The Role of Women in Modern English Novels

Abstract

The protagonist, Jane Eyre, of Jane Eyre, a novel by Charlotte Bront, rebels against gender stereotypes.  Charlotte Bronte spoke out against women's oppression through Jane Eyre.  The novel's central theme is a perspective on God; the freedom to choose or alter one's fate and achieve one's ambitions is crucial to a woman's happiness.  Achieving equality by believing in one's humanity requires individualism, the bedrock of independent personhood.  For all the passionate debates throughout history, the foundational principles of justice and morality have always been women's inherent dignity and autonomy.  The general agreement was that God created women to be subservient to men and entirely inferior to them.  Despite this, Jane Eyre defends the uniqueness of every person's spirit as an essential component of human worth.  Bront's views on women as independent beings are shown to be contradictory in paratextual readings of the work.  In the beginning, we see reason and religion lauded as the foundation for moral conduct, the pathways to equality and individuality.  Jane Eyre expresses herself throughout the book as a free and autonomous person, a voice that not even patriarchal institutions can censor.