Charlotte Bronte's Use Of Sexism In Jane Eyre

Greek mythology has always been my favorite of all myths. Ever since I was a teenager I always had an interest in learning these stories. For this paper, I selected one of my favorite Greek heroes, Heracles. I grew up watching the stories of Heracles’s adventures on TV, and it has always fascinated me. Heracles, also known as Hercules, was a demigod; son of the mighty god Zeus and a mortal woman. He possesses an incredible strength that no other mortal on Earth have ever had. However, the same way as most of the Greek gods and demigods of the Olympus, Heracles is anthropomorphic. He speaks and acts the same way as us, humans, do. Some of the heroic qualities that Heracles possesses are bravery, strength, skillfulness, and humbleness. He does not act or do things for others with the purpose of obtaining fame. This research paper is an analysis based on the life of Heracles, its personality, labors, and death. In the process, I will be evaluating his acts and comparing them to those of human beings and gods.

The Victorian Era encompassed a time of great discrepancy between the sexes, especially for women. The polarization of gender roles reflected on a basis of gender sexuality where men and women were granted certain advantages and disadvantages. Women were expected to realize a specific position in society based on morals of submission, passivity, and a complete lack of selfishness and independence. Constrictive notions such as these prevent individual expression and expansion. Therefore, while struggling to fill the pre-conceived expectancies of society, one forces true desires and happiness to pass as a scant priority. Charlotte Brontë's Victorian novel, Jane Eyre, explores the significance of individual fulfillment in an oppressive

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has been a widely discussed and analyzed work of Victorian literature since its publication in 1847. High school students to highly-educated scholars have read and interpreted the immeasurable breadth of this novel’s effect on society. This bildungsroman work has been analyzed through a multitude of literary lenses, each lens giving readers a different view on the plot, as well as Brontë’s motivations behind her writing. One such lens is the Socio-Historic Critical Lens, which indicates that if one is to understand a text, they must first understand the society in which it was written.

Women who had no claim to wealth or beauty received the harshest of realities in America’s Victorian era. Author Charlotte Bronte – from America’s Victorian era – examines and follows the life of a girl born into these conditions in her gothic novel Jane Eyre (of which the main character’s name

Vanden Bossche identifies Charlotte Brontë’s utilization of Jane Eyre as a vessel for spreading revolutionary ideas about equality, both supporting and creating new ideology in response to the social expectations of the Victorian era. These ideas tend to fall in accordance with Marxist values, which stress the negative impact of a hierarchal social structure on lower class or marginalized groups (Brizee). Vanden Bossche, in turn, relates the common critical

Throughout Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë uses the character Jane as a tool to comment on the oppression that women were forced to endure at the time. Jane can be seen as representative of the women who suffered from repression during the Victorian period, a time when patriarchy was commonplace. Brontë herself was affected by the time period, because according to Wolfe, she was deprived “experience and intercourse and travel.” (70) Thus Jane offers a unique perspective as a woman who is both keenly aware of her position and yet trapped by it despite repeated attempts to elevate herself and escape the burden placed on by her different suitors. Although superficially it seems that Jane wants to break away from the relationships that further

Deciding to leave Rochester provides Jane with a basis to mature and achieve financial and social independence, only then is she able to return to him and enter marriage as his intellectual and social equal. Encompassing the entirety of “Jane Eyre” is Brontë's unshakable standpoint regarding gender equality; the injustices experienced by Jane a clear reflection of her own life as a woman in the Victorian era. Jane accentuates Brontë's view that stripped of “custom, conventionalities [and] mortal flesh” women and men are at their very core equals; intellectually, emotionally and socially. Physical differences within “mortal flesh” are not a valid basis for condemning women to be second class citizens or servants, and the ensnaring “farce” of traditional Victorian marriage further implicates women as inferior, controllable and despondent. Brontë's strong social activist concepts are manifested within Jane's thoughts and words, and the accountable injustices become palpable for the reader; instilling a sense of compassion toward Jane and the wider scope of oppressed women in society who desire expression and independence.

People have many different takes on various aspects of the book Jane Eyre. In Chris Lewis’s “Separate Spheres and Women’s Status in 19th Century England,” and Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre,” are completely different types of literature. Lewis’s piece of work is a lecture on the restriction of female life in the late 18th to the early 19th century. Charlotte Bronte’s work was a gothic novel written to show that women are able to do as much as men can do, and maybe do even better. Both pieces of literature come together through the ideal of feminism.

