Jane Eyre Research Paper

In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë portrays the title character as a strong woman who rises from humble beginnings, which includes struggling through both poverty and abuse, and this depiction of the lower class is a key characteristic of Victorian Literature. Brontë further utilizes the old battle between right and wrong to depict Jane as a virtuous and morally courageous woman. Victorian era England may have been a thriving, newly industrialized empire, but the struggle of the lower class society was a theme echoed throughout Victorian Literature, and especially exemplified in Jane Eyre. Jane, the main character of Brontë’s novel, is an orphan hailing from an abusive home and, after escaping to a destitute Lowood school for orphans for 8 years,

The upper class who visit this estate immediately look down on her for being the governess of the property, “My Dearest, don’t mention governesses, the word makes me nervous. I have suffered a martyrdom from their incompetency and caprice,” (Brontë 179). The classism that Jane faces it not only exemplified by her profession, but also her appearance, “I am a judge of physiognomy, and in hers I see all the faults of her class,” (Brontë 179). However, Jane is an independent woman, a free thinker, and does not easily succumb to the values of the upper class, and believes her own morals to be true rather than the broken values of society, “Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!” (Brontë 257). Jane eventually falls in love with the owner of the estate, Mr. Rochester, who is tiers above her in class, and this situation further expresses the differences in class during the Victorian era. At first, their love is forbidden, because of the vast class difference between the two of them, “I feel akin to him, -- I understand the language of his countenance and movements, though rank and wealth sever us widely,” (Brontë 178), but also because of Rochester’s impending marriage to Blanche Ingram, “I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons,” (Brontë