Girl Power: The Importance of Female Relationships in Jane Eyre

A feminist analysis of Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart. Retrieved from http://voices.yahoo.com/a-femanist-analysis-chinua-achebes-novel-things-3187491.html?cat=38 Mezu, R. U. (2013). Women in Achebe’s world. Retrieved from http://www.nigeriaviallagesquare.com/forum/books-creative-writing/4420-women-achebes-world.html Strong-Leek, L., (2001).

New Haven: Yale Nota Bene, 2000. Lerner, Laurence. “Bertha and the Critics” Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Dec., 1989), pp.

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Jacobus, Keller, and Shuttleworth 24-46. Rich, Adrienne. "Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman." Gates 142-55. Roy, Parama.

Devereaux, Johanna “Affecting the Shade”: Attribution, Authorship, and Anonymity in An Essay in Defence of the Female Se,Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature(Vol 27) Number 1, Spring 2008, pp. 17-37 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tulsa_studies_in_womens_literature/summary/v027/27.1.devereaux. html Jones, Vivien Women in the eighteenth century: constructions of femininity, Routledge, 1990

"Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman." Gates 142-55. Roy, Parama. "Unaccommodated Woman and the Poetics of Property in Jane Eyre." Studies in English Literature 29 (1989): 713-27.

"Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman." Gates 142-55. Roy, Parama. "Unaccommodated Woman and the Poetics of Property in Jane Eyre." Studies in English Literature 29 (1989): 713-27.

It is not until Jane reaches Thornfield some time later, that she is able to confront her own rage through her encounter with Bertha, Rochester's "savage" wife who has been locked away in the attic of Thornfield Hall for fifteen years. The two are aligned through the restrictions placed upon them by domineering patriarchs; their responses to these circumstances, however, make them antithetical counterparts. While Bertha kindles a fiery wrath toward her oppressor, Jane must learn to contend with her anger so that she will ultimately be free to live a life of true equality and love with Rochester. In the novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë draws distinct similarities between the red-room and the attic of Thornfield, suggesting the complex relationship between Jane and Bertha. While Brontë presents Jane as a woman who is determined to subsist in a patriarchal world without allowing her anger to consume her, she also offers Bertha as Jane's alter ego who is imprisoned by her own r... ... middle of paper ... ...n terms by which she can exist equally with Rochester.

However, the physical abuse is nominal when juxtaposed to the verbal abuse that caused emotional scarring for years to come. Jane was told that she was merely a poor child that was graciously taken in by her dear aunt. However, it was clear that when Mrs. Reed has Jane locked in the Red Room after John Reed attacked her (9) that her intentions really weren't respectable. Further Jane was told by Bessie, "No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep." (9).

General OneFile. Web. 9 May 2014. Hughes, Gertrude Reif. "Subverting The Cult Of Domesticity: Emily Dickinson's Critique Of Women's Work."