The idea of governess extended until the nineteenth century. The Victorian women especially the Bronte sisters, Charlotte and Anne, experienced the occupation of a governess. Their impressions were negative because of the poor condition, bad treatment, and low wage of a governess during the Victorian era. According to Gilbert, Anne endured in the governess’s job for six years while Charlotte shortened it to two years. Charlotte wrote in a letter to her sister Emily, “I can now see more clearly than I have ever done before that a private governess has no existence, is not considered as a living and rational being, except as connected with the wearisome duties she has to fulfill”(qtd. in Heyck, 203). Charlotte transfers her negative views of …show more content…
Brocklehurst who is the headmaster of Lowood School keeps the girls hungry and cold. Also, he treats the girls very badly by punishing them. One of the problems that children from working and middle class face in schools, rather than the social distinction, is the physical punishment. In “Aspects of Neglect: The Strange Case of Victorian Popular Education,” Harold Silver investigates about the “corporal punishment” that is used in English schools. In his research, he claims “historians have assumed that physical punishment was the rule in the elementary schoolـــbecause it was the rule in the grammar and public school”(63). He argues that there is no accurate statistic about how much the physical punishment is used in poor and middle schools. Teachers in the English schools thought that the corporal punishment was a useful way to educate and instruct children. According to Victorian Children, teachers used several kinds of punishment for students who were lazy or naughty in classrooms by beating the boys by canes on their backsides while they punished girls on hands or legs. Teachers also punished students who were slow at their lessons by wearing the ashamed dance’s hat and sitting in a corner for an …show more content…
Through Jane Eyre, Charlotte shows the reality of a governess’s job that makes a governess’s life miserable. However, the Bronte sisters started to establish their own private school in order to provide a good environment and formal education for girls. Unfortunately, their project failed because they had no financial or governmental support that might help them to run their school. After that, all the Bronte sisters, as well as Jane Austen, transfers all their efforts in writing literary works that criticized several issues, especially the educational system of England. These literary works help to show British people’s suffering from class distinction, especially females who become inferior and have unequal positions in English society in the eighteenth century. This leads some political party to perform an act that supports the idea of equality between classes and males and females, especially in
Jane Eyre is about a girl named Jane who struggles to find who she really is and with it what she really wants. “As a model for women readers in the Victorian period and throughout the twentieth century to follow, Jane Eyre encouraged them to make their own choices in living their lives, to develop respect for themselves, and to become individuals” (Markley). One of the reasons why this book gained merit was because of its striking presence within its time period. During the “Victorian Age” woman did not have much say in society, so this novel broke boundaries to societal norms that restricted woman from things they have today. “Brontë is able to enact this tension through her characters and thus show dramatically the journey of a woman striving for balance within her nature.
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.
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.
...isted of many roles, but mostly consisted of the governess teaching her students to become adequate adults. Nevertheless, a governess must face many challenges and hardships. Through Jane Eyre's experiences as a governess, readers are able to gain a sense of what it is like to be a governess. Even though it seems that Jane has it easy in some ways there are many realistic things that happen to her that makes her experience similar to experiences of traditional governesses. In many aspects Jane Eyre is the embodiment of a Victorian governess. However, her strong-willed, independent, and assertive qualities seem to make her an exception to the ordinary governess as well, which clearly undermines what most governesses had to endure. Bronte does involve some realities of domestic service in the 19th century but more of Jane’s story has things that were very unrealistic.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is a novel about a woman, Jane, moving from place to place on a path to find her own feeling of independence. Throughout her journey, Jane encounters many obstacles to her intelligence. Male dominance proves to be the biggest obstruction at each stop of Jane's journey. As Jane progressed through the novel her emotional growth was primarily supported by the people and the places she was around. This examination will look for textual support from different sections of Jane Eyre to review how Jane had grown emotionally and intellectually as she moved from location to location, as well as looking at critical analysis from Bronte critics as to how each location plays a role in Jane’s progression.
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.
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.
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
Tremendous spirit. The enviable trait that Jane Eyre from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre possesses is what stimulates her to achieve self-actualization despite the fact that she is a woman. True feminism isn’t as violent as a handful of vicious extremists claim it to be. The accurate definition of feminism is “the doctrine advocating women’s social, political, civil, educational and all other rights as equal to those of men.” Women of Charlotte Bronte’s era did not have basic rights such as the aforementioned. The feminist movement in the Victorian Era had only just begun and Jane Eyre was far ahead of her peers. Published in 1847, the bildungsroman novel of Jane Eyre was an intricate one, with subtle feminism carefully woven in it, particularly through the actions and thoughts of Jane Eyre, the protagonist. Her quest for self-worth and identity lead her to overcome the various stigmas that women in that era were faced with. These ambiguities reflect the tensions real Victorian women of faith experienced in trying to meet multiple often conflicting demands in their lives. Such challenges were complicated further by the fact that 19th century Evangelical Christianity- attentive to the realities of sin, sorrow, sacrifice, and loss- was no easy creed for women and men. (Lamonaca) Jane Eyre’s battles for authentic love, good reputation and indifferent attitude towards social classes dominated English women’s lives. The heroine tackles gender roles and breaks all the mannerisms of the time to inject an early dose of feminism in the English audience. Jane’s transformation from naïve child to independent woman stunned the public and gave women the inspiration to make their own decisions and defy the norms of their era.
The development of Charlotte Bronte's character, Jane Eyre, becomes vital to her novel Jane Eyre, and the other characters in which she is involved. She is an intelligent, plain featured, honest young girl whose reaction to her situations brings more depth to her personality. She is forced to deal with oppression, discrimination, and at times poverty, which disrupt her strong will, dignity, and desire for freedom. At the beginning, Jane possesses a passion for pride and the idea of freedom and these characteristics, along with her integrity, are tested continuously throughout the novel by the many personalities with whom she encounters. Living in a male dominant world Jane is expected to remain obedient and docile and her passion sometimes keeps her from being able to do this. She is a rarity among obeying female characters and we see this throughout the book.
Jane’s education at Lowood provides a foundation for her rise through the ranks of society and alters the predetermined course of action for Victorian women. Consequently, Jane is raised among a class higher than her own with the Reeds’, and although they are family, they make sure Jane understands her social position is not on the same level. Ironically, Jane is afforded the ability to go to a private school at Lowood and receive an upper class education. “Gendered performances become acts that are increasingly tied to material wealth, and the text suggests that only the middle and upper classes can afford the costly performance of gender” (Godfrey,...
Charlotte Bronte assumed the role of intermediary between her late sister and the perplexed and hostile readers of Wuthering Heights (Sale and Dunn, WH p. 267). Charlotte attempted to provide Emily’s readers with a more complete perspective of her sister and her works. She selectively included biographical information and critical commentary into the revised 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights, which gave the reader a fuller appreciation of the works of Emily Bronte. Charlotte championed the efforts of her younger sister and believed that Emily’s inexperience and unpracticed hand were her only shortcomings. Charlotte explains much of Emily’s character to the readers through the disclosure of biographical information.
In Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre, the author juxtaposes the representations of femininity of Bertha Mason and the title character to champion Bronte’s ideal conceptualization of independent women.
As citizens of the United States, and as people living under a democracy, the government has certain responsibilities to us. We are guaranteed union, justice, tranquility, defense, welfare, and liberty. These rights are all very important to the well being of our country and the states that exist in it. I feel that there are three that are a little more important than the others.