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Presentation of women in victorian society in janes eyre by chalotte bronte
A literary analysis essay about jane eyre
The role of women in the Victorian era
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Although most readers of Jane Eyre are engaged and enthralled by the illusion of suspense surrounding the climax of the novel and its subsequent falling action, Charlotte Brontë has in fact already delivered a subtle clue concerning Jane’s situation following the conclusion of the novel’s events through her utilization of a first-person narrative and her experiential familiarity with nineteenth century Victorian society. During this era, women were relegated to domestic tasks and frivolous hobbies that meant to distract them from more satisfying aspirations such as authorship, as Jane desires. However, the existence of the novel Jane Eyre itself foreshadows Jane’s eventual achievement of the personal agency that enables her to explore creative and intellectual …show more content…
As an unwed governess in the Victorian era, Charlotte Brontë’s protagonist Jane Eyre experiences both personal psychological growth and socioeconomic advancement as she strives to preserve her identity, attain autonomy, and fulfill her desire for true intimacy in the context of the gender-restrictive Victorian culture. Jane’s childhood misconceptions concerning her identity and the path she envisions to realizing her desires are transformed as external forces threaten her fledgling sense of selfhood, which enable her to strengthen her resolve and confidently assert her identity. The childhood Jane suffers while trapped at Gateshead establishes her concept that servitude and emotional restraint are the only avenues available to her attainment of love. The opposition Jane promptly exhibits at this course of action unfolds when Jane attacks John Reed, a malicious cousin who stirs up trouble for Jane with his puerile behavior, in retaliation for the injustice she has tolerated at his hands. As the prejudiced maids transport Jane to the red-room to serve out her punishment, Jane resists their
In Stephen Dunn’s 2003 poem, “Charlotte Bronte in Leeds Point”, the famous author of Jane Eyre is placed into a modern setting of New Jersey. Although Charlotte Bronte lived in the early middle 1800’s, we find her alive and well in the present day in this poem. The poem connects itself to Bronte’s most popular novel, Jane Eyre in characters analysis and setting while speaking of common themes in the novel. Dunn also uses his poem to give Bronte’s writing purpose in modern day.
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.
After the death of Jane’s parents, her uncle Mr. Reed has taken her in with his family to a mansion called Gateshead Hall. Nine years after Jane uncle has past she has been trapped in Gateshead Hall while suffering the bitter treatment of her aunt Mrs. Reed. Mrs. Reed was resentful of her husband’s favoritism toward Jane and takes every opportunity to neglect and punish her. When Jane is punished by Mrs. Reed she would be sent to the red room by two of Mrs. Reed servants, Bessie and Miss Abbot. The red-room was “a spare chamber, it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion” and in this every same chamber is where Jane uncle past (8). Not only did Mrs. Reed treat disrespectfully but her own son, Jane’s older cousin John Reed. John Reed would abuse and punish Jane several times a day, in the words of Jane; “every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh on my bones shranked when he came near”(4). Everyone would ignore Jane’s plea for help especially Mrs. Reed who would act be blind and deaf on the subject. No one except for Mr. Reed show any love and care for Jane during her childhood in Gateshead Hall. Jane said “I was a discord in Gateshead Hall; I was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen vassalage” (10). Jane continued by saying that they did not love her not if as little she loved them. Although the family mistreats her, Jane still wished for the atte...
The three events that mark Jane as an evolving dynamic character are when she is locked in the red room, self reflecting on her time at Gateshead, her friendship with Helen Burns at LoWood, her relationship with Mr. Rochester, and her last moments with a sick Mrs. Reed. Brought up as an orphan by her widowed aunt, Mrs. Reed, Jane is accustomed to her aunts vindictive comments and selfish tendencies. Left out of family gatherings, shoved and hit by her cousin, John Reed, and teased by her other cousins, Georgina and Eliza Reed, the reader almost cringes at the unfairness of it all. But even at the young age of ten, Jane knows the consequences of her actions if she were to speak out against any of them. At one point she wonders why she endures in silence for the pleasure of others. Why she is oppressed. "Always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned" (Bronte, 12). Jane’s life at Gateshead is not far from miserable. Not only is she bullied by her cousins and nagged by her aunt, but help from even Bessie, her nurse and sort of friend, seems out of her reach. In the red room scene Jane is drug by Ms. Ab...
In Charlotte Bronte’s, Jane Eyre, Jane goes through numerous self-discoveries, herself-realization and discipline leads her to a life she chooses to make her happy. Jane Eyre has a rough life from the start. Forced to stay with people who despise her, Jane can only help herself. Jane must overcome the odds against her, which add to many. Jane is a woman with no voice, until she changes her destiny. The novel Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte consists of continuous journeys through Jane’s life towards her final happiness and freedom.
