A Study On Jane’s Inferiority Complex In Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bront? is one of the greatest British novelists in the nineteenth century. Besides some poems and letters, there are only four novels left in her short life and Jane Eyre is regarded as her masterpiece. Over one hundred years after the appearance of Jane Eyre, researches on it are fruitful and critics have interpreted it from various angles with different critical theories. Jane Eyre has been generally acknowledged as a female image of independence and self-esteem, but people have ever hardly paid close attention to the other important side of her character—inferiority feeling. Her overly strong sense of self-esteem is precisely caused by her deeply buried feelings of inferiority. Fortunately, Jane’s inferiority feeling motivates her to make continuous progress. By virtue of remitting efforts, she transcends her inferiority complex and gains a happy life.Under the guidance of the Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler’s inferioritycompensation theory, the thesis interprets Jane Eyre from the perspective of the heroine’s inferior psychology and expounds the expressions and reasons of this mental distress. What’s more, it puts forward the way of transcendence, which might be of some significance to improving the inferiority feelings among some modern people.In addition to the Introduction and Conclusion, the thesis is divided into four chapters.Introduction gives a brief presentation of the author Charlotte Bront?, the novel Jane Eyre, its present research at home and abroad, Adler’s inferiority complex theory, and the significance of this study.Chapter One mainly explores Jane’s compensation for her inferiority complex by means of withdrawing into herself, safeguarding her self-esteem, depreciating others as well as dreaming.Chapter Two probes into the causes of Jane’s psychological distresses through three aspects, i.e. social reality(Jane’s disadvantages), childhood experience and personal inner-conflict.Chapter Three focuses on Jane’s transcendence of her inferiority complex through resistance, constant self-improvement and the communication with others.Chapter Four, based on the close ties between Charlotte Bront?’s life experience and her literary creation, interprets the author’s inferiority complex and indicates her compensation tendency in Jane Eyre.Conclusion sums up the previous analysis, reveals the existence of inferiority feelings among some modern people, and further points out that people can get rid of their psychological problems to pursue a better life on condition that they take effective steps with right attitudes.