Jane Eyre Independent Woman

In the mid-19th century, a woman’s role in society suddenly began to gain traction. While the first wave of feminism, or the woman’s suffragette movement, remained more than a century away, women made small strides in respect to their social stratus. One example of this dynamic accumulates within Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, Jane Eyre, which depicts the life of the titular character through a first-person narrative, showing the progression of a once abused orphan girl to independent woman, reflecting on the various stages of her life. Through her narrative, Brontë shows some insight on the beginnings of feminism with her work, such as Jane stating “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will,” to …show more content…
However, this action leaves Jane in a struggle of compliance, as she suffers punishment from her aunt, Mrs. Reed, after receiving blame for fighting with her cousin, John, who mocked the poor girl, saying, “you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen’s children like us.” With this statement, Brontë sets up both the discussion of Jane’s class and her obedience, as Jane only receives punishment after lashing out at John’s brutality. John’s exposition gives insight on Jane’s background, showing why she receives the treatment of a second-class citizen, as the young girl became poor due to her parent’s deaths, which left her orphaned, and their initial lack of wealth. Seeing Jane as a second-class citizen mimics the perception of women of the time as well, lesser than “gentlemen’s children,” which Brontë uses to display comments on their placement as subservient to men, and that their characterization stems from the preconceived ideas of …show more content…
In a 1979 literary criticism of the same name, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar look into the dynamics of dichotomy between the two differing portraits of women and apply them to female writers, stating women must “kill the aesthetic ideal, [the angel,] through which they themselves have been "killed" into art. And similarly, all women writers must kill the angel's necessary opposite and double.. [that] whose Medusa-face also kills female creativity.” This act of “killing” in art refers to the male writer’s representation of any aspect of femininity, which created the binary of pure innocence and obedience or complete lunacy. Gilbert and Gubar want female writers to regain their sense of self-worth, and by displaying the binary of the two roles that women may hold in literature, Brontë shows the flaws in both portals, and suggests that women remain only otherworldly creatures that these titles suggest. For example, portraying a character as a “madwoman” places her beneath any other character, especially male characters, portraying her as incomprehensible and a loss cause to understand. This concept harkens back to the idea of “female hysteria,” or the male coined umbrella term that