Jane Eyre
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The novel is an art form. It allows the author to develop their social and moral opinions in a way that no other literary genre allows them to. Within the novel, the author can expand and detail their thoughts, values and beliefs through their characters. In other genres, such as poetry or short stories, authors are not allowed the time or space to develop ideas. Novels also allow the author to comment on or respond to new ideas in society. Charlotte Bronte did this with her novel Jane Eyre commenting on ideas including love, social class and gender. Jane Eyre allowed Bronte to develop her ideas and opinions about her society at the time thoroughly. Another author who uses the art form of the novel is Bram Stoker, with his novel Dracula. Stoker makes known his anxieties and the anxieties that characterised his age: the repercussions of scientific advancement and the dangers of female sexuality.
Jane Eyre discusses the idea of love verses autonomy. It is very much the story of a quest to be loved. Jane struggles continually to achieve equality and to overcome oppression and fight against patriarchal domination–against those who believe women to be inferior to men and try to treat them as such. Jane searches, not just for romantic love, but also for a sense of being valued, of belonging. Her fear of losing her autonomy motivates her refusal of Rochesters marriage proposal. Jane believes that “marrying” Rochester while he remains legally tied to Bertha, Rochesters first wife would mean rendering herself a mistress and sacrificing her own integrity for the sake of emotional gratification. Only after proving her self-sufficiency to herself can she marry Rochester and not be asymmetrically dependent upon him as her “master.” The marriage can be one between equals (1). As Jane says: “I am my husbands life as fully as he is mine. . . . To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. . . . We are precisely suited in character–perfect concord is the result” (2). The idea of a woman turning down marriage was controversial at the time. Women were supposed to marry and stay in the home. For a woman to choose independence over marriage was radical. Jane feels the need to find her independence, away from a man, in order to truly be happy within a marriage. Once she has done that, she is able to return to Rochester and feel content with their love. In her character doing this, Bronte
Brian Phillips, Sparknote on Jane Eyre.
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre.
is making it clear that she feels as though women should feel completely free before entering marriage. Brontes novel allows her to discuss this new idea, as the entire story revolves around Jane finding true autonomy.
Jane Eyre is critical of Victorian Englands strict social hierarchy. Jane is a figure of ambiguous class standing and, consequently, a source of extreme tension for the characters around her. Janes manners, sophistication, and education are those of an aristocrat, because Victorian governesses, who tutored children in etiquette as well as academics, were expected to possess the “culture” of the aristocracy. Yet, as paid employees, they were more or less treated as servants; thus, Jane remains penniless and powerless while at Thornfield. Janes understanding of the double standard crystallizes when she becomes aware of her feelings for Rochester; she is his intellectual, but not his social equal (3). Jane herself speaks out against class prejudice at moments in the book. For example, in Chapter 23 she chastises Rochester: “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!” (4). These double standards of class are what Bronte is lashing out at.
(3) Brian Phillips.
(4) Charlotte Bronte.
Her heroine rebels against social exclusion, in a society which treats class as a fundamental category of identity (5). Janes society reflects Brontes society and with her novel, Bronte is able to respond to class distinctions and her feelings of them.
Stoker uses his novel to voice his opinion on the “Consequences of Modernity”. Early in the novel, as Harker becomes uncomfortable with his lodgings and his host at Castle Dracula, he notes that “unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere modernity cannot kill.” (6). Here Harker voices one of the central concerns of the Victorian era. The end of the nineteenth century brought drastic developments that forced English society to question the systems of belief that had governed it for centuries. Darwins theory of evolution, for instance, called the validity of long-held sacred religious doctrines into question. Likewise, the Industrial Revolution brought profound economic and social change to the previously agrarian England. Though Stoker begins his novel in a ruined castle he soon moves the action to Victorian London, where the advancements of modernity are largely responsible for the ease with which the count preys upon English society (7). Stoker uses the novel Dracula to address the idea of technology in the Victorian era. Technology was a daunting thing, in which
(5) Bosche Vanden and Chris R., What did Jane Eyre do? Agency, the Class and the Novel, Narrative, Jan 2005, Vol. 13, Issue 1, p.46-66.
(6) Bram Stoker, Dracula.
(7) Ross Douthat and David Hobson, Sparknote on Dracula
many people got caught up in. Stoker was writing Dracula to serve as somewhat of a warning to people, that they must not forget the fundamental beliefs that underlie society, or otherwise great evil will prevail.
The topic of female sexuality was overtly present in the Brams novel. Most critics agree that Dracula is, as much as anything else, a novel that indulges