Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre I: Ahead of Her Time?

I have completely fallen in love with Jane Eyre, the supposed plain governess who dares falls in love with the master. Charlotte Bronte stirred up a hornet's nest with her plot involving Jane returning to Mr Rochester not knowing that his wife had died (sorry for ruining the plot for those who have not read it- I should have put a plot spoiler warning before I started!) This was shocking for her time when a woman's character was the basis of maintaining her social status and that hinting at the possibility of fornication and/or adultery was seriously frowned upon in this rising moralising middle class, which was forming contemporaneously to the writing of this novel. It is especially shocking for the reader even today that Jane returns to Rochester because she represents the moral conscious of the book (especially when contrasted to such characters as Rochester who has led a dissolute life in some ways and Bertha who is mad nymphomaniac.) This slightly unusual deviance from the accepted norm is something I loved about the novel. Charlotte Bronte's mouthpiece, Jane, expostulates some rather forward-thinking ideas, which really grabbed my attention:

"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 was initially grabbed by the equalising tone of this passage; that women require a similar freedom to what their "brothers" possess. The more recent version of feminism has alienated society and particularly men with the often antagonistic pronouncements that women are better then men. As an aside, I disagree, and in fact we are beginning to replicate the 'male oppressors' of old and equality is most definitely no longer what a lot have feminists have sought. They seek to surpass this. However, getting back on course.... Jane Eyre, or more particularly Charlotte Bronte through Jane, explains her own restricted feelings of a woman who could have no other role in society other than a governess or a wife. This passage proclaiming women's equality to men is really unique. It was written at a time when feminism- loathing to use such an anachronistic term-was really just kicking off; women were beginning to question their confined roles.

I believe Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre as a firm critique of society by showing what life was like for a woman bound by few options and also that to achieve happiness that some things would have to be sacrificed- like Jane's morality. In this view it seems a grim portrayal, but to the readers reading Jane Eyre today, we think "Good on her" since our moral values have altered somewhat over time. Still we still recognise the confinement of women in this time, with this moral obligation and of this class.

So, Charlotte Bronte the premature feminist? Maybe, but she definitely was a woman wanting more for her sex!