Education In Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre provided Victorian England with a new kind of woman who represented a shift in the common view of what Mary Wollstonecraft asserted was a limited education for women. Their education kept them childlike and superficial, with most of their attention going toward appearance and being satisfied mostly with matters of the home. These social pressures prevented women from becoming more interesting through using reason and substance, which were confirmed to the masculine sphere. Wollstonecraft’s observations of women’s education is both proved and disproved in the characters of Jane Eyre and Blanche Ingram.

Jane and Blanche’s upbringing differ in many ways. Two of them being their education and privileges. Unlike Blanche, Jane didn’t have a family or anyone to care about her. Her parents died when she was younger so she lived with her aunt and cousins as a foster. Her aunt, cousin and the servants were not kind or fair to her. She had to deal with “all John Reed’s violent trannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference, all his mom’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality”(Bronte 14). She was always excluded from “privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children”(Bronte 6). John treated Jane the worst out of his sisters, mom, and servants. He would physically and verbally abuse her. For example, after John called her over and stuck his tongue out at her, she thought “Accustomed to John Reed’s abuse, I never had an idea of replying to