preview

Theme Of Feminism In Jane Eyre

Decent Essays

Charlotte Brontë published Jane Eyre in 1847; the novel is a Bildungsroman concerning a Victorian woman metamorphosed into an “other,” resulting from her nonconformity and disenfranchisement, and her advancement into a state of independence. Jane Eyre is predominantly the focus of contemporary feminist criticism: Jane is hailed as the epitome of female empowerment, as she overcomes prejudice and forges an equalitarian position amongst the draconian gender caste of Victorian England. However, in “’Not Fit to Associate with Me:’ Contradictions of Race, Class, and Gender in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre,” Sangeeta Parashar claims that it is not with the alienated house-wives of the English mother country where “otherness” is derived, but rather with the subjects of her daughter colonies that this “otherness” further imposes racial and imperialistic undertones upon female characters within the novel. Jane Eyre herself is a metaphor for the preconceived black woman and rather than being a defiant source of rebellion, she submits to the colonist dogma of the Victorian Era, thereby becoming white.
Within the opening chapter of the novel, Jane flings herself into a fit of passion against a tyrannical Master Reed. Throughout her childhood, Jane is ostracized for her uncontrolled passion passion quote and thereby placed into a position of “otherness” derived from the vivification of passion as an “animal-like sexuality, a surrender to bodily appetites that indicated […] ancestry

Get Access