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Social Class In Jane Eyre And The Victorian Novels

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“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.”
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre novel

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Social Class and the Victorian Novels Social class is one of the prominent issues that took a high place within the Victorian novels. Differences and inequalities in social class have been discussed and criticized in all novels that we have been studied so far; Jane Eyre, Emma, and even Oliver Twist. It seems that those differences caused sufferance and oppression to a plenty of people during the Victorian era. In Jane Eyre, the heroine was an orphan poor woman from a low social class, who fell in love with a man who is exactly the opposite of her in all standards. Rochester, a rich man belongs to a high class. The lovers in this novels will live a love story that is filled with obstacles due to the social class, religion and principles, and independence that Jane looked for. Although all those obstacles they will marry in the end of the novel, but after a long self-journey of education, independence, wealth and high class that Jane will acquire later. As we can see, she couldn’t marry him until she became the same of him. Before that,

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