The Relationship Between Social Class and Gender in Jane Eyre - Essay Example

Brontes Jane Eyre, with its unlikely heroine distinguished by neither beauty nor fortune was a surprise success with Victorian audiences, her ability to find a voice by the end of the novel despite her obvious disadvantages won favour in the eyes of the readers. Jane triumphs in the end, against all the odds through her indomitable spirit, fierce will, and an unwavering sense of justice and morality, which are able to transgress on prevalent mores of society and gender. From the very outset, her social standing is unequivocally spelled out to her: "You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemens children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mamas expense. Now, Ill teach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they ARE mine; all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows."(Jane Eyre, Chapter1). By uttering social discrimination through the voice of a child, Bronte establishes Janes class predicament, and it is significant that the voice is John Reeds and not that of Eliza and Georgiana,who is asserting his patriarchal hegemony on the family property, a male declaring his rights. Janes struggle to achieve happiness and self sufficiency is against the dual oppression of class and gender. Janes father was a poor clergyman, on the fringes of middle class, and her mother in marrying him had lost the name and advantages of her own superior social standing, so they both lacked a well defined social status and the situation became worse as they left her an orphan. As Susan Fraiman says, both Janes parents were "socially ambiguous, and this ambiguity is part of their legacy to Jane" (616). This ambiguous station in life leaves her open to statements like: "No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep”. To this, the pressures of her gender add up, even the servants tend to sympathize with her less, because of her lack of good looks: “"Yes," responded Abbot; "if she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that." "Not a great deal, to be sure," agreed Bessie: "at any rate, a beauty like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition."” (Chapter 3) Jane is conscious of her social ambiguity and disadvantage in terms of femininity and its charms : “A Victorian womans value resides chiefly in her femaleness” (Archibald, 8), and she seeks to overcome both through mental discipline in Lowood, where she does gain an education, only to become another socially ambiguous figure in Victorian England, a governess. This was the only respectable option open to a single woman without a family, or even money or connections enough to get suitably married: In Victorian England, single women who were not particularly eligible for marriage (especially due to lack of fortune and suitable family ties) were considered redundant, unnecessary, superfluous. The redundant woman had few choices. If her father and/or brothers were able to provide for her, she usually lived at home and assisted with the care of the household and any children or elderly people who might live there...... For most middle- and upper-class women who could not be (or chose not to be) provided for by family members, the only clear reputable option was to teach, either in a school or as a governess. (Teachman,2001) Gender thus becomes a limiting factor and forces her to adopt an uncertain social station; she cannot become a lawyer or head a parish and at Thornfield she gets into an uneasy, complicated equation, where she does not fit into the established roles of either the gentry or the servants.On her arrival at the station she is not accorded the courtesies due to a lady by the servant who comes to receive her. Jane initially confuses Mrs. Fairfax, the woman with the "most housewifely bunch of keys" (Chapter 11 ), as the mistress of Thornfield and puzzles over the actions which Mrs. Fairfax does not seem to feel are “out of her place”. Bronte uses this confusion to highlight the differences, between a lady who would have been more stiff and formal and the friendly old woman Jane actually encounters, and emphasise the “ambiguities of status”(Gilbert and Gubar, 349) implicit in the patriarchal containment of the manor. Ironically, Jane’s manners, sophistication, and education are those of an aristocrat, because Victorian governesses tutored children in etiquette as well as academics, and in order to be able to teach high society norms they were expected to possess the necessary manners; but being a dependent, she is essentially powerless and penniless. The governess in the nineteenth century personified a life of intense misery. She was also that most unfortunate individual; the single, middle-class woman who had to earn her own living. Although being a governess might be a degradation, employing one was a sign of culture and means. . . . The psychological situation of the governess made her position unenviable. Her presence created practical difficulties within the Victorian home because she was neither a servant nor a member of the family. She was from the social level of the family, but the fact that she was paid a salary put her at the economic level of the servants. (Smith, 89) Janes ostracisation from the gentry is evident in Blanche and her mothers reactions to her in Chapter17 of the novel. Blanche Ingram says of governesses, "I have just one word to say of the whole tribe: they are a nuisance", and her mother, Mrs. Ingram:"[D]ont mention governesses: the word makes me nervous. I have suffered a martyrdom from their incompetency and caprice: I thank Heaven I have now done with them!", all distinctly within Janes hearing with an obvious motive of humiliating her, and letting her know her place. They do not look on her as