small featured face, and a redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist" (119).