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Oppression In Jane Eyre Essay

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During the Victorian era, the ideal woman’s life revolved around the domestic sphere of her family and the home. Middle class women were brought up to “be pure and innocent, tender and sexually undemanding, submissive and obedient” to fit the glorified “Angel in the House”, the Madonna-image of the time (Lundén et al, 147). Normally, girls were educated to be on display as ornaments. Women were not expected to express opinions of their own outside a very limited range of subjects, and certainly not be on a quest for own identity and aim to become independent such as the protagonist in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre was independent passionate woman who tried to against men who repressed woman from being educated and getting own human …show more content…

As punishment for her act of resistance, the eponymous heroine is confined to the frightful "red room" (Brontë, 5-14). Imprisoned for her insolence in the horrifying red room at Gateshead, Jane remembers: “My heart beat thick, my head grew hot, a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings: something seemed near me, I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down—I uttered a wild, involuntary cry—I rushed to the door and shook the lock in disparate effort.” (Brontë, 22) This opening confrontation sets the stage for what will be the central struggle of the work. Jane's struggle to make her voice heard and to express the truth of her own experience. Jane Eyre is very much the product of the specific time and place in which it was written, an environment in which a woman, especially an economically disadvantaged one, has to struggle greatly so that she might speak of her own vision of reality. According to the critic Maggie Berg, Jane Eyre reflects “the contradictory nature of Victorian society, a society that was in transition, and one in which people were forced to discover new ways of finding and defining identity” (Berg, 17). The world that Charlotte Bronte inhabited was rife with dichotomies.

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We will analyse, in this essay, the differences as well as the similarities which exist between Jane Eyre and Incidents in the life of a slave girl written by herself. We will see that they differ in terms of genre, the period of history in which they find themselves, the way the characters are presented and so forth. However, they share some of the main values concerning womanhood, race and some other aspects of life which they both treat in different ways and yet they do so in a specific aim. Charlotte Brontë and Harriet Jacobs present to us two texts which are both based in totally opposite moments in history. While many differences exist between the two texts, they have several aspects in common.

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Imprisonment and constraint, can be felt in many different scenarios in the passage from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. However, we get these two feelings with a girl who is portrayed as an orphan in this chapter. When being an orphan many feelings can run through a person’s mind, for example abandonment and not feeling loved, or being/feeling trapped. The feeling of imprisonment and constraint in this chapter is expressed through the use of imagery and diction. Imagery is viewed in this chapter in a variety of sentences.

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First, Jane Eyre’s attributes displays women in our society who are still in search for meaning and love in their lives. Just like Jane’s spirit of passion despite abuse, these women continue to search for respect from other

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In the novel we follow the protagonist, a young Victorian woman who struggles to overcome the oppressive patriarchal society in which she is entrapped. It is a story of enclosure and escape, from the imprisonment of her childhood to the possible entrapment of her daunting marriage. Throughout the novel Jane must fight against her inevitable future that society has already chosen for her. We see her attempt to overcome the confinements of her given gender, background and status. She must prove her worth against the men she encounters throughout her life, showing her equality in intelligence and strength.

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In “A Dialogue of Self and Soul,” Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar discuss Jane’s inability to escape a role of servitude. Gilbert and Gubar depict Jane’s “eagerness for a new servitude that brings [her] to the painful experience that is at the center of her pilgrimage, the experience of Thornfield, where, biblically, she is to be crowned with thorns, she is to be cast out into a desolate field, and most important, she is to confront the demon of rage who has haunted her since her afternoon in the red-room” (6). By mentioning Jane’s experience of the red-room, Gilbert and Gubar discuss Jane’s role as a governess as a type of jail similar to her encounter in the locked room. In her role of servitude, Rochester is the third male in the novel to enforce his superiority over Jane through gender, class, and age. Therefore, Rochester’s position over Jane compares to the roles of John Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst.

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The Victorian era, as depicted in Jane Eyre, was a time of extreme gender inequality and households being dominated by the patriarchs. Although a prominent change in attitudes towards this social matter could be seen towards the end of the Victorian era, the question arose know as “The Woman Question”. This short essay will address it in terms of what is was seen as, why it was asked and why it was an important part of the women’s lives. As mentioned above, the Jane Eyre milieu was Victorian. This meant that women and men were not treated in the same manner.

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Jane Eyre is an emotional, angry and rebellious child and is surrounded by demanding obedient women. She loves to rebel against Mrs. Reed, St. John Rivers, and even Mr. Rochester, who she ends up marring in the end. Her rebel streak she has is targeted at "inequalities of society” and reacts strongly when she is disgraced due to her class and/or gender. In the novel, Charlotte Bronte wanted her audience to be on the side of her rebellious and defiant child as she stands up to the adult tyranny in her life. Bronte was one of the first who set out to write about what it feels like to be a child as it is recounted by the heroine herself.

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