Re-Defining Feminism :jane Eyre

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Now when we turn back to the feminist aspect which the novel readily explores is that ,of passion ,anger and self control. Showalter for instance gives different connotations to different shades of the novel. The red-room where Jane is initially thrown in the opening of the novel,that confinement, depiction of psychic life, Showalter associates it with death and blood and ‘its a Freudian wealth of secret compartments,wardrobes,drawers,and jewel chest’ are evocative of ‘adult female body’, it is as Showalter explains that Jane experiences blood, of menstruation and she is carried from the curtains of childhood into the womb of a grown woman, a significant stage to mark her womanhood, which is what exactly the novel portrays. For Showalter, the novel is but a ‘feminine novel’ where she places Helen Burns and Bertha Mason as opposing Victorian stereotypes of womanhood-the Angel who makes Jane believe in God and who makes her learn to forgive people and on the other side the devil-in-the-house,with strong animal passions and unbridled sexuality of which Rochester talks openly about (her Bohemian blood). Showalter says, both forms are ‘an aspect of Jane’s personality ,which she must confront and reject and in doing so she becomes her own mistress’. A new kind of feminine heroine , which is contradicted by Virginia Woolf’s “A room of one’s own," which suggest Bronte addressing her personal grievances in the novel. Showalter refuses to accept this and believes that the novel came with a larger cause, of reclaiming the status of woman and banishing the Victorian stereotypes. If we were to analyse the novel with a post-feminist view as Rosalind Gill does to many texts and media forms in her book ,”Media,Gender and Culture”. We would notice that the novel would be placed at a pedestal where it fights the post-feminists. It is a powerful medium,better than any Vogue advertisement which talks of sexuality . We see ,when Jane receives a proposal from St.John Rivers, she fears that if they married, he would ‘scrupulously observe … all the forms of love’ while the spirit was absent: he would offer sex, in other words, without romantic love. Jane feels this would force her ‘to burn inwardly and never utter a cry’ Thus,defining the fact that the imagery of passion,of desire, a woman’s need , runs all through the novel Bronte for us ,even for people living in the twenty-first century redefines feminism , the passionate forms of womanhood and independence.