Essay Example on Hypocrisy in Jane Eyre

📌Category: Books, Jane Eyre
📌Words: 690
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 15 January 2022

Like many books of its time, Jane Eyre is more a political commentary than a romance novel, as it is generally perceived. Like Jonathan Swift and Charles Dickens, famous satirists of the time, Charlotte Brontë describes the social and political issues she observes through the genre of a love story. She wrote the novel under a pseudonym because it was unheard of for a woman to criticize the social order or to pen a novel in general. Brontë addresses many social problems in Jane Eyre through irony, but some main issues are the belief that women are the inferior sex, the incredible hypocrisy of the rich, and the poor treatment of orphan children. 

Because women had children and normally raised them, they have been viewed as the inferior sex. They were originally satisfied with this because this was the way it was. After several decades, women started questioning their place and viewing themselves as equals to men.  “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.”(Brontë) Women in the Victorian era put the stereotype upon themselves by shunning individuals that did not meet this standard. This is an example of irony in the book, as Jane struggles with this because she strives to be a proper woman, but still values her freedom and rebels against people trying to control her. This was a common theme then. Women were expected to stay home and were hardly seen outside the house. Jane was already breaking social norms by finding a job and getting involved with her employer. This is yet another example of irony in Jane Eyre. Because even though Jane acts out and runs away, Brontë would have never done this. 

Even today, the rich are exceedingly hypocritical. They preach about how they are above us because they have more money or have experienced more but in fact, they usually don’t use their influence for good, even though we are expected to give they are above us. “I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.” (Brontë) In this quote, Brontë is using her characters to symbolize a social problem. Unrealistically, as in those times, you would be shunned for expressing such strong feelings against the rich. The book’s tone shows Brontë´s opinion towards this issue. Considering Jane Eyre, in a sense, is an autobiography as the events mirror events in the author’s life. 

In Jane Eyre, we see many examples of poorly treated orphan children. While the children with money or family, like Georgia and Eliza, even though they were both raised in the same household, Jane was treated poorly because she was orphaned. The treatment of children everywhere was poor because they were viewed as wards, and they have no worth. At Lowood, they treat the children as if they were animals. The setting here is important. The horrible surroundings of the children are an example of that. Mr. Brockelhurst has the resources to make the environment more hospitable. Still, he chooses to make them suffer and claims it will help their spirit. He chooses to clothe and feed his children only the finest. This is an example of hypocrisy, in that Mr. Brockelhurst judges the children contradictory, even though he preaches god and equality. 

The use of hypocrisy in Jane Eyre highlights the prominent issues at the period the book was written through irony. Such as the treatment of orphan children, the hypocrisy of the upper class, and women’s rights. Elaborate descriptive language helps to describe the setting.  Jane Eyre is a metaphor for the social and political hypocrisy present in the Victorian era. To this day, we still struggle with the problems that Bronte identified in 1847.

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