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre chronicles the growth of her titular character from girlhood to maturity, focusing on her journey from dependence on negative authority figures to both monetary and psychological independence, from confusion to a clear understanding of self, and from inequality to equality with those to whom she was formerly subject. Originally dependent on her Aunt Reed, Mr. Brocklehurst, and Mr. Rochester, she gains independence through her inheritance and teaching positions. Over the course of the novel, she awakens towards self-understanding, resulting in contentment and eventual happiness. She also achieves equality with the important masculine figures in her life, such as St. John Rivers and Mr. Rochester, gaining self-fulfillment as an independent, fully developed equal.
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.
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.
Charlotte Bronte includes this passage in order to draw parallels between Mr. Rochester and Jane. In the first passage, Jane thought Mr. Rochester didn’t want to marry her because of her social class and lack of wealth and beauty. In this passage, Mr. Rochester feels Jane likes St. John more than him because of his appearances. A common theme throughout the book as well as in this passage is jealousy drives passion. In the beginning of the book Mr. Rochester used Ms. Ingram in order to make Jane jealous. In this passage, Jane similarly makes Mr. Rochester jealous by explaining how St. John is handsome. Both, at the time, knowingly tempted the other by using someone else to spark jealousy and drive the other to deeper emotions. For example, Jane
Through chapters seventeen to twenty one, in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, a few new aristocrats are introduced as Mr. Rochester’s guests. Among these guests there is a significant character called Blanche Ingram. Jane is soon to find out about the relationship between Mr. Rochester and Miss Ingram, they are engaged.
Jane, the main character in this novel, is forced to contend with oppression, inequality, and hardship throughout her youth. Mrs. Reed’s son, John, abuses Jane for no good reason and Jane gets punished for defending herself for she cannot stand the injustice being done to her. Mrs. Reed then sends her off to Lowood and before Jane leaves, she tells her aunt that she will spread her bad reputation to anyone who asks her how her aunt treated her. This defense made by Jane proves that she cannot endure the injustice without fighting back and taking revenge. At 10 years old, Jane travels to Lowood to go to school. There, she meets Helen Burns, who becomes her best friend. When Mr. Brocklehurst announces to the whole school that Jane is a deceitful person and a liar, Jane cannot stand the unfairness being done to her. Helen calms her down by giving her advice that goes like this: “Jane says to Helen, ‘And if I were in your...
Similar to many of the great feministic novels of its time, Jane Eyre purely emerges as a story focused on the quest for love. The novel’s protagonist, Jane, searches not only for the romantic side of love, but ultimately for a sense of self-worth and independence. Set in the overlapping times of the Victorian and Gothic periods, the novel touches upon both women’s supposed rights, and their inner struggle for liberty. Orphaned at an early age, Jane was born into a modest lifestyle, without any major parent roles to guide her through life’s obstacles. Instead, she spent much of her adolescent years locked in imaginary chains, serving those around her but never enjoying the many decadences life has to offer. It is not until Jane becomes a governess that many minute privileges become available to her and offer Jane a glance at what life could have been. It is on her quest for redemption and discovery that she truly is liberated. Throughout Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel Jane Eyre, the story’s protagonist Jane, struggles to achieve the balance of both autonomy and love, without sacrificing herself in the process.
The struggle is apparent in the development of Charlotte Bronte’s character Jane Eyre. Jane is an orphan since childhood and continuously struggles to reach freedom from the alienation she experiences at a young age. The uncertainty of Jane’s social status is ...
While the main component of any story is the overall plot, an author can do a lot with their own personal technique, which can further employ a completely different level of understanding. Specifically, Charlotte Bronte’s work ‘Jane Eyre’, a early nineteenth century tale and possibly the first feminist based novel. In this, Bronte uses various techniques to further enhance this avid tale of lost love like; feministic qualities, characterization of the main leads and a gothic appeal of the literary work as a whole. Through using these literary techniques, Bronte changes the overall essence of the work and only further enhances the theme of lost love and the bitterness it can cause, for the reader and author. ‘Jane Eyre’ is a classical novel that many may refer to as a ‘chick-flick’, unknown to those people ‘Jane Eyre’ is
A Critical Evaluation of Jane Eyre Although Jane Eyre grows and matures, Margaret McFadden-Gerber views her as a relatively emotionally stable young feminist. Through the duration of the novel, Jane demonstrates her "self-love" that is often an influential emotion leading to drastic and hasty reactions. In the very opening few chapters, Jane takes a stand for herself and presents her bruised ego, pride and maturity. Sara Reed, her aunt, dismisses her place in the family as Jane is physically and emotionally removed from her "family's" activities.