This extract from Jane Eyre sees Brontë, in one sense, overturning the gender and social constructions of the mid-Nineteenth century. However, overwhelming, she reinforces that Rochester and Jane’s relationship is one of insurpassable inequality. Jane’s Confirming her view of female independence earlier in Chapter 12, ‘It is thoughtless to condemn [women] […] if they seek to do more or learn more,’ (Jane Eyre, p.95) Jane rises above the constraints of her status as a ‘poor, obscure, plain and little,’ woman, through her retort towards Rochester, where she condemns him, who is superior to her societally, for his behaviour towards her.

Bronte’s feminist ideas radiated throughout her novel Jane Eyre. There were many strong and clear examples of these ideas in Bronte’s protagonist, Jane, her personality, actions, thoughts and beliefs. From the beginning of the book, Jane’s strong personality and her lack of following social expectations were quiet clear. “Women of the Victorian era were not part of a man’s world, as they were considered below them.”(VanTassel-Baska, 4) The class divisions between a man and a woman were very distinctive. Jane however ignored this. When Jane first met Rochester, the whole scene presented a feminist portrait of Jane. A women walking alone in that era should never address a man, but Jane went out of her way to help Rochester stating that “if you are hurt, I can help” (Bronte, 98), Jane even let him place a hand on her shoulder. Jane believed that “women were supposed to be very calm generally, but women felt just as men felt” (Bronte, 116), which showed her perseverance and persistence in being independent and proving that men should be equal to that of women. This was of

Charlotte Bronte created one of the first feminist novels--Jane Eyre--of her time period when she created the unique and feminist female heroine, Jane Eyre. Throughout the novel, Jane becomes stronger as she speaks out against antagonists. She presses to find happiness whether she is single or married and disregards society’s rules. The novel begins as Jane is a small, orphan child living with her aunt and cousins due to the death of her parents and her uncle. Jane 's aunt--Mrs. Reed--degrades her as she favors her biological children. Jane 's aunt--Mrs. Reed--degrades her as she favors her biological children. Her cousin--John Reed--hits her and then Mrs. Reed chooses to punish her instead and sends her to the room in which her uncle

Women in the Victorian era were supposed to be passive, pure, and idle; were not to be well educated; and were expected to marry.  Throughout Brontë's novel, Jane Eyre learns the realities of these social expectations and directly and indirectly speaks against them.

Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre embraces many feminist views in opposition to the Victorian feminine ideal. Charlotte Bronte herself was among the first feminist writers of her time, and wrote this book in order to send the message of feminism to a Victorian-Age Society in which women were looked upon as inferior and repressed by the society in which they lived. This novel embodies the ideology of equality between a man and woman in marriage, as well as in society at large. As a feminist writer, Charlotte Bronte created this novel to support and spread the idea of an independent woman who works for herself, thinks for herself, and acts of her own accord.

Great feminist writers, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Betty Friedan, have been openly outspoken against misogyny in their societies. Charlotte Bronte, a prisoner of the strict and proper Victorian society, speaks out against gender inequality in a subtle manner, as her environment limits her voice. Bronte illuminates the misogynistic and sexist attitudes of the Victorian era in Jane Eyre through the relationships between the protagonist, Jane, and the male characters in the book, through the treatment of madwoman Bertha Mason, and through the inner monologue of Jane herself.

In the society in which Jane lives, men are believed to be superior to women in any circumstance. Mr. Brocklehurst declares, "I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart" (28). During Jane’s early years, she is constantly surrounded by male figures such as John Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst,who always belittle her and assure she remains in a submissive position. When Jane answers to Mr. Brocklehurst that she does not like the book of Psalms, he compares her to his son. He makes it very apparent that his son is better than Jane due to his love of Psalms, and also expresses his belief that Jane obtains a wicked heart. The situation in which Jane experiences the immediate comparison to Mr. Brocklehurst’s son prompts her to realize that she will always remain less than any man, despite the situation. Later on in the novel Jane expresses, “Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts just as their brothers do..." (108). In this section of the text from the novel, Jane expresses her frustration on the fact that women are constantly pushed into situations where their predominant worries are based on simple things such as cooking, knitting and cleaning. She believes that women have a right to express their feelings just as much as men do.