Context: Victorian Women & the Gothic
The World Charlotte Brontë Wrote For
Charlotte Brontë published Jane Eyre in 1847 under the male pseudonym Currer Bell. She used a pen name because Victorian society judged women writers harshly — a novel by a woman about a woman’s passionate inner life would have been dismissed or scandalised. The novel was an immediate sensation: readers were gripped by its intensity, its first-person voice, and its heroine’s fierce demand for equality. Understanding the Victorian context is essential because Brontë was writing against the expectations of her time.
Victorian women were expected to be passive, obedient, and domestic — the ideal of the Angel in the House. They could not vote, own property after marriage, or access higher education. A woman’s choices were limited to marriage, becoming a governess (the only respectable paid employment for a middle-class woman), or dependence on relatives. Jane experiences all three: she is dependent on the Reeds, employed as a governess at Thornfield, and ultimately chooses marriage on her own terms.
Brontë published under a male pseudonym because Victorian society marginalised women writers. Jane’s declaration — “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will” — was radical for 1847. The novel challenges the Angel in the House ideal by presenting a heroine who demands equality in love and refuses to sacrifice her integrity.
Class and the Governess
Jane occupies an impossible position in the Victorian class system. As a governess, she is educated enough to teach but too poor to be a social equal. She tells Rochester: “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?” This speech directly challenges the Victorian assumption that social rank determines human worth. Jane’s refusal to accept inferiority despite her poverty is the novel’s most revolutionary quality.
Religion is presented through three contrasting figures. Mr Brocklehurst represents religious hypocrisy: he preaches self-denial for the Lowood girls while his own daughters wear silk and curls. Helen Burns represents patient, otherworldly faith: she endures suffering without complaint, trusting in heaven. St John Rivers represents religion as cold duty: he tries to recruit Jane as a missionary wife, offering a loveless marriage in God’s service. Jane rejects all three models, seeking a faith that accommodates human passion and individual conscience.
Brontë’s critique of religious hypocrisy (Brocklehurst) and cold piety (St John) was controversial. Victorian readers expected novels to endorse conventional Christianity. Jane’s insistence on following her own moral compass — rather than any institutional authority — was seen as dangerously independent.
The Gothic Tradition
Jane Eyre draws heavily on the Gothic tradition. Thornfield Hall is a classic Gothic setting: a grand house with dark corridors, a mysterious third-floor room, and unexplained laughter in the night. The figure of Bertha Mason — Rochester’s first wife, locked in the attic — is the novel’s Gothic centrepiece. Bertha’s madness, her midnight wanderings, and the fire she sets recall the Gothic tradition of imprisoned women and dark family secrets.
Brontë uses Gothic elements not just for atmosphere but to externalise Jane’s inner conflicts. The red room at Gateshead — where the young Jane is locked after fighting John Reed — is both a literal prison and a symbol of her suppressed anger. The room is red (passion, rage), it is the room where Mr Reed died (death, trauma), and Jane believes she sees a ghost. The Gothic terror is inseparable from the psychological reality of a child being punished for standing up for herself.
Similarly, Bertha Mason can be read as Jane’s doppelgänger — the dark mirror of her passionate nature. Where Jane controls her emotions, Bertha has lost all control. Where Jane suppresses her rage, Bertha expresses it through violence and fire. Brontë uses the Gothic to explore what happens when women’s emotions are denied any legitimate outlet.
Brontë uses Gothic conventions to externalise psychological states. The red room symbolises Jane’s suppressed anger and childhood trauma. Thornfield’s dark corridors and mysterious laughter represent hidden secrets and female imprisonment. Bertha Mason functions as Jane’s doppelgänger — the uncontrolled version of the passion Jane must learn to balance with reason.