Jane Eyre And Lady Audley's Secret Gender Analysis

1. Gender Roles in Jane Eyre and Lady Audley's Secret

In both Jane Eyre and Lady Audley's Secret there is a central man and central women which the novel follows around. Both of the novels titles are of women but while Jane Eyre follows the life of Jane, Lady Audley's Secret follows around Robert Audley. These two novels were wildly popular amongst both men and women during the time. The fact that both of these titles allude to the novel being mainly about a woman shows some of the progress that Victorian Society has made in the sense that they even though the titles were of women, it still was widely accepted by both genders. The two novels both work to undermine some of the distinct gender stereotypes put in place during the Victorian Era.

After one of Jane's outbursts one of the servants at the house discusses how because of the lack of her "beauty" and "obedience", "if she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness, but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that." (Bronte 26). As a result of her demeanor, she is sent to Lowood to learn how to become more obedient and mostly just to get her off the hands Mrs. Reed. Jane eventually begins working as a governess, which breaks the typical role of a woman marrying and living her life at home. Because of her profession, Jane was also an outsider to those surrounding her in her immediate world, thus demonstrating the life of a working woman as the living quite solitarily. In Lady Audley's Secret, Robert's initial description in the novel is also negatively portrayed, similarly to Jane. The lack of hard work and the laissez faire qualities of his personality are opposite of what was expected from men during this era. Braddon description of Robert casts a negative portrayal of his lax characteristics and his seemingly meaningless profession, "But he had never either had a brief, or tried to get a brief, or even wished to have a brief in all of those five years, during which his name had been painted upon one of the doors in Fig-tree Court. He was a handsome, lazy, care-for-nothing fellow…" (Braddon 32). Along with his lack of motivation,

The negative connotation Bronte shows surrounding social classes is quite explicit. Bronte uses Jane's own words to demonstrate the negativity surrounding the difference between Jane and Rochester being of different classes and how it affects how Jane believes Rochester will view her. Jane's movement between social class was something that was a recurring difficulty in Jane's relationships. Jane's disdain for being seen as inferior to Rochester was what initially created the separation between the two. The fact that the difference between their two classes was stark enough to cause her to leave and invite judgment of others seeing their relationship unfold was very interesting. Jane did not seek wealth when it came to marrying Rochester, dissimilarly to how Lucy came into marriage with Sir Michael. Lucy's relationship desire to marry Sir Michael is used by Braddon to implicitly imply a negative connotation toward social classes in the Victorian Era. Lucy's life with George, living in poverty, was hard and was what led her desire to move up in social classes. This desire to become wealth caused her to leave her family, and after obtaining this wealth Lucy desperately tried to maintain her status by attempting to murder George. Braddon demonstrates through Lucy's quest for wealth, the unhealthy obsession the Victorian Era had with wealth and that this wealth