Look at Different Female Characters in the Novel. What roles were available to Victorian women?

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Look at Different Female Characters in the Novel.  What roles were available to Victorian women?

Jane Eyre was published in 1847, at the height of the nineteenth century.  At the time, many people believed that the liberation of women would threaten and disrupt the traditional institution of home and family.  Jane Eyre proclaims the equality of a governess.  It is the first novel that allows women the opportunity to break away from conventional society and follow their own desires.  It is also the first book in which the role of women in life was seriously explored and questioned and because of this, the novel which brought Charlotte Bronte worldwide criticism.  Many people claimed that Jane Eyre had an “extreme, radicalist image”, was highly inappropriate and encouraged women to rebel against the conventional Victorian society.  It is for these reasons that “Jane Eyre” has been the topic of much controversial discussion for many centuries.

        Women in Victorian times were extremely restricted as to what roles were open to them.  Those who were poor, as well as uneducated were particularly limited when it came down to career choices.  They were confined to taking up roles where they served the richer, aristocratic classes.  They worked as maids and in jobs where they needed little or no education.  In these positions they earned little money for themselves and were usually put up in the household in return for their labour.  It was expected that a woman who derived from a working class background would marry into the same class and nothing better.  Very few women were rebellious enough to follow their dreams at the risk of defying the Victorian society and their expected roles as destitute and penniless woman.  Very few succeeded in bettering their status or ranking in life.

        In this novel we see Jane Eyre rebelling against the Victorian society, following her dreams and improving her position with determination and fortiveness.  There was a clear divide between the lives of the aristocratic women and the lower class women in Victorian times and this partition is clearly evident in “Jane Eyre”.  The lower class women had the opportunity to become maids and seeked employment where they would be serving the wealthier classes. They were heavily discriminated against because of their social status.  The aristocratic women in Victorian times were typically wealthy, self-indulgent and extremely condescending.  One example of a typical aristocratic figure is Blanche Ingram.  

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        Blanche is admired by all around her for her beauty and charm and is eminent because she is the daughter of the prestigious Lady Ingram.  She and the other society guests are described as being,"proud as peacocks”.  Both Blanche and her mother talk in the stilted language of affection and aristocratic status.  When Blache asks her mother,  “am I right Baroness Ingram?",  being the proud society mother she replies, “my lily flower you are right-as always”.  Blanche shows the rude, self-awareness of a girl possessing beauty and wealth,

        “Moulded like a Diana-and fully conscious of her ranking.”

Blanche’ ...

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