Jane Eyre Quote Analysis

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Recommended: Feminism in Jane Eyre

Evading the Attic
Prompt: How does Jane both fit and defy the paradigm of the woman in the attic?

Although mostly soft-spoken and docile, the eponymous protagonist of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has exhibited a strong and outspoken distaste for the various systems of oppression to which she is subjected as a Victorian woman. Refusing to succumb to the same emotional and psychological repression that destroyed Bertha Mason, Jane Eyre asserts herself in the presence of those to whom she would ordinarily be subordinate in the context of Victorian England. Even as an abused and neglected ward of the Reed household, Jane exhibits a burgeoning rebellion against the restrictive social norms of Victorian England. She exemplifies this quality in a confrontation with her cousin, John Reed, during her childhood at Gateshead, the estate of the Reed family. …show more content…

(Chapter 2, pg. 9)” This quote exemplifies the early stages of Jane’s strong, confident character inasmuch as the young Jane refuses to concede to Miss Abbot, Bessie, or the Reeds in spite of the authority that they wield over her as her guardians. By that token, this encounter lays the foundation for her later evasion of the proverbial attic, as it is the first instance in which she refuses to tolerate oppression and/or repression of any

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