Jane Eyre By Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre is a personal journey for independence and belonging in an extremely unpleasant society. Jane Eyre is very distinctive from other romantic pieces of the era, in the fact that it portrays a woman searching for equality and dignity through independence from those who treat her as a second hand citizen. Finding independence is Jane’s only way to combat the situation she is stuck in time and time again throughout her life. Throughout Jane Eyre, Jane, attempts to find independence and a sense of belonging, while also attempting to form open and equal relationships.

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

Jane Eyre’s life was full of oppression, neglect and sorrow. The novel was formed around a few main ideas. One of those would be the search of love and acceptance. Jane wanted to find a family so desperately and she wanted to belong to people. More than this though, Jane wanted to be treated equally. She was denied equality because of her social status, her income,her lack of “beauty” and most of all because of her gender. The book Jane Eyre shows the struggle that women face while attempting to overcome oppression and inequality in the Victorian era.

Following the experiences of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, expresses many elements of gothic literature throughout her novel Jane Eyre. In her perfect understanding of gothic literature, she expresses the three types of evil commonly found in gothic literature, including the evil of the supernatural, the evil within or the instinctual evil motives of humans, and lastly, the evil because of societal influence. Jane Eyre experiences all of these three evils with her aunt and three cousins with her residency and return to Gateshead: Jane encounters the supernatural and the evil of societal influence as a child and she fully encounters the evil within upon her return.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë is a bildungsroman novel that follows Jane’s development from an oppressed orphan to a grown woman who lives happily ever after in Victorian England. The novel focuses on Jane’s relentless pursuit to find her self-identity and avoid patriarchal domination. Charlotte Brontë’s own experiences growing up in a male-dominated society influenced her writings of Jane Eyre, as she used a pen name of a male’s to make certain her novels would be published in England. Her mixture of various literary modes: gothic, romance, melodrama, and social realism makes her fiction criticize society’s restrictions on women in 19th century England. Tiainen analyzes Jane’s growth in the novel through the feminism lens of literary criticism, as Jane lives in a strict Victorian culture that influences her development. Tiainen’s position has merit as Charlotte Brontë addressed the dominance of males in 19th century England society throughout the novel Jane Eyre, and pushed for increasing awareness on the issue.

At Gateshead Jane Eyre grew up with her malicious cousins and Aunt. This fictitious location is placed in a part of England north to London. The name Gateshead has significant meaning in the book. This location was the “gateway” to the rest of the world. Also, this is where Jane grew up, so evidentially it was the “head” or beginning of all her tribulations in life. Throughout the rest of the book, all that Jane has to deal with is linked back to her childhood there at Gateshead. Abused verbally and physically by her Aunt and cousins, Jane felt an outsider among her kinsmen. She was ostracized by Aunt Reed from the rest of the family. At one point when her Aunt became extremely oppressive, she locked adolescent Jane into the dreaded

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre written during the Victorian era in the nineteenth century, stars Jane, an orphaned, isolated girl, living with a family that disapproves of her. As she grew, she exceled at school, became a governess, and falls in love with Edward Rochester her employer. Furthermore, after being deceived by him, Jane goes to Marsh End, where she reclaims her aspect and indentifies her own strength. By novel's end, Jane became a strong, independent woman. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre still raises relevant questions to readers; like (4) how abuse or unfair treatment makes a person angry or bitter? or (10) how love can transform appearances in the eye of the beholder?

Jane Eyre, often interpreted as a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age story, goes further than the traditional “happy ending,” commonly represented by getting married. Instead, the novel continues beyond this romantic expectation to tell full the story of Jane’s life, revealing her continual dissatisfaction with conventional expectations of her social era; as a result, many literary critics have taken it upon themselves to interpret this novel as a critique of the rigid class system present in 19th century Victorian society. One literary critic in particular, Chris R. Vanden Bossche, analyzes Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre through a Marxist lens, asserting the importance of class structure and social ideology as historical context and attributing this to the shaping of the novel as a whole. This approach of analysis properly addresses Brontë’s purposeful contrast of submission and rebellion used to emphasize Jane’s determined will for recognition as an equal individual.

Charlotte Brontë’s classic literature novel Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman novel, which concentrates on the moral growth of the protagonist Jane. Brontë explores and extrapolates why Jane has difficulty complying to Victorian conventions whilst she is at Gateshead. Furthermore, Thornfield can be seen as a major learning curve, where Jane experiences both duty and desire. Through the use of this delicate balance of the binary opposites, readers are given insight into

The novel Jane Eyre written by Charlotte Brontë depicts a young girl in England who suffers at the dramatic loss of both her parents and loving uncle. She was left to a rude, maniacal step-aunt named Reed who allows her to be beaten with books and locked away in “Red Rooms”. Eventually she was sent away to the Lowood School were she was then tortured, educated, and made “like a lady.” It is shown throughout the novel that she faces persecution by her own thoughts and actions at the persecution of her happiness and future.  “Charlotte Brontë uses various characters to embody aspects of reason and passion, thereby establishing a tension between the two.

This purpose of this essay is to examine Charlotte Bronte’s analysis of Victorian gender roles found within Jane Eyre. For most readers, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is much more than an iconic Gothic novel set within the Victorian Era. In my opinion, it’s a story about a young woman who not only defies gender role, but also the social class in an attempt to live her life; but in her own way. On top of that, readers began to view Jane as a somewhat unexpected heroine of Bronte’s novel, that while facing innumerable obstacles within a tough social class, becomes something more by the end of the story. I believe that another purpose for Bronte’s novel is to show readers that women like Jane Eyre can rise above the oppressive environment of

If a woman did not marry she was ridiculed and faced ostracism at the hands of society. Victorian ideals also expected a woman to accept a marriage proposal from any decent man who offered to wed her. Charlotte Brontë uses Jane’s pursuit for true love in Jane Eyre to challenge the Victorian perceptions and beliefs about marriage. In the novel Jane first falls in love with Mr. Rochester, her employer. The pair engages in a courtship and is set to be wed. A series of peculiar events occurs and the relationship crumbles; Jane flees.

Jane experiences issues in each of the settings she resides in. In Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre, the Reed family abuses Jane at Gateshead. Similarly, Mr. Brocklehurst harms and strips Jane of her self confidence at Lowood, the institution he manages. After her time at Lowood, Rochester betrays Jane in his home, Thornfield Hall. In order to rid herself of that hurtful emotion, Jane escapes to the Moor house. However, at her supposed sanctuary, St. John, one of the members of the household, takes Jane’s power away. Jane drifts through multiple settings in the plot as a way to cope with the insecurities instilled in her.

In the novel Jane Eyre, the author, Charlotte Bronte, emphasizes the message that women should never sacrifice their freedom or equality for love and acceptance. Bronte uses Janes social class and gender as tools to show the inequalities that were most often faced in that time period. Jane’s interaction with her family, friends, and male interests, are used to provide opposition to Janes freedom. Janes choices directly affect the theme because they express the importance of freedom and equality for women. Bronte uses the plot to show the struggles women face in order to balance their freedom and equality with love.

Throughout the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronté, Jane grows up a lot. When Jane was a young lady, she taught herself to be proper and virtuous. During her youth, Jane is often criticized by her aunt and made to feel miserable. She was never treated as part of the family and never recognized herself as such. She was very independent and self-reliant and her goal was to become a better person and more superior each and every day she spent at Gateshead. During her time here, we can see how she truly feels when, on page 22, she states: “…I cry because I am miserable,” and on page 37 when she states “...I hate to live here.” This adds to the evidence that she desired to live elsewhere and how she detached herself from her aunt and the relationships she endured at Gateshead.