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Similarities
- Gothic themes- female oppression, dark foreboding houses, Byronic male love interests, a dark secret concerning a past wife that forms the plot twist, supernatural allegory/ideas/metaphor
- Protagonists start out young and naïve- in comparison Rochester and Maxim are old, experienced, cynical and harbour dark secrets
- Poor reception. Rebecca regarded as 'glossy brand of entertaining nonsense'; Jane Eyre regarded as immoral, anti-Christian and Chartist
- Thornfield and Manderley both burn down at the end of their respective novels, and this is treated as emotional catharsis
- Rebecca and Bertha Mason are both 'immoral' archetypes of women; strong, sexualised, free from society's dogma
- Social differences create conflict in love: heavy class and age divide, female oppression in society
- Both produced by female authors who weren't very well-respected; Bronte, like her sisters, used the pseudonym Currer Bell before it was revealed who the true author was
- Sex is not a theme in either novel. It's sometimes subtly implied, mostly through the actions of Bertha and Rebecca, but neither Jane nor the Protagonist make any direct mention to it
- Flora/fauna symbolism. Birds are used for Jane and Rochester falls from his horse. In Rebecca, the Protagonist has a rose-garden and Rebecca is symbolised by rhododendrons and azaleas
- Marriage is a way of circumventing social mobility- working-class Protagonist suddenly finds herself mistress of Manderley, and Rochester insists on decking Jane out in pearls and gold and jewellery during their first marriage
- Both protagonists are orphaned and impoverished
- For both Maxim and Rochester, divorce is impossible. It presents a huge social shame and a difficulty
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Differences
- Jane Eyre follows Jane's life for much longer- from her childhood at Gateshead to her parentage. Rebecca in comparison looks at the protagonist from young adulthood to adulthood
- Jane Eyre is a more intentionally Gothic novel as well as a Bildungsroman; Rebecca is a psychoanalytic 'study in jealousy' that uses Gothic tropes
- Jane acts on morals when she discovers what Rochester did with Bertha; the Protagonist, when she finds Maxim killed Rebecca, decidedly doesn't
- Sympathy is invited for Jane- however, the Protagonist may be more of an unreliable narrator
- Context of production: Jane Eyre is in accordance with a lot of Romantic Period tropes (for example, the treatment of St. John's ascetic religion) but Rebecca is not very well in keeping with High Modernism of the 1930s- save for similarities to stream-of-consciousness narration, it's more traditional than experimental
- The treatment of Maxim and Rochester; Rochester is redeemed as he loses his hand and eye, and Maxim is arguably not redeemed but punished as he loses Manderley
- Bertha, Rebecca and suicide. Bertha's is a plot device, arguably a Deus Ex Machina that conveniently gets rid of her for the novel's conclusion; Rebecca's suicide through Maxim conversely is used for a lot of the secrecy and deception in the plot
- Jane Eyre has strong religious production. Some aspects of religion in Rebecca are referred to, but not nearly as much
- Rebecca has a cyclical narrative, whereas Jane Eyre is in chronological order
- Historical context: Jane Eyre was published in 1847 and Rebecca in 1938. Jane Eyre runs alongside events such as the Irish Potato Famine and the end of the Opium War in 1842. Rebecca is post-World War One, post-Roaring 20s, and is a couple of years after the Great Depression.
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