Group Images Of Women In Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is far more popular than her other books because in superficial level this novel presents us a Cinderella-type love story about a heroine who is not exteriorly but spiritually attractive and in a certain degree caters to modern mentality. But this novel is also one of her most controversial novels that invite permanent concern of the literary world. This thesis is dedicated to the research of the underlying meaning related to female social, psychological and sexual reality in this novel in Victorian England. This thesis studies Charlotte's special feminine voice in the patriarchal society mainly through exploration into the three main women images in Jane Eyre-Jane Eyre, Helen Burns and Bertha Mason. In order to understand the authoress' subversive spirit a close study of the subculture of women writing in Charlotte's time is also important and necessary. At any rate this thesis is not written only to satisfy an interest in literary women of the past. I hope this thesis will also help women have a better understanding of their own position in modern world.First of all, this thesis gives a brief review of Charlotte Bronte's life experience and a brief account of the story. As a woman writer, Charlotte Bronte attaches much of her own experience and feeling to Jane Eyre and the authoress and the heroine share much in common. The hard surrounding and repression of nature in Charlotte's childhood, her own plain appearance, her experience as a governess and her persistent pursuit of the expression of inner self in literary imagination are all embodied in Jane Eyre. All these lend a realistic overtone to the novel.Secondly, the thesis gives an introduction to the subculture of women writing in Charlotte's own time. In literary or the real world in Victorian England, the images of women were defined by male-dominated society as either an angel or a whore. Women were always expected to serve men as their better halves. Theprevailing Romantic belief and Victorian thoughts limited women to a marginal and subordinate social position. This kind of restriction defined the subculture of women writing in Victorian England. However, individualism and imagination that were advocated by the Romanticists also helped emancipate women in terms of the way of thinking. The rising of novel writing in Victorian age offered feminine writers an opportunity to excercise their literary ability and express their special feminine voice. Charlotte's writing contributes to the subculture of women writing, but her novel Jane Eyre is by far the more experimental and original and is regarded as the representative of early feminine work.In the subculture of women writing Charlotte Bronte gives her special feminine voice in Jane Eyre mainly through depiction of three women images-Jane, Helen and Bertha. These women all suffer psychologically and physiologically in the patriarchal world. Being plain, poor and helpless, Jane Eyre is always at a social marginal position in her early life. Her rebellious inner self identified herself with Bertha to a large extent. Helen Burns is the representative of (he female intellect and intelligence. Though looking calm from appearance, she chooses to escape the unhappy worldly life by plunging herself into a strong passion for eternity of soul. All through the story Bertha Mason is the special woman who has got no chance to speak for herself. Rochester's subjective account of his legal wife is told with deliberate attention to degrade and distort her. But by applying the concept of moral madness to study the case of Bertha, it is horrifying and chilling to realize that the so-called mad woman in the attic is only the repressed wife whose existence is concealed by her malicious husband who is determined to silence her.Charlotte speaks of feminine sexual reality in Victorian England through description of the development of her heroine's personality. Women's awareness of sexuality is repressed by the representatives and helpers of the male-dominated world who are determi...