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Jane Eyre and the 19th-century woman

Professor Sally Shuttleworth explores how Charlotte Brontë challenges 19th-century conceptions of appropriate female behaviour through the creation of a heroine who works, demands respect and combines self-control with passion and rebellion.

Professor John Bowen explores the central role of women in Jane Eyre and the unique role of the governess in 19th-century society. Filmed at the Brontë Parsonage, Haworth.

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Femininity and rebellion

When Jane Eyre (1847) was published by Charlotte Brontë under the masculine pseudonym Currer Bell, it was received with great acclaim by some critics, and harsh criticism by others. The conservative Lady Eastlake suggested that if the book was by a woman 'she had long forfeited the society of her own sex'. In addition to this lack of femininity, she also diagnosed a spirit of rebellion which she likened to the working class uprisings of the Chartists, with their demands for votes for the working people, and also the political revolutions which were then sweeping across Europe.[1] Jane Eyre unsettled views as to how women should act and behave, suggesting, in Lady Eastlake's eyes, almost an overthrowing of social order. Unlike the long-suffering heroines in Charlotte Brontë's early writings, who pine away for the dashing, promiscuous Duke of Zamorna, Jane demands equality and respect. 'Do you think', she demands of Rochester, 'I am an automaton? - a machine without feelings?'. She speaks to him as one spirit to another, 'equal - as we are' (ch. 23). One can find, however, elements of this rebelliousness in the early writings, which cover a period of Brontë's life from early adolescence to her late 20s. In 'Visits in Verreopolis' (1830), the noble Zenobia, who is deeply learned in the classics, is subject to ridicule by various males. The Duke of Wellington suggests that women are like swans, graceful in the water, but when they presume to leave their natural element, the home, they have an 'unseemly waddle' which entitles everyone 'to laugh till their sides split at the spectacle'.[2] Interestingly, Zenobia is also prone to fits of rage or madness, and is described as having a West Indian, or Martinique complexion, which makes her also a forerunner of the ' mad wife '.

Review of Jane Eyre by Elizabeth Rigby

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The conservative 'Lady Eastlake', real name Elizabeth Rigby, harshly criticises Jane Eyre as dangerously immoral in this review, here reprinted in Littell's Living Age, 1849.

Women should be allowed to use their talents

Despite the spirit of rebelliousness which flows through Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë was not overtly radical in her social views. On reading an article in the Westminster Review (1851), which argued for women's rights to vote and to work, she writes to the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell that while she approves of many of the writer's arguments she feels they are lacking in 'heart' and tender feelings.[3] While Brontë does not approve of women voting, she does believe they should be allowed to work. In the novel, Jane makes a passionate plea for women to be allowed to use their talents, and not to be confined to the home 'making puddings and knitting stocking, ...playing on the piano and embroidering bags' (ch. 12). Charlotte Brontë herself had worked as a governess and a teacher, but had hated it. Her views come over clearly in a letter to her brother Branwell, written while she was teaching in Brussels, and also in a letter to her editor, W S Williams, in which she suggests that women who take on the role of a live-in governess can never be happy.[4] The plight of the governess was one which was drawing considerable social attention at that time. It was virtually the only occupation that was considered respectable for a middle-class woman who had no family to support her, but the experience was often wretched. The governess was neither one of the servants, nor one of the family, and was often treated with contempt by both sides. Anne Brontë writes in vivid detail of these problems in her first novel, Agnes Grey (1847). Jane Eyre is, in comparison, very fortunate in her relationship with Mrs Fairfax, and of course in her romantic relationship with her employer which broke all the rules of social hierarchy.

Charlotte Brontë's letter to W S Williams (15 June 1848) reflects on the life of a governess.

Copyright: Brontë Parsonage Museum

A common way for women to find a position as governess was to place or respond to advertisements, as pictured here in The Morning Post newspaper, 1837.

Copyright: Sourced from the British Newspaper Archive

Article from Punch critiquing the governesses' pay and working conditions, 1843.

Passion or self-control?

The novel draws a marked implicit contrast between the strong, self-controlled figure of Jane, and the animalistic qualities of Rochester's first wife, Bertha Mason. But as many critics have shown, there are parallels between the angry child shut in the red room, and the mad wife confined to the attic. Significantly, Jane first sees Bertha in her own mirror, and she refuses to condemn her as Rochester does. The novel was shocking in Rochester's frank descriptions of Bertha's sexuality, and his own debauchery, but it is important to note that the novel also depicts Jane as a heroine with strong desires. When Jane is courted by St John Rivers, she fears that if they married, he would 'scrupulously observe ... all the forms of love' while the spirit was absent: he would offer sex, in other words, without romantic love. Jane feels this would force her 'to burn inwardly and never utter a cry' (ch. 34). Images of passion, and of fire, run through the novel, symbolised most forcibly in the fire that burns down Thornfield. Brontë establishes explicit contrasts between Jane and Bertha, but she also suggests that there are underpinning parallels between these two passionate forms of womanhood.

