Charlotte Bronte and her women : the oppression of women in a patriarchal society and their quest to have a voice to express their emotions and sexual desires with reference to Charlotte Brontë's, Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette

Abstract

In the Victorian period woman was perceived as a submissive being whose main role in society was “to love, honour, obey her Lord and master.” In her novels, Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette, the Victorian author, Charlotte Brontë, portrayed her heroines’ subversion of patriarchal authority and their quest to express their sexuality through a feminine voice. It is an undeniable fact that the main goal of feminists, like Mary Wollstonecraft, was to give women ‘a voice’. Throughout the centuries women have been the oppressed gender and many women have even risked their lives to try and exert some form of female equality. Margery Kempe wrote the first English autobiography during a period of strict patriarchal authority which governed literature at the time. She overcame intervention from the ecclesiastical realms to write her book The Book of Margery Kempe. Kempe was fully aware of the possibility of being labelled as a madwoman. She knew that going outside the constraints of the conventions of society could be seen as an attempt to undermine balance and order, in society. Such behaviour would quickly be categorised as madness by a society dominated by patriarchal authority. Another voice in the depths of oblivion was Mary Wollstonecraft, an eighteen century author, who also stood her ground and pioneered for equal rights to education for women in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her stance on improving women’s low status in society left her ostracised from society as it created strong objections in a patriarchal domain. Wollstonecraft argued that women were seen as objects of sexuality and not subjects of sexuality. She felt that in a male dominated society, women’s sexuality was portrayed as a male construct and that female desire did not exist. “Men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us as alluring objects for a moment.” Regrettably, these women had no chance of improving their position in the literary world, as they struggled to overcome the oppressive conditions women were forced to endure at the hands of men. There was only one language at the time and that was solely dictated by men. It was inconceivable for a female author to express her emotions and feelings, let alone her sexual desires. Any women expressing these sexual feelings would be labelled a madwoman. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in their book The Madwoman in the Attic deal with the problems women writers faced in the nineteenth century and how they struggled for self-definition in a maleorientated world. A woman’s place was considered to be in the home raising her children. Society forbade them from a working career. They were not given equal opportunities to education; instead the only real employment they could seek would be as a tutor or a governess. John Ruskin argued that although men and women were biologically different they still deserved the same opportunities with regard to education, as he maintained that even women had their roles to play in society. However, in his book Sesame and Lilies there are still strong patriarchal overtones as he states that a woman’s education should be to serve and aid her husband: “[h]is command of it should be foundational and progressive, hers, general and accomplished for daily and helpful use.” In other words, woman should be granted the opportunity to further their education but should in no way exceed men’s knowledge. It was not until the nineteenth century, that John Stuart Mill, in his book The Subjection of Women showed compassion and support for women’s rights and Victorian liberalism. Elaine Showalter wrote in her A Literature of Their Own that: “If women lived in a different country from men and had never read any of their writings, they would have a literature of their own.” Mill argued that males were the ones in power because of their superior physical being and because they did not want to surrender their superior standing to women.