Jane Eyre Reflection

Jane Eyre is an important text to really deconstruct what feminism was in the Victorian era. I think from reading it I questioned the feminism aspect throughout and wondered what it meant to Jane herself. As a woman in 2021, feminism is a lot different from Jane’s perspective in the 1840s. We focus on equality and are still striving forward to make those big changes in society, but in the 1840s, feminists were standing for equality in their homes, with the people they shared their lives with. I think it was about halfway through the text when I truly understood why it was considered a feminist novel. Jane, even though some of her decisions were persuaded by others, they were her own decision. She wanted to marry for love, not for the mere concept of marriage. She wanted her own life, do what she wanted to do, and throughout the story, she made her own decisions. She chose not to marry Rochester, she chose to move away, she chose to turn down St. John, and she chose to forgive Rochester in the end. It is a story about decisions, all of which Jane made, which you wouldn’t see in other works. This is why I think that this novel is one of the first great feminist novels of that century, simply from Jane’s ability to make her own decisions.