Impact of Society of Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre Essay -- Jane Eyre E

Impact of Society on Jane Eyre  Ã‚        Ã‚   For the middle classes, the years preceding the publication of Jane Eyre were a time of turbulence and change from which the family provided a haven of stability and security. At the center of the family stood the "Angel at the hearth" - a Madonna-like wife and mother from whom all morality sprang. Not everyone agreed but the conception was supported by mainstream political and religious beliefs, and girls were taught that they should aspire not [to] self will, and government by self control, but submission, and yielding to the control of others, to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections. Despite some social reforms and widespread debate about the role of women, the idea was tenacious. Soon after Jane Eyre was published, while John Stuart Mill wrote of "a principal of perfect equality" for men and women, Mrs Lynne Linton complained that the Girl of the Period was excessively forward and independent, comparing badly with the "simple and genuine girl of the past". Many of the middle classes agreed, but not all, and by the end of the century the Girl of the Period had matured into the "New Woman", a predatory figure who rejected marriage, advocated contraception and wanted independence through paid work. To those like Mrs Linton who supported the status quo this represented a state of anarchy. If society was built upon the family, which in turn depended upon a particular role for woman, to change that role was to threaten the whole structure of society. Novels and periodicals, widely read at the time, offered a good medium in which to debate the "women's question", since the fate meted to characters... ...: Linton, E Lynn, "The Girl of the Period", Saturday Review, 14 March 1868 Mill, John Stuart, The subjection of women, (Everyman edition, 1965) Lerner, Laurence (ed), The context of English Literature; the Victorians, (Methuen and Co Ltd, 1978) Miles, Rosalind, The fiction of sex, (Vision Press Ltd, 1974) Stoker, Bram, Dracula, (Pan books, 1992) Internet articles: Jackson, Mark, The position of middle class women as a context for Bronte's Jane Eyre, (http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/victorian/cbronte/73cbwomen.htm) Landow, George P, In what sense is Jane Eyre a feminist novel? (http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/victorian/cbronte/brontel.html) Steyer, PJ, Jane Eyre, Protofeminist, versus the "third person man" (http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/victorian/cbronte/steyer7.html