Edmund Garrett's illustrations to Jane Eyre

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Illustration of Bertha Mason by Edmund H. Garrett, a renowned American illustrator, for an 1897 edition of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

Footnotes

[1] See extracts from Quarterly Review, 84 (December 1848).

[2] An Edition of The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë, ed. by Christine Alexander, 2 vols. (Oxford : Published for the Shakespeare Head Press by Basil Blackwell, 1986), i, pp. 313-4.

[3] See extracts from Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, July 1851, pp. 289-311; The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, with a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends, ed. by Margaret Smith, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), ii, pp. 695-6.

[4] The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, with a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends, ed. by Margaret Smith, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), i, p. 316-7; The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, with a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends, ed. by Margaret Smith, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), ii, pp. 63-6.

Sally Shuttleworth is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, where she specialises in Victorian literature and the inter-relations of literature and science. Her published works include Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology and The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature,Science and Medicine, 1840-1900. She has also published Oxford World's Classics editions of Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey.

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Jane Eyre and the 19th-century woman | The British Library

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Professor Sally Shuttleworth explores how Charlotte Brontë challenges 19th-century conceptions of appropriate female behaviour through the creation of a heroine who works, demands respect and combines self-control with passion and rebellion.

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Fairytale and realism in Jane Eyre

Dr Carol Atherton explores how Charlotte Brontë mixes fantasy with realism in Jane Eyre, making use of fairytale and myth and drawing on the imaginary worlds she and her siblings created as children.

Professor John Bowen explains how Charlotte Brontë combines fairytale, Gothic techniques and realism to give Jane Eyre its unique power. Filmed at the Brontë Parsonage, Haworth.

Read transcript of this video

Jane Eyre is often seen as a profoundly realistic novel, drawing on Charlotte Brontë's own experiences to paint a vivid picture of Jane's suffering at Lowood and her struggle against the narrow role that 19th-century society allotted to women. Nevertheless, the novel also contains a strong element of fantasy. Right from the start - hidden in the window-seat, where she sits, 'cross-legged, like a Turk' - Jane escapes into a world of imagination, losing herself in the wild frozen landscapes of Bewick's History of British Birds, and thinking of the fairytales and ballads told by Bessie, the nurse, on winter evenings. Fantasy is thus established as a counterpoint to Jane's real-life privations, and as a rich source of imagery.

Bewick's The History of British Birds

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Extract from Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds (1797, 1804), showing one of the tiny illustrations Jane Eyre refers to as a child.

Notes on the Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders

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William Henderson's Notes on the Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England (1866) contextualises the fairy and folk references found in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

Rochester

One important strand of fantasy in the novel surrounds Jane's relationship with Rochester, which is shot through with references to myth and fairytale. When Jane encounters Rochester's dog Pilot in Hay Lane, just before she meets Rochester himself, her first thought is of the 'Gytrash', a mythical black dog said to haunt the deserted roads of northern England. Rochester repeatedly refers to Jane as a 'sprite' and a 'fairy', and claims that she 'bewitched' his horse (ch. 13). The paintings that Jane shows to Rochester - of a cormorant perched on a desolate shipwreck, the goddess Selene rising into the sky above Mount Latmos, and a 'colossal head' wreathed in 'turban folds' - are straight out of fantasy, influenced by Brontë's knowledge of the Bible and of Greek mythology (ch.13). And the tale of the poor orphan who overcomes obstacles to marry a rich man can itself be seen as having its roots in fairytale, although what could appear as a simple rags-to-riches story is complicated by Rochester's references to himself as an 'ogre' (ch. 24), the fact that Jane is emphatically not a Beauty, and the troubling fact that in the fairytale canon, the most famous imprisoner of wives is, of course, the murderer Bluebeard.

The Brontës' childhood fantasies

If the realistic elements of Jane Eyre can be traced back to its author's childhood, then so can its more fantastical side. This has its roots in the 'web' of stories woven by the Brontë children. These began, famously, when the Revered Brontë brought home a box of soldiers from a trip to Leeds in 1826. Charlotte described this event in her idiosyncratic spelling in her 'History of the Year':

Emily and I jumped out of bed and I snat[c]hed up one and exclaimed this is the Duke of Wellington it shall be mine!! When I said this Emily likewise took one and said it should be hers when Anne came down she took one also. Mine was the prettiest of the whole and perfect in every part Emilys was a Grave looking ferllow we called him Gravey. Anne's was a queer little thing very much like herself. he was called waiting Boy Branwell chose Bonaparte.

