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Lily Lamb
Mrs. Bouch
AP English Literature
8 March 2021
Jane Eyre: A Feminist Message for the Victorian Age

In Virginia Woolf’s feminist essay A Room of One’s Own, she makes the claim “towards

the end of the eighteenth century a change came about which, if I were rewriting history, I

should describe more fully and think of greater importance than the Crusades or the Wars of the

Roses. The middle-class woman began to write.” The significance of the rise of the female,

middle-class author which Woolf here refers to is primely represented in Charlotte Bronte’s 1847

novel, Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre was groundbreaking, unique, and “of greater importance than the

Crusades,” for the simple fact that it boldly exposed the various gender and class oppressions

experienced by the women of the Victorian Age. Of course, in exposing the unique sufferings of

middle-class women during a time when both politics and art were dominated by men, Bronte’s

work echoed many of the similar complaints and subsequently the messages of the early feminist

movement, occurring around the same time as publication. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

expressed and defended the feminist values of the movement in the Victorian age, however as

society and feminism have since developed, the feminist message of Jane Eyre has become more

limited and outdated.

In the Victorian Age, the feminist movement was in its earliest stages, with the main goals of

changing the societal perception of women and earning them the most basic legal equality with

men. During the Victorian Age, women were seen as fundamentally inferior to men, and were

thus restricted by laws and social standards in ways which were in line with this standing (Gao).

For instance, it was during the Victorian Age that the idea of the “Separate Spheres” of men and
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women was at its most popular. This idea interpreted men as being universally confident and

competitive while women were fundamentally gentle, caring, and self-sacrificing. The respective

social spheres of men and women reflected their supposedly innate qualities, where men were

expected to leave the home and enter the public sphere in order to work, earn money, and make

their ways in the world. Women, on the other hand, were limited to the private sphere, and

expected to fill the roles of homemaker and mother. This understanding of women as innately

limited creatures also affected laws of the time. Under the law women were practically helpless,

unable to hold property, unable to vote, and, at the point of marriage, wholly dependent on their

husband’s decisions (Nsaidzedze). As it was, the primary concerns of the First Wave Feminists

were to address the popular understanding of women as weak, and to change the laws which

came with this understanding. A main facet of First Wave Feminism, the women’s suffrage

movement, makes this much clear--in Victorian England the suffragettes were mainly upper and

middle-class women who wished to challenge the idea that domestic life was sufficient,

emotionally, for women (“Feminism During”). Barbara Boudichon, an early English feminist

operating in the 1850s, led a suffragette group whose goals included “improved female rights in

the law, employment, education, and marriage” (“Feminism During”). Though the culmination

of First Wave Feminism came with the Voting Act of 1918, which finally gave women in

England (over the age of thirty) the right to vote, the feminists also had a number of smaller legal

successes during the 19th century. A law from 1852 made it so men could no longer force their

wives to live with them, in 1857 the (legally) divorced women got the right to keep her share of

the property under the Matrimonial Causes Act, and finally, in 1870, came the first of the

Married Woman’s Property Acts. The first Act secured the rights of married women to hold and

inherit money and property independent of their husband, and these basic rights expanded under
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future iterations of the act (“Married Women’s”). In general, these early successes in affirming

basic legal rights, earned the feminists a success and jumping off point for future campaigns

(Married). Jane Eyre was written and published right at the advent of First Wave Feminism, and

thus the contemporary expectations of women, as well as the goals and attitudes of the women

trying to break them, can be seen and marked throughout its text.

Jane Eyre is in many ways a product of Victorian feminism, given the way Jane’s personal

values and goals align with those of the First Wave Feminist movement. One of the clearest ties

to the Victorian feminist movement is Jane’s personal belief in equality. Throughout her life and

the novel, Jane’s stubborn demand for equality and justice is one of her most defining features as

a character. Jane’s earliest fight for equality comes while she is living at Gateshead with her

negligent Aunt Reed and abusive cousin John. At Gateshead, Jane experiences a number of

injustices, such as the bullying of John, the arbitrary hate of Aunt Reed, and the cruel

punishment of being locked in the Red Room (Bronte 14-45). During the final argument between

