Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Representation Of Women In Literature
Gender's role in literature
The character of Jane Eyre
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Jane Eyre Social Criticism Lens Jane Eyre truly captures the elements that made up the Victorian Era: oppression and social constraint based on social norms at the time. The novel appreciates women and puts them in a light where they have rarely been seen in. Instead of keeping the protagonist restrained to the home, the author Charlotte Bronte, allowed Jane to be free and search for her true identity, which was considered a stray from the social customs of the Era. Furthermore, Bronte uses the novel to criticize the hypocrisy and inequality that existed during this time period through different characters and experiences. Through the social criticism lens, Jane Eyre was created as an unorthodox display against marriage, religion, and gender …show more content…
Bronte uses the characters in the book to depict the hypocrisy that resided within the Era in terms of how one uses religion. She is able to criticize it based on characters such as Mr. Brocklehurst and St. John Rivers. Mr. Brocklehurst was the head of a religious charity school for orphans. He tells the girls at the school that they must wear plain clothing so they can learn about self-denial, hardiness, and patience, and punishes them if they do not do so. But, his daughters were “splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs. The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses” (119). His daughters are over-indulging because of their wealth and he allows them to do so. He does not practice what he preaches to the girls at the school. In addition, St. John River’s contradicts himself through his missionary zeal and devout Christianity. When St. John asks Jane to marry him she says no, and in response he states “You shall be mine: I claim you—not for my pleasure, but for my sovereign’s service” (771). Essentially St. John sees her rationally and not passionately, he thinks that she was made for work and not pleasure. The problem with this is that in the Christian religion, marriage is the sacred, holy and consisted of love. In St. John’s situation, he made it clear that he was not going to marriage her for love, but work. Through St. John and Mr. Brocklehurst, Bronte criticizes two different but both contradicting views on
Jane is exposed to different kinds of religion as the novel goes on. Bronte exposes a great deal of characterization in Jane as she is forced to decide between conforming to the religions of her peers or staying true to herself and discovering the faith that is right for her. She must decide between the evangelical overlook of a harsh Christian society, represented by Mr. Brocklehurst, the idea of passion before principle, represented by Mr. Rochester, and the idea ...
In the novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte uses Jane Eyre as her base to find out how a character confronts the demands of a private passion that conflicts with her responsibilities. . Mistreated abused and deprived of a normal childhood, Jane Eyre creates an enemy early in her childhood with her Aunt Mrs. Reed. Just as Mrs. Reeds life is coming to an end, she writes to Jane asking her for forgiveness, and one last visit from her.
Following the Moral Compass in Jane Eyre Jane Eyre is the perfect novel about maturing: a child who is treated cruelly, holds herself together and learns to steer her life forward with a driving conscience that keeps her life within personally felt moral bounds. I found Jane as a child to be quite adult-like: she battles it out conversationally with Mrs. Reed on an adult level right from the beginning of the book. The hardships of her childhood made her extreme need for moral correctness believable. For instance, knowing her righteous stubbornness as a child, we can believe that she would later leave Rochester altogether rather than living a life of love and luxury simply by overlooking a legal technicality concerning her previous marriage to a mad woman. Her childhood and her adult life are harmonious, which gives the reader the sense of a complete and believable character. Actually, well into this book I  I was reminded of a friend's comment a few years back to "avoid the Brontes like the plague.
Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Brontë, was published in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Company, in London. This year is exactly ten years into Queen Victoria’s sixty-four year reign of the British Empire. The Victorian Era was renowned for its patriarchal Society and definition by class. These two things provide vital background to the novel, as Jane suffers from both. Jane Eyre relates in some ways to Brontë’s own life, as its original title suggest, “Jane Eyre: An Autobiography”. Charlotte Brontë would have suffered from too, as a relatively poor woman. She would have been treated lowly within the community. In fact, the book itself was published under a pseudonym of Currer Bell, the initials taken from Brontë’s own name, due to the fact that a book published by a woman was seen as inferior, as they were deemed intellectually substandard to men. Emily Brontë, Charlotte’s sister, was also forced to publish her most famous novel, Wuthering Heights, under the nom de plume of Ellis Bell, again taking the initials of her name to form her own alias. The novel is a political touchstone to illustrate the period in which it was written, and also acts as a critique of the Victorian patriarchal society.
Jane Eyre’s continuous search for love, a sense of belonging, and family are all thoroughly displayed by Charlotte Brontë. Jane starts off as a despised orphan who is captivated by the thought of love, believing that it will help her achieve happiness. Throughout the novel, Jane attempts to find different substitutes to fill the void in her life.
From the very moment of his introduction to the narrative of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë surrounds Mr. Rochester in a cloud of mystery. It takes months for Jane to break through Rochester’s surface, and even when she thinks she understands the man behind the mystery, Rochester’s shocking secret plunges Jane even deeper into his hidden life. Mr. Rochester’s secret, his insane wife Bertha, keeps him in the shadows, as her existence threatens his status among his peers and the reputation of his whole family. Mr. Rochester’s secrets control his entire life and control every action he takes, from the way he interacts with Jane, to the show he puts on for the other elites; Rochester’s mystery is not a choice, but rather a means of survival in his world. Rochester is a man of many secrets, and although he keeps them for his own good, they often become very harmful to all involved with him.
