'Feminism & Postcolonialism in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre Essay\r'

'As a representative work of a fe antheral causality who was well ahead of her times, Jane Eyre can safely be regarded as the magnum opus of Charlotte Bronte. A literary travel that spanned for a meager six years, it was really unlikely as to how Charlotte Bronte could excel so much as a novelist so as to be equal to(p) to pen d profess the account of a single(a) and principled cleaning woman who has since been expressioned up as the precise epitome of womanhood, let alone the politic of feminism. Moreover, elements of post colonialism and their twist on individual behavior can withal be traced in the polarized character sketching of Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason.\r\nIn contemporary writings, gender and postcolonial discourses do non seem to remnant solely on any stereotypical rule of characterization. Instead, such approaches tend to de-categorize women according to their individual identity. In former(a)(a) words, a female character in today’s literary produc tions would rather pee-pee patchy dispositions, as opposed to having lofty and pore i handwritings. What makes Jane Eyre a true critique of postcolonial and feminist literature is its assimilation of the contradictory traits of womanhood †good and bad, refinement and vileness, civility and impudence †within a hotshot narrative framework.\r\nIn the light of this observation, this paper attempts to let off Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre as a fictional lesson of feminism and postcolonialism. To substantiate the thesis, the paper will look into chapters 26 and 27 †a transitory variant in the storyline of Jane Eyre. Most of Charlotte Bronte’s novels, including Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853), deal with a vivid picture of colonial europium and document how social conventions atomic number 18 shaped and redressed by colonial aggressions. At the end of chapter 26 of Jane Eyre, Mr.\r\nRochester asks Jane to practise him to France †a place not colon ized by Great Britain. This shows how the concepts of meta-colonization were imbued in the author’s estimation while writing the novel. What it also brings out is how the male protagonists of Bronte, while most of whom have a sardonic and bipolar attitude to romantic relationships, invariably elect women having a distinct colonial background in order to rule out the possibility of a foreign intrusion into their hardnosed straight-laced veils.\r\nMeyer points out that on that point is a fusion of postcolonial societal doctrines and racial synthesis in the way Bronte treats her women characters in Emma (1853) and Jane Eyre. This hints at a dichotomy of social prejudices regarding how a common European would respond to the color of human skin on one hand, and how it would be treated as a benchmark for social permissibility. The paradigm of postcolonialism is embedded at the heart of the novel when Mrs.\r\nReed grows an aversion to flyspeck Jane on the ground of her ethnic background, alien to the source’s own (249). Meyer further discusses the literary tropes Bronte uses in Jane Eyre to signify race relations prevalent in contemporary English societies. Bronte, according to Meyer, uses the concept of blackness in a figurative way to marry the actual history of British colonization with racial â€Å"otherness”. This psycho luculent practice of attributing â€Å"otherness” to was a result of a colonizer’s intentness with Whiteness.\r\nThere is a paradigmatic shift from literature to life, however, in the way Bronte pinpoints the presence of both class and race discrimination in the British society. She does this to unmask the patriarchal impositions that were central to the overall aura of potency practiced by the British over their colonies. The political relation of feminism in Jane Eyre is quite complex in nature, simply because a number of related factors are interwoven in the plot. Quoting Gayatri Chakravorty Spiv ak, Meyer argues that Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason represent cardinal distinct leagues of feminism.\r\n piece Jane is a sober and liberal woman capable of bettering her situation on her own accord, Bertha Mason is a compulsive character, almost an rampart character, lying beyond the scope of self-improvement or redemption. Bertha Mason is a representative of the aboriginal race, precariously positioned between human and bestial instincts. In traffic with the development of a meaningful character, Bertha Mason is designally stripped of the very qualities that are bestowed to Jane Eyre. Consequently, Jane grows to be the epitome of womanhood with all her distaff virtues (250).\r\nBut Meyer does not take Spivak’s argument at stage value. She further questions the validity of the claim that Spivak makes about the correlational statistics between feminism and imperialism in Jane Eyre. If imperialism can be cited as a tentative offshoot of postcolonialism, it would be easier to substantiate the thesis. From imperialistic perspectives, Bertha Mason qualifies as a colonial woman who is supposed to have an individualist entity of her own. But then again she is also envisioned as a native woman, which seems to obfuscate the previous attribution to imperialism.\r\nGoing by Meyer’s argument, it is finish off that traits of both imperialism and postcolonialism cannot coexist within a atomic number 53 character, and if it does, one must(prenominal) remain dormant for the other to thrive (250-1). Hence, it is logically better to link patriarchy with colonial dominance, as both have their origins grow in the nineteenth century British high-bloodedness that had historically been proved to be discriminating on gender issues. Rositsa Kronast examines Bronte’s introduction of the â€Å"female colonial different” in the context of a male predominate regime.\r\nCiting Jane Eyre as her principle reference, along with jean Rhys’ all -encompassing Sargasso Sea, Kronast shows how the tables can turn with changes in military group and hierarchy. It may be noted, however, that this change may or may not come from internal agents. As is the case with Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason, the change is imposed by the straightlaced norms that were outright puritanical. Consequently, Jane, despite being a woman of substance, is pitted against seemingly insolvable situations especially when her acknowledge affair with Mr.\r\nRochester comes under serious threat from Bertha Mason. While Jane is drained of her power, Bertha Mason steps in as an empowered woman, capable of inflicting great damage at a public level. The reversal of fortune is only possible because the Victorian times in colonial England allowed for total submission of women before male whims. The Victorian concept of womanhood that Jane embodies is based on sex act compatibility with men. Women were seen to be playing second fiddles to their gender counterparts i n a number of component parts †from mother to wife (3).\r\nWhat is provoke to note from Kronast’s argument is that if Jane is the Other woman, she is at once powerless and empowered. This brings us to the same logical fallacy that has been mentioned earlier in the paper †devil contradictory traits cannot control a character’s life in any way. So to chuck matters in the right context, it is reasonable to infer that the Creole woman portrayed by Bertha Mason must give in to the author’s intention of representing the colonized face of womanhood, in order to befit for a lofty and ideal feminine fictional character for the individualistic Jane (Staines 42).\r\nIn essence, reading into the feministic and postcolonial components in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre brings out the difference between what is intrinsically feminine and what is not. It is basically a novel based on modern concepts of feminism. Jane’s personality exudes a plentiful ardor of feminine grace and beauty. Postcolonialism, on the other hand, is only introduced for putting the concept of feminism into perspective. Therefore, Jane and Bertha deal to hold their respective positions of significance, with the latter playing the role of a borderline character.\r\nWorks Cited Kronast, Rositsa. The Creole woman and the Problem of Agency in Charlotte Bronte’s â€Å"Jane Eyre” and Jean Rhys’s â€Å"Wide Sargasso Sea”. Munich: smile Verlag, 2010. Meyer, Susan L. â€Å"Colonialism and the Figurative Strategy of Jane Eyre. ” Victorian Studies. Bloomington, inch: Indiana University Press, 1990. Staines, David. Margaret Laurence: critical reflections. Ottawa, Ontario: University of Ottawa Press, 2001.\r\n'