Victorian Values, religious beliefs, society and

other issues in

“Jane Eyre”
by Charlotte Bronte

Prof. María Ximena Maceri

UCA 2007
 Religious Beliefs
Evangelical Protestantism

 Flourished from 1789 to 1850

 Responsible for many of the attitudes

today thought of as “Victorian”

 Said to be the heirs of seventeenth-

century Puritans
They believed…
 That human beings are corrupt and need Christ to save
them (thus the emphasis on puritanical morality and
rigidity)

 That the church hierarchy and church rituals are not as

crucial to individual salvation as a personal conversion
which stressed the emotional, the imaginative and the
intense

 That believers must demonstrate their spirituality by

working for others

 That believers would be persecuted, such persecution

indicating the holiness of the believer (thus, their
willingness to take opposition as martyrdom)

 That the Bible read literally and had codes and signals for
men to interpret
Religious beliefs in the novel
Jane encounters characters who follow
different religious beliefs
(1. Who? What do they believe in?)
in her search for happiness, and she
finally finds a middle-ground position. For
Jane, religion helps curb immoderate
passions, and it spurs one on to worldly
efforts and achievements. These
achievements include full self-knowledge
and complete faith in God.
 Jane and Mr Rochester
Jane and Mr Rochester’s lives evolve after their
reunion, they mature as individuals, and also
grow close as a couple

As the novel concludes, miracles are worked, love

and sight are restored, a child is born and a new
haven of domestic bliss is established in Jane and
Rochester's home.

Emerging as an ideal Victorian companion, wife and

mother, Jane stands as the perfect woman that
Bertha, the mad woman in the attic and Mr.
Rochester's first wife, could never be.
(Victorian ideal of the perfect family)
When Jane encounters Rochester at Ferndean, he is
deformed and alone,in decrepitude. When Jane
sees him, she decides he is barely human, tells
him that "It is time some one undertook to
rehumanize you" (371).

Jane sees transformation as her task, and

undertakes the project with loving kindness and
devotion. Treating him as a human being, she
enlivens both of them. In each other's company,
they change and blossom: "in his presence I
thoroughly lived, and he in mine," (372) remarks
Jane.

With her care, Rochester is indeed rehumanized

and once again blossoms into a human being,
and both come to be happier, more complete
individuals.
At first, Jane is content to forgo marriage, willing to
live as Rochester's nurse: although it seems she
might be sacrificing her own happiness for
Rochester's, it is clear that caring for him will
indeed complete her happiness rather than
detract from it. Almost disturbingly.

Soon, however, being his nurse is not enough, and

Jane marries Rochester in a simple ceremony.
With this, life is complete. Jane delights in her
newfound place in the domestic sphere. Marriage
makes her a true woman,as Jane says to her
husband, "I am rewarded now. To be your wife is,
for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth"
(379).
Marriage, it seems, infuses Jane with new life, reflected
in her effusive proclamations of love and devotion: "I
know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love
best on earth. . . .I am my husband's life as fully as
he is mine" (384).

So perfect is their love that as Jane and Rochester

become each other's lives, so do they come to merge
physically, as Jane becomes Rochester's vision and his
right hand (384). With the end of the novel, Jane is
only beginning in her role as a true angel.

Jane has only known of a life serving others (a Victorian

woman's sense of Christian duty)

(2. Considering the above explained, what would you

say about the image of woman Jane embodies? What
criticism does it deserve from a 21st century
perspective?
 Gender relations
Jane struggles continually to achieve equality and to
overcome oppression. In addition to class hierarchy,
she must fight against patriarchal domination—against
those who believe women to be inferior to men and try
to treat them as such.

Three central male figures threaten her desire for equality

and dignity: Mr. Brocklehurst, Edward Rochester, and
St. John Rivers. All three are misogynistic on some
level. Each tries to keep Jane in a submissive position,
where she is unable to express her own thoughts and
feelings.

In her quest for independence and self-knowledge, Jane

must escape Brocklehurst, reject St. John, and come to
Rochester only after ensuring that they may marry as
equals.
In Chapter 12, Jane articulates what was for
her time a radically feminist philosophy:

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.