In the nineteenth century, the role of charity was portrayed differently by many individuals depending on what religion they followed. On one hand, many people felt obligated to help the unfortunate to comply with religious responsibility and to become better individuals. On the other hand, Others, felt that the misfortunes of the poor weren’t their responsibility. The different concepts of charity can be viewed in Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre, as she reveals to us the various experiences Jane underwent as an orphan. Many of the instances that Bronte mentions in her novel are references to some of the incidents she encountered in her school years. To know why charity was significantly one of Bronte’s main focuses in the novel, we will look at the conceptions that the Anglicans and other Christian groups had of charity in the nineteenth century, as well as a history of Bronte’s familial background.
Bronte wrote Jane Eyre to emphasize her beliefs behind the purpose of women, and how society lacked to understand them as who they were created to be. The issue of lack of opportunity for women to engage in intellectual preparation and continuation is prevalent within the character of Jane. Expectation of women’s role was a social norm, with a lack of diversity or individuality. Bronte challenges this issue through the character of Jane, whom experiences a tug-of-war sensation between being herself, who she wants to be and should be, and what society wants her to be, and pushes her to be. Bronte was trying to explain that women have the same capability as men to be productive individuals of society, but they are held back from establishing their potential. The most unique understanding of Bronte’s challenge to society is the understanding that the characteristics and personality of Jane as a female is shamed and criticized, however these features are identical to those of a successful and representable man in
Jane Eyre is not only a fictionalized version of her own creator and the epitome of the mankind . here in this novel charlotte Bronte has to encounter and go through some harsh time . here she had to face some kind of changes , the history of age shaped their thinking and personal lives . which she tries to show in her novel Jane Eyre . though Jane Eyre written during the Victorian period time where feminism topic is the most important issue which is to be taken in to consideration .
Bronte is known as one of the first revolutionary and challenging authoress’ with her text Jane Eyre. The society of her time was male dominated, women were marginally cast aside and treated as trophies for their male counterparts. Their main role in life was to be a mother and a wife, “ Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life……the more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it.” A quote from a letter Robert Southey wrote to Bronte. A clear sign of the mentality and opposition Bronte was up against. A woman’s “proper duties” of course being to tend and wait on her “master’s” every whim and need. Women during Bronte’s time had no clear voice, none that was of any merit, they were a silent category of society, silenced by their male oppressors. Bronte’s book was in fact written before the first women’s rights movement had happened, yet it puts forward an image of an independent strong character, of a passionate and almost rebellious nature. A character “refusing subservience, disagreeing with her superiors, standing up for her right’s, and venturing creative thoughts.” I put forward that Bronte throughout her text not only revises the themes of male power and oppression, but reconstructs them also. The text is a female bildungsroman of it’s time, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly tackling the patriarchal view of women.
Jane Eyre is a novel, written in the Victorian era by the author Charlotte Bronte. Bronte uses different setting in order to show what the characters are feeling. The setting is often a reflection of human emotion. The setting also foreshadows certain events that are going to occur.
Jane Eyre: Feminism in a Victorian and Christian Society Charlotte Bronte’s influential and well-studied novel Jane Eyre has been a successful piece of literature throughout the world and is considered a message of radical spiritual autonomy for women. It has been deeply analyzed for over a century as it exemplified the challenges and struggles faced by an English girl as she grew into a woman, and demonstrated her will to defy the standards set against her. The novel can be viewed from an array of critical lenses, most commonly a feminist view. As discussed in this novel, Jane Eyre allows readers to fully understand the themes being portrayed. From this view, readers specifically saw how the novel discussed gender roles in society, specifically, a Victorian society, the struggle between a woman’s faith and
Although, due to the time this novel was written and published the decision of whether or not it fully represents feminism is argued from both sides. The reason why the novel is not considered feminist literature by some individuals is due to the differences between feminism in the Victorian Era compared to modern feminist viewpoints. In the novel Jane Eyre there are multiple examples of feminism and social influences that affected women during that era, and as a result Charlotte Brontë incorporated them in the novel to provide
Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre, is set in a Victorian England, where social class is a huge factor in life. Brontë is very critical of Victorian England’s strict hierarchy. the main character, Jane, is a governess. Her social position is very complicated in which she has to be sophisticated, educated, intelligent, and soft spoken but she is then talked down to as she is of a lower class. The job of a governess is to teach children, whether it be art, writing or reading english literature. Victorian society is very corrupt and in the novel Brontë truly captures and illustrates the challenges that Jane has to face as a governess. The novel also emphasizes the social gap between individuals and how big it really is. In Victorian society, the rich get the most out of life and life for the poor gets harder. No individual should judge or belittle another due to the very minor factor of social status, but it seems to be very important in Jane’s society. The message that Brontë expresses in the novel is that social class is a meaningless catalyst in the progression of relationships, creating giant gaps between individuals.
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre represents the role of women in the Victorian era by giving the reader an insight into the lives of women from all social classes. Jane Eyre therefore represents figures of the Victorian time yet the character of Jane Eyre, herself, can be seen as very unconventional for the Victorian society.