How Does Bronte Present Sisterhood In Jane Eyre

Harriet Jacobs and Bronte present women or womanhood as an ideology which has to be questioned. However, since the two women lived in two different historical periods, the ways in which womanhood and sisterhood are brought forward in both texts differ from each other. Jane eyre is the protagonist of the novel and describes the women around her as either superficial and as a product of capitalism, or as those who demand understanding and a certain degree of pity. For instance, when she first meets Mrs Fairfax, she immediately develops a certain liking for her and the description of Mrs Fairfax is quite simple and to some extent shy: “wherein sat the neatest imaginable little elderly lady, in widow’s cap, black silk gown and snowy muslin apron: eactly like what I had fancied Mrs. Fairfax, […] there was no grandeur to overwhelm, no stateliness to embarrass; […]”(95). Miss Ingram, on the other hand, is presented as more extravagant and over the top: “she was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person , many brilliant attainments but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature; nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil […] she was not good; she was not original […]she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own […] she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her […]” (185-186). Our opinion of other women is therefore shaped by …show more content…
While Bronte’s novel uses the presentation of womanhood as an opportunity to bring to light the character of Jane and the expect to which the latter does not agree to the expected norms and values, Linda’s representation of womanhood provides an illustration of women where there exists an extent of solidarity between each