Jane Eyre - Task 1

1.      Class- a number of persons or things regarded as forming a group by reason of common attributes, characteristics, qualities or sort.

Feminism- Feminism is a diverse collection of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies. Some versions are critical of past and present social relations. Feminist theory aims to understand the nature of gender inequality and focuses on gender politics, power relations and sexuality. Feminism is also based on experiences of gender roles and relations.

Gender- Gender refers to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female and the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations between women and those between men.

Ideology- refers to the way in which people think about the world and their ideal concept of how to live in the world.

2.       

Ø  The author thanks everyone who had a hand in her book and who helped her, because she published it under a man’s name, Currer Bell.

Ø  She makes a correction to the people who thought her book means something that it is not.

Ø  She defends her book, because there are people who don’t like it.

Ø  She makes it clear “I repeat it” (Currer Bell, preface) that there is a difference. They must not get it wrong and judge her book, because she’s a woman.

Ø  I think that she is very thankful that she got it right to publish her book under the name of a man.

Ø  The author answers some of the questions about the novel that the reader asks and didn’t realise.

3.     

 Jane Eyre is written by a female and it can be seen in the way the book is written from a woman’s perspective, “the heroine is the image of a woman’s heart” (Rigby, 449). “Mr. Rochester’s character is tolerably consistent. He is made as coarse and as brutal as can in all conscience be required to keep our sympathies at a distance” (Rigby, 451). The author is a feminist so she writes about all her bad experiences of men and in that way she turns the reader also against them. Later Jane marries him and then the reader’s perspective change when he becomes the hero. Jane is not happy with the fact that only men can do what they want and get advantage in situations and women can’t. “No one would think that she owed anything either to God above or to man below” (Rigby, 452). She is a very strong feminist and she refuses to do what the usual women had to do in those years.

For the middle class people this book was unacceptable and Jane didn’t follow the moral rules. For them it is vulgar and it transgresses the rules of God. “She has inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen nature - the sin of pride” (Rigby, 452). Jane transgresses the rules that was in those years (Victorian class) seen as “right”. “Mr. Rochester is a man who deliberately and secretly seeks to violate the laws both of God and man, and yet we will be bound half our lady readers are enchanted with him for a model of generosity and honour” (Rigby, 451). It had upset the Victorian class people that although a man doesn’t appear moral, the girls still like it. It was seen as wrong for them. “We would have thought that such a hero had had no chance…but the popularity of Jane Eyre is a proof how deeply the love for illegitimate romance is implanted in our nature” (Rigby, 451). They believed that a woman shouldn’t fall for a man who has not moral values, but in this book the women like it. The readers and was disgusted about the book and Brontë illustrates this in the article.