Jane and her aunt—after Jane’s last traumatizing stay in the Red Room and shortly before her

departure from Gateshead—shows Jane impassionedly defending herself with the words: “you

think I have no feelings, and that I can live without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live

so; and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back… though I was in agony;

though I cried out, while suffocating with distress” (Bronte 45-46). Though here Jane is rallying

against a general injustice, and not an injustice of the laws under a patriarchal society, the line

and situation still reveal an underlying association with First Wave Feminism which is essential

to Jane’s character. This is the first moment in Jane’s life where she really stands up for herself

and asserts her own opinion; the situation is repeated time and again in the rest of the novel as

Jane goes on to face greater foes such as hypocritical Mr. Brocklehurst and the self-centered Mr.
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Rochester, yet this case is the first. As such, Jane’s fight with Mrs. Reed shows that she has been

awakened to the injustice of the world and singularly refused to accept it; similarly, First Wave

Feminism represented the first general outcry against the oppression of women, which from this

awakening would grow and spread both through this wave and eventually into a greater,

centuries long movement. The next stage of Jane’s development as an activist is highlighted in

her moralistic face-off against the oppressive and hypocritical Mr. Brocklehurst. As she is still

only a young girl at the time of their association, Jane never asserts herself directly against Mr.

Brocklehurst, yet she remains distinctly aware of the ways in which Brocklehurst mistreats the

girls—as in the poor quality of their food, the unfair expectations for their appearances, and the

hypocritical application of his religous beliefs—and is upset by them (Bronte 72-100). Even if

Jane is dependent upon higher authority figures like Miss Temple and Lowood’s board of

directors to actually take the actions against Brocklehurst and make the changes in

administration which she deems necessary, by recognizing the need for reforms at Lowood, Jane

again acts as a microcosm for the larger Victorian feminist movement—particularly in their

attempts to reform the laws to benefit women, as these were reforms the feminists themselves

obviously had no power to actually bring present or vote on (Gao). Finally, like the Victorian

feminists, Jane focuses with particular intensity on the equality of marriage, even if Jane’s

concerns are specifically for herself. To establish intellectual equality, Jane directly asserts

herself against Mr. Rochester, her future husband, on numerous occasions. In its earliest stages

of their relationship, Jane repeatedly asserts herself and holds to her own opinions in her evening

conversations with Rochester, refusing to be put on a different level from him because of her sex

or social standing (Bronte 163-165). Later, once the secret of Mr. Rochester’s marriage to Bertha

has been revealed, Jane similarly asserts her independence and self-dignity with the line “I care
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for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained, I am, the more I will

respect myself” (Bronte 369). Even Jane’s ultimate marriage to Rochester reflects her desire for

equality—Jane refuses to marry Rochester until their relationship is able to be founded in

emotional and social equality. Emotional equality, as she only finally marries Rochester once all

of his dark secrets have been revealed and resolved; and social equality, as by the time Jane

returns to Rochester, she has been made a wealthy heiress, and thus in marrying Rochester will

not risk becoming his dependent or pet (Bronte 503-519). As Jane desires and demands equality

in her personal relationship with Rochester, so the feminists fought for the legal, social, and

monetary rights all married women to own money and assert themselves against their husbands

as equals. Thus through the individual fights Jane picks on her personal mission against injustice,

Jane reflects the development, values, progression, and goals of the early feminist movement

itself—but, not so much its later stages.

In so fully embodying the First Wave of the feminist movement, Jane Eyre in certain ways

falls short as a feminist novel for the modern age. Since the time of the publication of Jane Eyre,

feminism has developed through its second, third, and even fourth waves. The concept of

feminism itself has changed along with these waves—and changed significantly. First wave

feminism was championed mainly among the upper and middle class white women of Western

countries such as Great Britain and America (“Feminism During”). In later generations of

feminism, this trend shifts, and feminism evolves to include women of all different ethnicities,

classes, races, and sexualities. Even the perception feminists had of their own issues shifted,

meaning a new recognition that “race, class, and gender oppression are all related” (Rampton).

