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Jane Eyre and Women of 19th Century Victorian England

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The Bronte's are considered important women writers of the early Victorian era. The novel "Jane Eyre" which was published in 1847, under the masculine pen name "Currer Bell" successfully portrays the position of women in 19th century Victorian England. The very fact that Charlotte Bronte uses the name Currer Bell rather than her true name gives us the idea of the status of women in that society in which she wasn't sure of the acceptance of a woman writer in Victorian England, since Victorian women are supposed to be modest and full of propriety. With a close examination of the novel " Jane Eyre" we comprehend that there are several themes woven around the story as love and passion, gender and independence, social class, education, appearance and reality, nature and dreams and the supernatural. Thus we find gender and independence to be the major theme of the novel where Charlotte Bronte successfully depicts her intentions through the portrayal of her protagonist Jane as her radical heroine to manifest a contradictory character to the conventional Victorian woman. In her detailing of the position of women in the 19th century Victorian England, Charlotte Bronte does not limit herself in discussing the expected qualities or characteristics and duties of a woman, Hence she proceeds in giving a picture of the expected appearance of a Victorian ideal woman while painting Jane to be unattractive, simple and plain. "I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer: I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and a small cherry mouth: I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and features so irregular and so marked." The lines above reveals us of the fact that Jane doesn't possess a considerably admirable beauty in appearance. As Felicia Gordon in her book "A Preface to the Bronte's" says ; "Not only is Jane a dangerous egalitarian, her appearance also is a radical departure from the feminine ideal of the period and allows the reader to see how far Charlotte had developed her ideas from the conventional beauties o the juvenilia." According to the book ladies incorporated white hands, drooping curls and a graceful neck as Blanche Ingram and Rosamund Oliver represents this physical ideal of women in 19th century Victorian England. Jane on the contrary is physically small and plain with no brilliant complexion. Even though her quality lies within her spirit, she bitterly resents her phy

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