Explore, and account for, Bronties presentation of characters in conflict with society in the novel Jane Eyre.

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Thomas Griffiths        English Coursework        29-06-03

Explore, and account for, Bronties presentation of characters in conflict with society in the novel Jane Eyre.

In this essay I will explore and account how Bronte presents her characters in conflict with society in Jane Eyre. To do this I will show a number of times in her life when she gets into conflict with society and she doesn’t fit in. These times are the red room incident, the party and Thornfield Hall and the marriage with Rochester. I will be looking at how Bronte uses techniques to make it clear to the reader how her characters are in conflict. I will also look at how Mr Rochester and Bertha Mason conflict with society.

During the first few chapters we begin to understand that Jane does not fit into the family she is living with and isn’t an ordinary girl. We can see that she does not fit in with the family because she is excluded from the group and is bullied by John. The conflict with society in this case is because she is in a class that she doesn’t belong, other people are in conflict with her because she is different. The family all know that Jane’s parents where dead and that she depends on them for everything.. Women during that time where considered inferior to men and were not given many of the rights they have today. A woman would not have anything that belonged to her and when she got married anything she did have was her husband’s. Jane was an orphan and was living off her Aunt, this is why she is disliked in the house so much. She defended herself against one of John Reeds usual attacks and was punished by being put into the Red Room. A modern reading of Jane Eyre would suggest that the Red Room incident was in a way trying to suppress Jane’s sexuality. The room she is put into scares Jane and she seems to think it is haunted; words like ‘dark’ ‘broken reflections’ ‘seldom entered’ and ‘remote’ all suggest a feeling of loneliness and helplessness. This suggests repressed sexuality because of how lonely it is, she can’t express herself with anyone and is very isolated. The colour of the room suggested how Jane feels as she is put into the room ‘red damask’ ‘crimson cloth’ ‘blush of pink’ are all red colours. Red is the colour of anger, passion, blood and sexuality. This is one of the first accounts that we can obviously see Jane's true character - courageous, passionate and unusually strong feelings about justice and morality from an early age. In the Red Room Jane begins to scare herself by imagining a ghost was in the room, she screamed for help and then collapsed.

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After the Red Room incident Jane becomes ill and tells her doctor that she wishes to go to school. The owner of the school, Mr Brocklehurst, intimidates Jane very much and is quite a cruel and old fashioned man. We can see this by several references made by Jane just on his appearance ‘Black pillar’ ‘carved like a mask’ ‘base voice’ these all suggest an intimidating man who would seem very frightening  to Jane who is still only about ten years old. He is a very self righteous man, we know this because he boats about how disciplined his ...

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