Professor John Bowen and Ann Dinsdale discuss the fantasy worlds of Gondal and Angria, created by the Brontë children, and the lasting influence of these on the sisters' later novels. Filmed at the Brontë Parsonage, Haworth.

Read transcript of this video

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Brontë juvenilia: 'The History of the Young Men'

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Branwell Bronte's account of the toy soldiers from his 'The History of the Young Men', written in 1830.

These soldiers became the basis for the imaginary worlds of Angria and Gondal that absorbed so much of the children's attention. Set in Africa and the South Pacific, and featuring a cast of characters based on contemporary political figures such as Wellington (Charlotte's hero) and Napoleon, and influenced by the writings of Byron and Scott, the Angria stories (created by Charlotte and Branwell) and their Gondal counterparts (the invention of Emily and Anne) were an early education in writing about political intrigue and tempestuous romance. Indeed, critics such as Christine Alexander have argued that they allowed their authors to explore emotions that had few other outlets. They were written up into tiny books and absorbed their authors well into adulthood, occupying a space in their imaginations that was in some ways even more vivid than reality.

As an adult, Charlotte struggled to detach herself from the world of Angria, which increasingly became the possession of Branwell. Nevertheless, many of the fantastical elements of Jane Eyre have their roots in Angria; and the character of Rochester - dark, complex and brooding - is a direct descendant of the Angrian hero the Duke of Zamorna. An awareness of fantasy is, therefore, essential to an understanding of both Jane Eyre and the imagination that shaped it, adding another dimension to a novel that is grounded so firmly in reality.

Brontë juvenilia: Tales

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'Is the Duke of Zamorna sane or insane?': from 'The Spell', a short story focussed on the Zamorna character and written by Charlotte Brontë as part of the Angrian saga. The Duke of Zamorna can be seen as a precedent for Rochester in Jane Eyre.

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Carol Atherton is Head of English at Spalding Grammar School in Lincolnshire. She has worked with a number of organisations, including NATE, the British Library, the Poetry Archive and the British Council, and was made a Fellow of the English Association in 2009. A specialist in literary theory and pedagogy, she has written widely on the teaching of English Literature, curricular reform and the nature of disciplinary knowledge.

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Fairytale and realism in Jane Eyre | The British Library

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Dr Carol Atherton explores how Charlotte Brontë mixes fantasy with realism in Jane Eyre, making use of fairytale and myth and drawing on the imaginary worlds she and her siblings created as children.

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By using this site, you agree we can set and use cookies. For more details of these cookies and how to disable them, see our cookie policy.

Jane Eyre and the rebellious child

Drawing on children's literature, educational texts and Charlotte Brontë's own childhood experience, Professor Sally Shuttleworth looks at the passionate and defiant child of Jane Eyre.

Professor John Bowen and Ann Dinsdale discuss the childhood writings and experiences of the Brontë sisters, exploring how these shaped their later writing in novels such as Jane Eyre. Filmed at the Brontë Parsonage, Haworth.

Read transcript of this video

I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty. (ch. 4)

When Jane Eyre was published in 1847, it introduced a new voice to the world - a passionate, angry and defiant child. There were many passionate children in the moral instruction books designed for children in the early decades of the 19th century, but in these cases, they were examples of bad or sinful behaviour. Such children had to mend their ways, or suffer a terrible fate. In the case of Jane Eyre, however, Charlotte Brontë clearly expected her readers to be on the side of her defiant child as she stands up to adult tyranny.

Fair copy manuscript of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

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Page from the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, 1847, featuring a conversation between Jane, Mr Brocklehurst and Aunt Reed about Jane's behaviour.

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Passion and disobedience

Jane Eyre was one of the first novels that set out to explore what it feels like to be a child: unlike Charles Dickens's slightly earlier work, Oliver Twist (1838), it is recounted by the heroine herself, supposedly in adulthood, but with all the intensity of immediate experience. On the very first page we learn that Jane is set apart from her cousins by her aunt who wants her to acquire 'a more sociable and child-like disposition'. Her aunt clearly has in mind the sort of child depicted in the instruction books for children such as Ellen, or the Naughty Girl Reclaimed (1811) , a picture book with a cut-out dunce's cap. Here a naughty child, who throws away her schoolbook, learns to control herself and to become a quiet, obedient daughter, who is 'anxious her dear mamma to please'. Another example, from Flowers of Instruction (1820), shows an angry child who is jealously attacking her little sister or brother, but learns from her mother to control 'passion's angry storm'. Children who did not control themselves could descend, it was warned, into a life of crime, or even worse, medical books suggested, into complete mania in adulthood.

Flowers of Instruction

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The children's book Flowers of Instruction (1820) depicts an angry child who jealously attacks her siblings, but learns from her mother to control 'passion's angry storm'.

