Gender And Social Class In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

During the Victorian era, Charlotte Bronte published Jane Eyre. In that time period, women, like the main character Jane Eyre, played a domestic role in society helping to raise the children, clean the house, and cook the food. Women were seen as property to men. They were not free to pursue an education and were not economically independent. The Victorian era was also defined by a rigid social structure. Members of the upper class tended to look down upon the lower class because of their lack of education and sophistication. Marriage primarily took place within social classes. Those who married outside of the class went against societal norms and were ostracized. Through writing Jane Eyre, Bronte wants the reader to stand up to the rigid gender and social standards to create a society with equality of rights for all. She utilizes a sophisticated narrator, Jane, to create a passionate but also rational tone to challenge the contemporary mindset that women should conform to Victorian society. Bronte wrote the book using a sophisticated narrator, Jane, to captivate the audience. By making Jane intelligent, Bronte

Only someone with proper education could write such an elegant description of John. In another instance, Jane describes Miss Temple, the superintendent of Lowood, with a very sophisticated diction:

Seen now, in broad daylight, she looked tall, fair, and shapely; brown eyes with a benignant light in their irids, and a fine pencilling of long lashes round, relieved the whiteness of her large front; on each of her temples her hair, of a very dark brown, was clustered in round curls, according to the fashion of those times, when neither smooth bands nor long ringlets were in vogue; her dress, also in the mode of the day, was of purple cloth, relieved by a sort of Spanish trimming of black velvet; a gold watch (watches were not so common then as now) shone at her girdle. (Bronte