scholarly journals Using Language to Rage against Victorian Hierarchy: Self-constructed Feminist Identity in Jane Eyre

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Yao Chiachen ◽  
Ya-huei Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Identity Development ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Sense Of Competence ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
True Love ◽  
And Gender

<p class="AbstractText">All human beings seek certain identities in order to understand their existence and position in society, the groups to which they belong, and the unique characteristics they have. This paper examines how, in <em>Jane Eyre</em>, Charlotte Bronte examines socially constructed institutionalism in Victorian England. This paper also explores how the protagonist, Jane Eyre, oppressed due to her social class and gender, struggles to live with equality, dignity, and freedom, and finally reaches independence and self-fulfillment. Jane successfully completes the stages of identity development, and, after acquiring a sense of competence, achieves happiness and intimacy in an equal partnership with her true love, Mr. Rochester.</p>

‘For pagans laugh to hear women teach’: Gender Stereotypes in the Didascalia Apostolorum

1998 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 23-35
Author(s):  
Charlotte Methuen
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Gender History ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Femininity And Masculinity ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Women’S History

The broader theme of gender and Christian religion presupposes three definitions: of Christianity, of religion, and of gender. Probably none of these is as simple as it might first appear, but that of gender is perhaps the most critical for our theme. Although there are still some who would use the terms ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ interchangeably, there is a growing tendency to recognize an important distinction between gender – that is, femininity and masculinity, regarded as largely socially constructed – and sex, the biological distinction between male and female human beings. Gender is best considered as born out of interactions between men and women. This means that the gender roles which make up what we experience as masculinity and femininity cannot be defined by looking only at men or at women, although ideas about both can be gained from looking at one group or the other. That is why gender history is different from women’s history, and that is why both women’s history and gender history are essential enterprises. We need women’s history because we need to know where women were as well as where they were not.

scholarly journals The "Black box" Identity Development and the Crisis of Connection among Black Adolescent Boys

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
leoandra onnie rogers
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Identity Development ◽  
Black Male ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Black Boys ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Adolescent Boys ◽  
Black Adolescent

The Black box in American culture is imposed upon Black boys and girls regarding what they can and cannot do, and who they should and should not be. In the case of Black boys, they can be athletes and thugs, but they cannot be scholars and scientists or engaged fathers and partners. They should be tough, independent, and aggressive, but they should not be vulnerable, relational, and sensitive. The Black box, in other words, constrains the humanity of Black people; it splits Blackness from goodness, and embeds homophobia into the Black male identity. These impositions are not simply about race, as Marcus reveals, but also about gender, sexuality, and social class. When Black boys and young men accommodate to society’s box of intersectional stereotypes, they disconnect from what they know about themselves—that they are thinking and feeling human beings—and disconnect from others within and outside of their communities as well. Over the next few pages, I first describe identity development and then reveal the pathways through which Black boys construct their identities, and conclude with ways to foster resistance to help Black boys stay connected to themselves as well as to others.

scholarly journals Human Nature and Confinement in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-78
Author(s):  
Jessica L Muller
Keyword(s):  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Wuthering Heights ◽  
Passionate Love ◽  
Literal Truth ◽  
And Gender ◽  
And Control ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Catherine Earnshaw’s famous statement, “I am Heathcliff” in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, has often been thought to signify the depth of the passionate love between Catherine and Heathcliff (73).  It seems, however, that Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship may have more to do with symbolic possession and control than romance.  In their famous feminist work, The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar make a well-known assertion about the relationship between the characters of Jane Eyre, a novel written by Emily Bronte’s sister, Charlotte Bronte.  They suggest that Bertha, the deranged and malicious wife of Edward Rochester, can be considered as a symbol of the rebellious spirit that rages inside the seemingly quiet female protagonist, Jane Eyre, against the constraints of her class and gender role in society (356-367).   I suggest that, similarly, Heathcliff is not a “devil” that possesses Catherine and inflicts misery on her, but that like Jane Eyre’s Bertha, Heathcliff is a symbolic manifestation of the raging spirit trapped inside Wuthering Height’s socially confined protagonist—Catherine Earnshaw. Catherine’s statement, “I am Heathcliff” could be said to signify, not a passionate relationship of love, but rather a literal truth.  After Edgar forces Heathcliff to leave Thrushcross Grange, Catherine confines herself to her room for 3 days without food or water, bringing on an illness which eventually becomes fatal. Catherine is unable to unite herself with her true nature in life, and she therefore seeks unity with him in death.  Though she cannot be united with Heathcliff while she remains the civilized wife of Edgar Linton, she can achieve unity with him in death by imprisoning and then eradicating the symbol of her civilized identity—her physical body.  

scholarly journals Tess as a Kaleidoscope of Socially Constructed Images in Tess of the D'urbervilles

sjesr ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-43
Author(s):  
Romana Jabeen Bukhari ◽  
Tahira Asgher ◽  
Safia Parveen
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Victorian Novel ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Tess Of The D'urbervilles ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Female Protagonist

This study aims to examine the Victorian novel Tess of the D'urbervilles to explore the general social construction of women which prescribes images and roles for them and moulds them accordingly. The researcher selected Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which portrays the plight of women in Victorian England. This qualitative study makes a thorough analysis of the female protagonist who is exploited by the social prescription of her identity and concludes that the female figure is no more than the kaleidoscopic images of hers drawn by others. The study applies the concept of social construction with feministic insight. It hints that women cannot attain full potential until they and society establish their existential rights as empowered and independent human beings. It points out that the resistance against the dominant patriarchal ideologies endows women with a new image and identity, and ensures the possibilities to break away from social prescription.

