Charlotte Bronte expresses herself in Jane Eyre

'Women are supposed to be very calm generally; but women fell 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.' -Jane Eyre chapter 12, (page 123 in my copy)

You could probably write an essay on this passage from Jane Eyre. Indeed, I would not be surprised if someone has! I would think this is one of the most frank passages from Jane Eyre, where Charlotte Bronte expresses her feelings most openly. She does not beat around the bush, she comes right out and says what she things here.

I think this is also a more angry passage from Jane Eyre. Charlotte had face a lot rejection. She had written to many other writers saying that she wanted to write, and sometimes giving them samples of her work. She most often received back a letter saying that writing was not for women, and that she should content herself with doing the things that other women do(the things she listed in the passage above). This passage is her expressing herself to those who had rejected her and her writing because she was a women. It should be noted that when Jane Eyre was first published she wrote it under the male name of Currer Bell.

I found this passage interesting because I saw what Charlotte might have been feeling when she wrote it.

Blessings

~Elizabeth