Construction of Love and Gender in Charlotte Brontes...

Construction of Love and Gender in Jane Eyre Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte focuses primarily on love, specifically romantic love and it is the way in which Charlotte Bronte challenges 19th century socio-cultural views on gender and romance, as well as other discourses within the novel such as class and status that makes Jane Eyre successful. The main discourse within Jane Eyre that impacts most greatly upon its feature, romantic love, is the societal classes of the time. This upper and lower class structure becomes evidently the basis of the novel Jane Eyre. Jane Eyres relationship with Mr. Rochester, her employee and master, is deemed inappropriate by high society as it crosses class boundaries. Even without†¦show more content†¦Jane is described as plain and when asked by Mr. Rochester whether she thinks him handsome, she replies no (149). This defied widely accepted social standards and could mean the demise of both family honour and wealth. The construction of gender within Jane Eyre is heavily impacted upon by the socio-cultural attitudes of the time. These social and cultural viewpoints are what formed the female gender, by forming the expected code of conduct and behaviour of women in the mid-1800s. Within society women were almost always represented as lower than men and were commonly expected to be sub-servient and non-opinionated. Prime examples of this sort of behaviour is Mrs. Fairfax and to some extent in Jane, while the exact opposite to societal expectation is seen in Bertha Rochester. Whos unruly, psychotic behaviour deemed her to become an unacceptable person within 19th century society. Society at the time of Jane Eyre offered very little in the way of employment for women. The few jobs or tasks they could perform were often menial and mundane. The only alternative to work was to marry, and quite often for money or the purpose of child bearing than love. Thoughts of goals and desires of success were suppressed within women and they were to adhere to convention. Jane Eyre has several characters within its text that comply with these strict, societalShow MoreRelatedThe Exposure of Feminist Critique in 19th Century Literature: a Look at Charlotte Brontà «Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s Jane Eyre1749 Words   |  7 Pagesphysical, and even made humorous or satirical. Charlotte Brontà «, a 19th century Victorian feminist wrote her novel Jane Eyre as a means of exposing the confining environments, shameful lack of education, and pitiful dependence upon male relatives for survival (Brackett, 2000). Charlotte Brontà « used literature as a means of feminist cultural resistance by identifying the underlying factors of how the Victorian ideologies, gender and social construction of that time was limiting, and brings to lightRead MoreEssay on Doubles in Jane Eyre2194 Words   |  9 Pagesexamining the doubling between and within the characters in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre I consider the various representations of the female gender and how Jane’s doubles, Bertha Mason, Helen Burns, and Mrs. Reed contribute to the construction of Jane’s gender. Jane Eyre’s quest for love can be seen as a measure of establishing her identity as a woman in a society in which women are expected to be submissive. In order to retain her autonomy Jane must explore her true inner-self. Karl Miller maintainsRead MoreWomen During The Nineteenth Century1562 Words   |  7 PagesWomen both in Europe and America during the nineteenth century were living in a society that was characterised by gender inequality (Wwnorton.com, 2015). In the early periods of the century, women were expected to remain passive and subservient to the male counterparts. They were denied many of the legal, social, or even political rights, which in the modern world we consider as a right (Wwnorton.com, 2015). Thus, generally speaking women who belonged to the middle and upper classes remained home;Read MoreVictorian Novel9605 Words   |  39 Pagesstability and rising standards of living. Artists of ‘Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood’ claimed to write only true about nature, concentrate only on the true ideas. These three years saw the rise of such works: of Bronte sisters’ Poems, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. The Following twenty years could be seen as the high period of ‘Victorian novel’. Despite being a mixture of boom and slump, the years of 1850-1870 were recognized by the economic