Essay - In Many Ways, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre May be...

In many ways, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre may be read as one of the earliest feminist texts in English literature. While Bront employs ***** of the standard elements of the Gothic novel, it is clear that her true ambition ***** ***** her depiction of the title character, a woman who endures great trials in order to overcome repression ***** the male-dominated society ***** ***** nineteenth century. What makes a ***** reading of Jane Eyre all the more interesting, however, is the fact ***** Bront borrows from ***** own life experiences while exploring Jane's struggles with male authority, and her use of au*****biographical ***** inevitably raises questions about her ***** frustrations with the patriarchal ***** of which she wrote. Indeed, Bront 's personal concerns with feminism inform much of the narrative in Jane Eyre, giving rise to a novel in ***** the main character must struggle ***** achieve a sense of independence and equality in spite of the oppressive *****fluence of the men in her life.

***** the time that ***** Eyre first appeared in 1847, questions arose about the autobiographical nature of the text.

Initially, the ***** was published under Bront 's male pseudonym, Currer Bell, but labeled as an autobiography nonetheless. Furt***** encourag*****g the impulse to assume that the events ***** the novel mirror those in the life of the author is the ***** that J*****e Eyre is written in ***** first person, which virtually eliminates any distance between the ***** ***** its *****. Indeed, when it was revealed in 1850 that the female Bront had actually penned ***** *****, readers became even more likely to ***** that Jane was merely a stand-in for the author (LeFavour 121-122).

***** is important to consider the manner in which female ***** in particular interacted ***** Bront ***** text at the time of *****s public*****ion if one wishes to grasp the extent to ***** the ***** nature of ***** ***** imparted a feminist mess*****ge. Certainly female readers would more easily identify with the ***** that both Bront and Jane confronted in a male-dominated society, and the novel's first ***** narrative allowed readers to feel that they were privy to an honest ********** authentic account ***** one woman's experiences. This is not the only reason that the autobiographical elements of Jane Eyre impact ***** text's feminist leanings. Indeed:

there is more to the identification of Jane with Charlotte than a conventional assumption ***** authorial presence; the commingling of the two indicates a degree of closeness to books and to the process of reading that is at once specific to a ***** reader's experience of Jane Eyre and indicative of broader trends in female culture that made the experience of *****... ********** important instruments for ***** development of female subjectivity. The tension ***** the positive moral effects of ***** ***** ***** potentially negative *****s underlines the ***** ***** which reading, domesticity, and femininity were in tension (***** 121-122).

The notion ***** reading as a means of subverting traditional femininity ***** an ***** one; in