Heagy1

Arielle Heagy

Ms. Winter

British Literature

5 May 2017

Women in the Victorian Era

Women have been mistreated and not equal to men since the beginning of time. At

some point, women start to dislike that and start to do their own thing no matter what anyone

tells them. Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Bronte in 1874, is about a young girl who is first an

orphan that is poorly treated at a young age. Throughout the story, Jane becomes a very tough

character because the environment she grew up in helps her learn how to live. The experiences

that she encountered create her strong personality and her wisdom and she always shows her

own voice. Even though life gets tough for Jane, she maintains her self-respect by hard work and

her intelligence but also never giving in on her way. Janes kindness, intellect, and independence

not only help her through all her hardships but also help attract a man which she at last finds a

perfect love. Bronte writes this story in the viewpoint of a woman which has a very strong

significance. The necessity of having a female narrator in Jane Eyre is to show a womens status

in society and display the changing behaviors of women.

Women have always had a low status compared to men and this is clearly shown in the

Victorian Era and in Jane Eyre. The fact that Bronte made the narrator female points out the

actual thoughts and feelings of women through their own perspective rather than through the

perspective of men. Females thoughts and feelings were often filtered and watered down by

men because the men did not actually know how the woman felt, they just assumed. Having this
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narrator be female, gives the female more power in expressing herself in the way she views

things, not how anyone else views the things that they think she views. Jane Eyre brings up the

central question [that is raised which] is: What would history be like if it were seen through the

eyes of women and ordered by values they define? (Snef) And to answer to this question, many

would say that everything would be different. As said before, womens thoughts are through

someone elses perspective not their own so having this big change is a really big deal. Wang

Guofu, author of the Literary Theory of Feminism, states precisely that, Jane Eyre is the first,

also the most powerful and popular novel to represent the modern view of women's position in

society.(Snef) this exhibits that having Jane as a narrator that is a women was very influential

and clearly showed her views and feelings through her own perspective.

Depicted below is a man and a woman, the woman is clearly standing below the man and

it seems as if she is inferior to him. Women did not power or status and this is distinctly shown

here.
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This painting expresses how the women were treated and how they were looked upon by all the

men. Men always thought of women to be secondary to themselves. If we did not have Jane as

the narrator then we would have no idea what her personal thoughts and feelings were as we do

now.

The women did have a lower status and started to realize that they disliked that greatly.

Most women start to rebel and go against their embodied ideals to show their anger. Women are

supposed to be a homemaker and always do what they are told but in this time period, the

women start to negate and do things they are not supposed to do. Jane, being the bold young girl

that she is, reveals in the beginning of the story how she goes against the certain norms when she

first yells at her Aunt Reed saying,

I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt again as long as I live.

I will never come to visit you when I am grown up; and if anyone asks me how I liked

you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that

you treated me with miserable cruelty (Bronte)

which is very unlike how the women are proposed to act. The significance of Jane yelling at her

Aunt Reed is that she is not going to take anything from people who have done her wrong. Most

girls would have not done this because they were taught to always be respectful and not be rude.

Jane does not really care what others think of her and will state her mind no matter what. Jane,

along with Bertha, were characterized as birds because they did not go along with how women

were supposed to act. In fact, all women were characterized as birds or another type of animal

because men did not like that the women were not acting womanly as they should be. Bertha's
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sole function is thus to define...the consistent and coherent female subject-under-construction

(Mardorossian) and to also show that Jane is going against how the women were supposed to be.

Bronte wanted to have the reader experience what the women were really going through and how

they were acting. Women were not important except when it came to the arts of pleasing men,

in other words, are not only angelic characteristics; in more worldly terms, they are the proper

acts of a lady (article). This was something that women did not like and they just wanted to be

their own person and not always have to care for the men.

Women definitely started to resist what they are supposed to do and just went against

everything. This theme of women acting differently than expected is also very prominent in the

poem Goblin Market by Rossetti when the main character, Laura, goes out late at night and eats

the fruit that the goblins were selling which she bought with her golden locks of hair. When she

clipped a precious golden lock,/ She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,/ Then she sucked their

fruit globes fair or red (Rossetti), you see that most women acted as they wanted and did not

care no matter what anyone said. Laura acted much like Jane and Bertha by going out in the dead

of night to get the goblins fruit that she was not supposed to. Laura was punished for this and

started to die, showing that her wrong doings was very looked down upon. She was being out of

line just like the other two girls that were talked about previously.

The significance of a female narrator in the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is so

that people can see womens status in the world and also show the changing behaviors of these

women.
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Works Cited

1.Article

The arts of pleasing men, in other words, are not only angelic characteristics; in more worldly

terms, they are the proper acts of a lady.

2. Goblin Market

She clipped a precious golden lock,/She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,/Then sucked their

fruit globes fair or red (126-28)

3. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will

never come to visit you when I am grown up; and if anyone asks me how I liked you, and how

you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with

miserable cruelty(page 36)

4. Kaplan, Carla. "Girl Talk: Jane Eyre and the Romance of Women's Narration."

Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, edited by Kathy D. Darrow, vol. 217, Gale, 2010.

Literature Resource Center,

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=eldorado&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CH1420093642

&it=r&asid=b011352c7625c48c5c033fbfccc05f09. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017. Originally published

in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 30, no. 1, Fall 1996, pp. 5-31.
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while Jane laments her "isolation--this banishment from my kind!" (361) and acknowledges that

to be shut out of human dialogue, to be silenced, isolated, and spoken for by others is to be

denied identity and being, denied the space

5. Mardorossian, Carine M. "Unsuspecting storyteller and suspect listener: a postcolonial

reading of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre." ARIEL, vol. 37, no. 2-3, 2006, p. 1+. Literature

Resource Center,

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=eldorado&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA167378944&i

t=r&asid=54319c17ee0dbcd517ec7069bc2942d6. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

Bertha's sole function is thus to define--through contrast--the consistent and coherent female

subject-under-construction

6. Senf, Carol A. "Jane Eyre and the Evolution of a Feminist History1."

Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 280, Gale, 2014.

Literature Resource Center,

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=eldorado&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CH1420116541

&it=r&asid=d348186576552c55d87281a91008e8aa. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017. Originally

published in VIJ, vol. 13, 1985, pp. 67-81.

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Jane Eyre is the first, also the most powerful and popular novel to represent the modern view of

women's position in society.

7. Senf, Carol A. "Jane Eyre and the Evolution of a Feminist History1."

Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 280, Gale, 2014.

Literature Resource Center,

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=eldorado&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CH1420116541

&it=r&asid=d348186576552c55d87281a91008e8aa. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017. Originally

published in VIJ, vol. 13, 1985, pp. 67-81.

The central question it raises is: What would history be like if it were seen through the eyes of

women and ordered by values they define?

8.
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