Unlike these naughty children from the morally improving literature, Jane is a defiant child, who is fully convinced of the rightness of her rebellion. She likens her mood to that of a 'rebel slave' with her 'heart in insurrection' (ch. 2). Subtle connections in language are thus created with the figure of Rochester's ' mad wife', who we will meet later on, who is of mixed race, and from the slave-owning West Indies. In her anger and passion, Jane is far removed from the conventional model of the Victorian child who should be 'seen and not heard'. Instead, she is part of new, emerging, more sympathetic attitudes to childhood, which stressed that adults should pay attention to the feelings and sufferings of children. They were not just blank slates until adulthood, but capable of even more intense emotional suffering than adults. In her book, Household Education (1849), the writer Harriet Martineau noted that it had not been fully understood how much a child can suffer from fear, and few parents 'know anything of the agonies of its little heart, the spasms of its nerves, the soul-sickness of its days, the horrors of its nights'. Her description of her own terror of a magic lantern, and the shadows it cast, offers remarkable parallels with Jane's terror of the flickering light when she is locked in the red room. (ch. 10, Care of the Powers - Fear)

Lowood and the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge

When Jane is sent away to school by her aunt, she hopes her life will improve, but she is mistaken. Lowood Institution is partly based on the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, which Charlotte Brontë attended with her older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, and younger sister Emily, in 1824-25. Maria and Elizabeth died of consumption, contracted at the school, and there was also an outbreak of typhus while Charlotte was there, which clearly helped to colour her memories of Cowan Bridge. When the Reverend Brontë sent his daughters there, however, he had every reason to believe it would be a good school, and indeed it was not that different from other similar institutions. Lowood Institution, as depicted by Brontë, was harsh, but far removed from the dreadful Yorkshire school, Dotheboys Hall, in Dickens's novel Nicholas Nickleby (1839). The dominating Mr Brocklehurst was partly based on the evangelical clergyman, the Reverend Carus Wilson, who ran Cowan Bridge. The 'Child's Guide' Brocklehurst gives to Jane, which contained 'an account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G---, a naughty child addicted to falsehood and deceit' (ch. 4) is no doubt based on some of Carus Wilson's own publications, either Child's First Tales (1836), or his magazine, The Children's Friend, which both carried many tales of children who were struck down dead if they flew into a passion, or told lies. Brocklehurst makes Jane stand on a stool in front of the class and orders her classmates to shun her because she is a liar. The novelist Elizabeth Sewell recalls how, at her school in the 1820s, girls who told a lie were made to stand in a black gown with a picture of a liar's tongue round their neck. (Sewell, Autobiography, 1907, pp. 13-14) The main idea behind these harsh measures was that if the body was punished, the soul could be saved. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë challenges these notions, and instead offers a deeply sympathetic portrayal of a rebellious child, which helped to transform Victorian attitudes to the child.

The Friendly Visitor, written by the Brontë sisters's headmaster

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This book by the Brontës' headmaster tells numerous tales of children who are struck down dead after flying into a passion or telling lies.

Advertisement for the Clergy Daughters' School (column 3) that was attended by the Brontë sisters from 1824.

Copyright: Sourced from the British Newspaper Archive

'Child in a Pet' from Child's First Tales by William Carus Wilson, Charlotte Brontë's headmaster, about a child who 'was in such a rage, that all at once God struck her dead'.

Moral lessons for young children from Sarah Trimmer's early 19th century Charity School Spelling Book, teaching that 'rude' children will be physically punished.

Sally Shuttleworth is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, where she specialises in Victorian literature and the inter-relations of literature and science. Her published works include Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology and The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature,Science and Medicine, 1840-1900. She has also published Oxford World's Classics editions of Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jane Eyre and the rebellious child | The British Library

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Drawing on children's literature, educational texts and Charlotte Brontë's own childhood experience, Professor Sally Shuttleworth looks at the passionate and defiant child of Jane Eyre.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Professor John Bowen explores the character of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre, revealing the depths of her character and the context in which Charlotte Brontë created her. Filmed at the Brontë Parsonage, Haworth. Explore more films, together with thousands of Victorian and Romantic literary treasures, at the British Library's Discovering Literature website - http://www.bl.uk/discovering-literature.

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The Brontës' early writings: Combining fantasy and fact

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Professor John Bowen and Ann Dinsdale discuss the fantasy worlds of Gondal and Angria, created by the Brontë children, and the lasting influence of these on the sisters' later novels. Filmed at the Brontë Parsonage, Haworth. Explore more films, together with thousands of Victorian and Romantic literary treasures, at the British Library's Discovering Literature website - http://www.bl.uk/discovering-literature.

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