Though the general inclusion to feminism has expanded over time, so have the goals and ideals

of the feminists. These changes have been so broad that in recent years the very term feminism
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has come under questioning—not because the movement is being abandoned by the latest

generation of women, but because their aims have shifted so much away from the old form of us

vs. them, woman centered feminism. Feminism today means not so much fighting for the image

of women in society, but achieving complete gender equity across society, regardless of race,

class, gender, or sexuality (Rampton). This same expansion, and potential ambiguity, represents

exactly why Jane Eyre struggles to assert itself as a feminist novel for the modern age.

Though Jane is confident, bold, and committed to earning her personal independence and

equality, the novel suffers in comparison to modern intersectional feminism in its treatment of

Bertha Mason. In almost every case, Jane fails to build up or support the lunatic, “creole” Bertha,

Mr. Rochester’s neglected first wife. The tone of the novel as a whole addresses Bertha as little

more than a monster or an animal—though this likely has more to do with the novel’s Gothic

elements than Bronte’s personal view of the mentally ill (Bronte 342). However, the fact remains

that to a modern feminist in Jane’s place, or even to a modern feminist in Bronte’s audience,

Bertha in actuality would not be viewed a monstrous other, as simply an obstacle to Jane’s

happiness with Rochester, but as a fellow sufferer under the standards of a patriarchal and ableist

society. True intersectionality would seem to call that Bertha’s be sympathized with both for

being a woman who was helpless but to be locked away in her own attic by her husband under

the marriage laws of the Victorian Age, but also, fundamentally, as a person facing unique and

valid struggles as a mentally ill woman of ambiguous racial background (Hawk). The feature

issue with both Jane and Bronte’s treatment of Bertha is her function as an unfortunate obstacle

to Jane’s future happiness with Rochester. Bertha is a key point to revealing Rochester’s wider

shortcomings, assuredly, yet Jane will still eventually return to Rochester once he has resolved

his self-centered attitudes and immaturity—a change which only occurs thanks to Bertha’s
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destruction of Thornfield and subsequent suicide (Bronte 494). Though Jane herself is the

epitome of female confidence and independence in literature, though her personal confidence

and stubbornness are a commendable model for and representation of the larger efforts of the

Victorian feminist movement, Jane Eyre’s status as a feminist novel remains questionable by

modern standards. Though Jane is so perfect an example of the earliest stages of feminism, she is

subsequently blind to the suffering of those even more oppressed than herself, and thus negligent

of the intersectional values and aims of the modern, fourth wave feminist.

Charlotte Bronte uses both her novel and character, Jane Eyre, to unique effect in expressing,

and championing, the values, struggles, and successes of the earliest feminist movement. Though

to modern readers, and to modern views of equality, the novel has certain critical flaws of

contents and tone, the message which Bronte particularly championed is still strong. Jane Eyre

teaches about the value of self-dignity, hard work, and independence and the ways these

particular values can help to achieve wider and grander goals of justice. This message, despite all

the years, remains clear, and remains valuable. In fighting for social change and betterment, the

first step—the simplest yet most important—is to secure change and betterment to ones own self.

Social change may come in small steps, and social change may take decades to fully achieve, yet

with strong values, strong leaders, and strong models, the greatest of changes remain possible.
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Works Cited

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Barnes & Noble Books, 2005.

"Feminism During Victorian Era". Victorian Era, http://victorian-era.org/feminism-victorian-

era.html.

Gao, Haiyan. "Reflections on Feminism in Jane Eyre". Theory and Practice in Language

Studies, Vol. 3, No. 6, Academy Publisher, June 2013,

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9d8e/49eab258d7cb99dd7aa9b580c6926fcdbbe3.pdf.

Hawk, Taylor. "What is "Intersectional Feminism"?". Denison University, 26 June 2016,

https://denison.edu/academics/womens-gender-studies/feature/67969.

"Married Women's Property Act 1870". Intriguing History, 4 January 2012, https://intriguing-

history.com/married-womens-property-act/.

Nsaidzedze, Ignatius. "An Overview of Feminism in the Victorian Period [1832-1901]".

American Research Journal of English and Literature, Vol. 3, No. 1, American Research

Journals, 2017.

Rampton, Martha. "Four Waves of Feminism". Pacific University, Oregon, 2008,

https://www.pacificu.edu/magazine/four-waves-feminism.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1989.