scholarly journals �WEALTH OR LOVE, WHAT DOES A WOMAN WANT?� AN IRONIC LOOK AT THE MIDDLE CLASS NORMS IN CHARLOTTE BRONTE�S JANE EYRE

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 334
Author(s):  
Afina Murtiningrum
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Family ◽  
English Society ◽  
The Relationship

Jane Eyre is a novel written in the early nineteenth century (1847). It depicts the English society of the upper, middle and lower class and their habits and attitudes towards life. The opening of the novel points to social class, wealth and marriage as its major theme. Throughout the novel, the relationship between social awareness of class and marriage, especially dealing with money or property are highlighted, the reason why society tends to consider about social class, money and property in finding a suitable partner to marry. This paper relies on the examples from the novel to show how nineteenth-century women imagined their marriage. In terms of women�s social rights and roles, Charlotte Bronte tries to open readers' eyes to the idea that women's abilities should not be limited only to the sphere of the family. Bronte�s novel does not only attack Victorian class structure but also the issue of gender. �Keywords : marriage, wealth, property, women�s roles, gender

Mistaken Identities: First-Person Narration in Kazuo Ishiguro

1993 ◽  
Vol 3 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 139-154
Author(s):  
Margaret Scanlan
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Cultural Criticism ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
First Person ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Kazuo Ishiguro ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Floating World

Abstract Contemporary theorists tend to agree on the death of the subject and therefore, it seems, on the death of the first-person realistic novel. Novels like David Copperfield and Jane Eyre seem like extended metaphors for humanism itself-the outmoded view that human beings are the center of their world, that they can know themselves, that their psychology and moral character develop con-sistently, and that they are largely responsible for the courses their lives take. In two recent first-person novels, An Artist of the Floating World (1986) and The Remains of the Day (1989), Kazuo Ishiguro explores such assumptions, providing us with narrators whose selves do seem to be socially constructed and consequently decentered and unstable. Although Ishiguro fully understands and displays the appeal of posthumanist models of the subject, he ends by suggesting that a self no longer author of itself is a self in search of authority. (Cultural criticism, literary criticism)

‘The insane Creole’: the afterlife of Bertha Mason

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Cox
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
First Century ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Significant Obstacle ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the character of Bertha Mason as a significant obstacle to writers and artists seeking to adapt Jane Eyre: to treat her in the same manner as Charlotte Brontë is to replicate her degradation on the grounds of sex and gender, race and ethnicity, and dis/ability. Focused upon portrayals of her appearance, madness and death, this chapter charts the evolution and variation of Bertha’s character from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, tracing the impact of feminist and postcolonial theorising upon creative engagements with Brontë’s novel. Encompassing a wide variety of adaptations across different media, including Young Adult and neo-Victorian fictions, film, television, theatre and the visual arts, it argues that recreations of Bertha point to an ongoing desire to recover this character from the margins of Brontë’s novel.

Deconstructing Masculinity: A Qualitative Study of College Men's Masculine Conceptualizations and Gender Performance

NASPA Journal ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Harris
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
College Men ◽  
Gender Performance ◽  
Epistemological Perspective ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Undergraduate Men

Informed by the constructionist epistemological perspective, the purpose of this study was to examine socially constructed conceptualizations of masculinity and gender performance among 12 culturally diverse undergraduate men. The participants espoused seemingly productive conceptualizations of masculinity, yet their gendered behaviors were inconsistent with the conceptualizations they espoused. Based on the findings, recommendations for supporting the gender identity development of college men are proposed.

A Changeling Becomes Titania: The Realm of the Fairies in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

2020 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-37
Author(s):  
Francisco José Cortés Vieco
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Social Rules ◽  
Life Journey ◽  
And Gender ◽  
As If

AbstractJane Eyre never-endingly mesmerizes readers and scholars alike thanks to its fairy-tale echoes, but Charlotte Brontë also wrote this novel as a tale of her own myth-making about two fairies: Jane and Edward Rochester, because only fairylands of fantasy and daydreaming might empower an unprotected woman in Victorian times. This article explores Jane Eyre’s life journey and life-writing as if she were a fairy. She begins as a changeling child who torments malevolent adults and consoles herself in fairy tales. When Jane becomes a woman, whose fairy wings of rebelliousness and freedom cannot be torn by social rules or by any mortal, she is eventually crowned by her fairy godmother – Charlotte Brontë – with the diadem of love and gender equality as Titania, a queen in her own right, who chooses to marry her Oberon: Rochester.

Feminist Perspective in Shashi Deshpande's “That Long Silence”

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ahashan ◽  
Dr. Sapna Tiwari
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equity ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Feminist Movement ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Key Aspects

Man has always tried  to determine  and tamper the image of woman and especially her identity is manipulated and orchestrated. Whenever a woman is spoken of, it is always in the relation to man; she is presented as a wife , mother, daughter and even as a lover but never as a woman  a human being- a separate entity. Her entire life is idealized and her fundamental rights and especially her behaviour is engineered by the adherents of patriarchal society. Commenting  on the Man-woman relationship in a marital bond Simone de Beauvoir wrote in her epoch-making book entitled The Second Sex(1949): "It has been said that marriage diminishes man,  which is often true , but almost always it annihilates women". Feminist movement advocates the equal rights and equal opportunities for women. The true spirit of feminism is into look at women and men as human beings. There should not be gender bias or discrimination in familial and social life. To secure gender justice and gender equity is the key aspects of feminist movement. In India, women writers have come forward to voice their feminist approach to life and the patriarchal family set up. They believe that the very notion of gender is not only biotic and biologic episode but it has a social construction.

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