Overview of Topic and Plans

The topic I am interested in is examining how Charlotte Bronte uses her character, Jane Eyre, as a vessel against patriarchal/Regency society through the depiction of Jane as plain, dull, wearing dark or plain clothes, etc., and the depiction of her intellect, passion, and defiance in the face of a society that is trying to make her a “marriageable” woman. Jane knows she is not a top candidate to be a wife; she is an orphan, she has little to no family inheritance or property, she is much too independent and interested in things like writing, reading, drawing, and so on. All of these details are deliberately a reflection of Bronte and her/Jane’s rebellion against the society they exist in. I chose the Oswald Review because on our shared spreadsheet, I saw that Jane Eyre is a previous subject of papers accepted by this journal and that they also publish a lot of feminist related research or literature review. I assigned my classmates several excerpts throughout the entirety of the text where Jane is describing her own appearance, describing the appearances of other characters (mainly women), or where she is asserting herself/her autonomy by embracing her decisions (such as when being punished by Mr. Brocklehurst, or when returning to Rochester and reflecting on her rejection of St. John). I have worked with this text several times in my education and have previously written a paper on Jane’s struggle/assertion of personal autonomy, despite the many different paths her life could have taken had she sacrificed her free will (I no longer have access to this paper). I want to learn more about the significance of Bronte’s deliberate writing of Jane in the context of when the story takes place or was written.