Jane Eyre Social Lens Essay

Jane Eyre Social Criticism Lens Jane Eyre truly captures the elements that made up the Victorian Era: oppression and social constraint based on social norms at the time. The novel appreciates women and puts them in a light where they have rarely been seen in. Instead of keeping the protagonist restrained to the home, the author Charlotte Bronte, allowed Jane to be free and search for her true identity, which was considered a stray from the social customs of the Era. Furthermore, Bronte uses the novel to criticize the hypocrisy and inequality that existed during this time period through different characters and experiences. Through the social criticism lens, Jane Eyre was created as an unorthodox display against marriage, religion, and gender

Bronte uses the characters in the book to depict the hypocrisy that resided within the Era in terms of how one uses religion. She is able to criticize it based on characters such as Mr. Brocklehurst and St. John Rivers. Mr. Brocklehurst was the head of a religious charity school for orphans. He tells the girls at the school that they must wear plain clothing so they can learn about self-denial, hardiness, and patience, and punishes them if they do not do so. But, his daughters were “splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs. The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses” (119). His daughters are over-indulging because of their wealth and he allows them to do so. He does not practice what he preaches to the girls at the school. In addition, St. John River’s contradicts himself through his missionary zeal and devout Christianity. When St. John asks Jane to marry him she says no, and in response he states “You shall be mine: I claim you—not for my pleasure, but for my sovereign’s service” (771). Essentially St. John sees her rationally and not passionately, he thinks that she was made for work and not pleasure. The problem with this is that in the Christian religion, marriage is the sacred, holy and consisted of love. In St. John’s situation, he made it clear that he was not going to marriage her for love, but work. Through St. John and Mr. Brocklehurst, Bronte criticizes two different but both contradicting views on