An Outrage against Victorian Governess Novel

Jane Eyre is a novel by Charlotte Bronte which was published in 1847 during the Victoria’s era which challenges all the traditional notions of governess in Victorian literature. In patriotic Victorian society women were deemed as second-class citizens, subordinates, and passive; such outlook should have been represented in popular literature as well otherwise that work of literature along with its author were expected to be scorned. But Jane is an independent, disobedient and contumacious woman who refuses the conformations of the society. Since she was familiar with the male-dominating community she was living in. Bronte highlighted the need of social reforms for the women in that time and determined to utilize a male penname for authoring her novels including Jane Eyre, with a great hope for her novels to be accepted, published, and sold. The language of the novel represented in the main character which was both rebellious and passionate as the novel narrated the story of Jane, a woman who is against social norms of that time, made it an outrage against the governess novel genre. Therefore, she showed her outrage and all of her expectations through the language, which is an important and specific tool that Bronte used in her sentence structures, tone, dialogues between main character and others especially Jane and Mr. Rochester to reveal and reflect theme, plot of the story and overall, concept and culture. However, finding some traces in Jane Eyre, and suspecting it might have been sprung from the pen of a female author, the critics regarded the novel as improper. Governess novel under which Jane Eyre was put was a sub-genre among the Victorian popular literature of those days which was supposed to portray Victorian patriotic society as well as its attitudes toward women; because Jane Eyre, as a governess novel, had not observed those conventions which were dominating Victorian age, it was considered as an outrageous novel. Valuing subjectivity of women, crying out the equality of sexes, and removing lingual inhibitions in women through fiery language, Jane Eyre rebels against Victorian governess novel.