a fellow woman, and are ruthlessly discriminating of Janes class, despite the gender and cultivation she has in common.But that does not spare Miss Ingram from the social mores regulating her gender, she has to play the game of marriage, which she loses in the case of Rochester despite her designs. In falling in love with Rochester who is her employer, Jane crosses a social line which does not meet with general approval, and she herself is apprehensive of the class difference. Mrs. Fairfax, who is the same social class as her warns her : “It passes me!" she continued; "but no doubt, it is true since you say so. How it will answer, I cannot tell: I really dont know.Equality of position and fortune is often advisable in such cases;...” and adds, “Gentlemen in his station are not accustomed to marry their governesses”.Throughout the courtship, the consciousness of her class does not leave her, and she is well aware of the differences in social standing between herself and her future husband, and of the gender and class equations between them, which she brings up, albeit in jest: “I thought how I would carry down to you the square of unembroidered blonde I had myself prepared as a covering for my low-born head, and ask if that was not good enough for a woman who could bring her husband neither fortune, beauty, nor connections. I saw plainly how you would look; and heard your impetuous republican answers, and your haughty disavowal of any necessity on your part to augment your wealth, or elevate your standing, by marrying either a purse or a coronet”. (Chapter 25) She longs to join him in marriage on an equal footing, and knows that not bringing a fortune to him and being average in looks works to her disadvantage.She is also apprehensive about the outcome of the marriage, and how well her individuality will survive Rochesters onslaught of male domination, virility and social hauteur, a fear intertwined in both her class and gender. Being a woman and a penniless one at that, her separate identity is in danger of being decimated by marriage, through which Rochester would gain access to her virginity and wield power over the rest of her life. This fear is justified, as the reader discovers, because once the marriage is aborted, Rochester tries to coerce her into going with him to the Continent, to live there in the semblance of a marriage. The full extent of his power is realised when Jane is compelled to actually leave Thornfield without his knowledge, knowing that he could easily overcome her resistance through force, a force born out of being a virile man, with the strength of money behind him. In the end, Jane returns to Rochester out of love, but by this time she has gained in social standing due to the inheritance left to her by her uncle:"I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own mistress." But in the end, it is the loss of power in Rochester as a man, his fortune burnt and body blinded and maimed, that allows Jane the flowering of her emerging persona, because without the accident Rochester may have been a different man, more potent both socially and as a man: Janes money and social status, even her confidence and self- knowledge, would not have offered her sufficient protection against the psychosexual power of Rochester, her "master"; would not have defended her against the arrogance and pride supported by society through its laws, its structures, its attitudes, its mythology. Nor would her new position, her developed self, have protected Rochester from the fears and actual dangers associated with the "masculine" role assigned to him. So strong are these external forces that the reduction of Rochesters virility and the removal of them both from contact with society are necessary to maintain the integrity of the emergent female self. Rochester is brought into the "female" world of love and morality, out of the "masculine" universe of power: out of society, into Janes sphere of psychic functioning. (Bloom,87) Jane becomes the caregiver, her chastity gives her a moral superiority, and she is able to overcome the challenges of both social bigotism and gender bias that are the predominant feature of her contemporary society.Through her, Bronte is able to portray the evolution of female power in Victorian England, where women from the middle class began to determine the gender equations to which they were subject: Rochester loses his aristocratic bearing by the end of Jane Eyre to assume a role within a purely emotional network of relationships overseen by a woman. It is only by thus subordinating all social differences to those based on gender that these novels bring order to social relationships. Granting all this, one may conclude that the power of the middle classes had everything to do with that of middle-class love. And if this contention holds true, one must also agree that middle-class authority rested in large part upon the authority that novels attributed to women and in this way designated as specifically female. (Armstrong, 89) Works Cited Archibald, Diana, C. Domesticity, Imperialism, and Emigration in the Victorian Novel. London: University of Missouri Press, 2002.p.8 Armstrong. N. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. New York. Oxford University Press.1989.p.4 Bloom H.Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre. New York.Chelsea House.1987.p.59 Fraiman, Susan. “Jane Eyres Fall from Grace”. Jane Eyre. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins. 1996. p.614-631 Gilbert, S. M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.p.349 Smith,B.G. Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700 .Lexington, Mass. and Toronto: DC Heath. 1989. Ch5. p.169 Teachman D. A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, CT.Greenwood Press.2001. p.79 Read More