Feminine Agency in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: A Review

Art and writing by Nayantara Maitra Chakravarty

“ Do you think I am an automaton? – a machine without feelings? And can bear to have a morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drops of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!”

‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Bronte is a romance set in the Victorian era. It would, however, be a disservice to the novel to limit it to the genre of romance – It is, in reality, a radical story of a strong female character navigating through the obstacles posed by a predominantly patriarchal society. Considered to be one of the cornerstones of feminist literature, Jane Eyre holds you from beginning to end and has elements of comedy, romance action and suspense. Feminist critic Elaine Showalter categorises Jane Eyre as a “classic feminine novel” with a few “explicit feminist passages.”

From the very beginning, Jane is set apart not by her looks but by her intellect and emotional prowess. Though ‘plain’ she is ‘strong-willed’, ‘passionate’ and ‘outspoken’. She shuns a life of convenience and conformity, in the pursuit of true love and equality, and breaks the social conventions of her age. The novel ‘Jane Eyre’ was unique and pioneering in its depiction of women and their place in society. This portrayal makes Bronte’s work revolutionary in its representation of women and their role in society.

In juxtaposition to Jane, stands Mr. Rochester, a rude impetuous man with a secret. Though at first one might think of him as the quintessential Byronic hero, when placed across Jane, he serves as a foil to her character. He is often self-pitying and manipulative, thus accentuating Jane’s tenacity and independent spirit.

Perhaps what is most interesting to me is the character of Bertha Mason, who is “morally insane”. Showalter writes: “the mad wife locked in the attic symbolizes the passionate and sexual side of Jane’s personality, an alter ego that her upbringing, her religion, and her society have commanded her to incarcerate”. In fact Bertha became the inspiration behind Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert’s famous work on 19th – century female writers titled “The Mad Woman in the Attic”.  In bringing in the character of Bertha, I feel that Charlotte Bronte brings the treatment and concealment of mental health issues to light as well and the solution employed of simply locking the person away.

Jane chooses to come to Mr. Rochester on her own terms in the end, when he himself is in greater need of her and she is a financially independent woman, thus reinforcing her agency and subverting traditional gender- led power dynamics.

In an era characterised by the subjugation of women, Charlotte Bronte writes about a woman who believes in her autonomy, and refuses to be marginalised by her class and gender. Though written in the Victorian era, this is an enduringly relevant not just for women. This compelling read is definitely worthy of a place on your bookshelf.

works cited:

The Bronte Sisters Complete Works, Wordsworth Editions, 2008.

Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own : British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton, N.J. :Princeton University Press, 1999.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Yale University Press, 2020.