This Terrific Separation: The Experience of Girlhood in Jane Eyre and Northanger Abbey - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages... The only options for proper yet impoverished women were to become a governess or teacher, roles Charlotte and her sisters filled and felt very confined in. Charlotte believed a governess was not considered an equal member in the family she worked, nor even allowed her own existence. It was this state of bondage that Charlotte longed to escape through her writing, and it was when these writings of her and her sisters were discovered, that freedom was granted to her. Undoubtedly, marriage was the best opportunity for women; but neither Charlotte Bronte nor Jane Austen, had the spirit to marry for any consideration outside love. And so they made their own way, claiming their independence writing of the love and life for women they believed in, paving the course for all women to come. “If adventure will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad” (Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Chapter 1). Jane Eyre’s journey begins when she is cast out by her aunt of Gateshead Hall. She is sent to Lowood, a school for orphaned children. It is a difficult and dismal existence, harsh conditions created to break the spirits of young girls. Jane must learn to submit her passions to her reason. All journeys begin with emotional orphanage and Jane finds solace in the comfort of her friend Helen and teacher Miss Temple. “Well has Solomon said- Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. I would not now have exchanged Lowood and all its privations for Gateshead and its daily luxuries.” (Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, chapter 8). The passion she learns to subdue never deserts Jane and it is through this passion that her yearning for more is expressed. “Women are supposed to be very calm generally; but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex." "I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach...I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes..." (Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre Chapter 12). In the character of Jane we see a woman ahead of her times, not only in her independent spirit, but her education and the dignity she holds as a capable woman able to stand on her own. Charlotte wasn’t arguing for equal rights between men and women but only recognition that “the same heart and the same spirit animate both men and women, and that love is the pairing of equals in these spheres.” (George P. Landon, victorianweb.org). Catherine Morland in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey does not encounter the struggles Jane does in loss of family, finance and circumstance. She gets taken by Mrs. Allen to the big city of Bath to have such life-altering experiences as her ...Download file to see next pagesRead More