Manipulation In Jane Eyre

The female body's manipulation in Jane Eyre increases the significance of women's feelings and furthers the ways in which women's objectivity affects their gender and societal roles. The patriarchal Victorian culture of the 19th century is depicted by Jane Eyre's concentration on the various critiques of the female body. Brontë portrays women in the book as complex beings who are restrained and bound by society standards in their respective positions. However, the intersection of class and gender provides an engaging look into how class plays a role in the fluctuating degrees of the freedom certain women have whilst still being oppressed by the patriarchy. MAYBE MENTION FEMALE SILNCE AS A REPRESENTATION OF MANIPULATION OF FEMALE BODIES maybe

Although she is treated by Mrs Reed as a person beneath Jane, and treats her as a working-class person, Jane is never seen to be a working-class girl. She is raised alongside other middle-class children in a middle-class household, it is the mindset that those at Gateshead have that separate Jane from the other children. Her treatment from a societal standpoint as the daughter of a woman who chose to lower her class for a man, seems to be the root of the dislike of Jane for Mrs Reed who reinforces class expectations through passing it down to the younger generation of her children. When John Reed argues with young Jane, he calls her a ‘dependent’ (footnote) and implies that she is stealing from the family, alienating Jane further as an orphan but also as a young girl trying to establish her place in

By viewing Bertha as Jane’s foil provides a view of Jane’s outbursts of emotion. Bronte presents similarities between the two through use of animal comparisons. In her younger years, John Reed called Jane a ‘rat’ and Bessie compares her to a ‘mad cat’ in response to Jane’s outburst after being hit by the book. Highlighting how easy it is to dehumanise women for being loud or showing any kind of emotion that is not what Victorian society deem as appropriate. This parallels Bertha’s upbringing, told by Rochester in Chapter… give Bertha more of a backstory. The history of mental illness in Bertha’s family, paired with her father’s abuse towards her is like the trauma Jane experienced in her younger years. Both women navigate their lives and shape their personalities from these experiences. This outburst and Jane’s subsequent confinement to the red room parallels Bertha’s confinement to the third-floor room in Thornhill, hidden away from the world as Rochester deems her as a risk to his