Jane Eyre Research Paper

Jane Eyre: Feminism in a Victorian and Christian Society Charlotte Bronte’s influential and well-studied novel Jane Eyre has been a successful piece of literature throughout the world and is considered a message of radical spiritual autonomy for women. It has been deeply analyzed for over a century as it exemplified the challenges and struggles faced by an English girl as she grew into a woman, and demonstrated her will to defy the standards set against her. The novel can be viewed from an array of critical lenses, most commonly a feminist view. As discussed in this novel, Jane Eyre allows readers to fully understand the themes being portrayed. From this view, readers specifically saw how the novel discussed gender roles in society, specifically, a Victorian society, the struggle between a woman’s faith and

Gilbert and Susan Gubar in their piece The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Women in society were interpreted in a specific way, where the good and proper women were those who were clean, quiet, and took care of their household. Women were to act proper within this patriarchal social system, and this was apparent from the beginning of the novel when Jane was sent to an all girls religious boarding school after living with her aunt and cruel cousins. She was thought to be a troublemaker, just an orphan girl who was poor, worthless, and pitied. Jane’s caretakers believed that this boarding school would train her to be well-behaved and educated, overall making her the well-rounded young lady she needed to be in society that would be fit for a man. Throughout her life, Jane had to prove herself as being equal to those around her. She worked to show that she was not just a poor girl, but someone who was capable of anything- specifically, someone worthy enough of being loved. As Jane grew older, however, we saw