试析_简_爱_中的女性主义_英文_

摘要：《简爱》是十九世纪英国批判主义文学家夏洛蒂勃郎特的代表作品，它成功的塑造了新型的小资产阶级女性简的生动形象，集中描写了她为谋求妇人经济独立和爱情平等而进行的斗争，在这篇论文中，首先将对作者夏洛蒂勃郎特﹑简爱的社会背景﹑简爱的故事情节﹑主角和影响进行简要的介绍，紧接着着重描写她的爱情观点，她自信，果断，坚持自我选择，表现了简这位新时代女性在各方面的追求以及超时代性，然后将简·爱，那个时代的楷模和突破，与新时代的女性进行对比，有此得出的结论是，现在的女性主义是当时的一种延续以及发展。

ABSTRACT ：Jane Eyre is written by Charlotte Bronte who is the famous English novelist.It successfully cre －ates Jane ’s vivid image.She describes a woman seeking economic independence and struggling for love and equal －ity.At first,the paper gives an introduction of the author –Charlotte Bronte,the background,the role and influ －ence of Jane Eyre.Second,it describes Jane ’s pursuit of love,her confidence,decisiveness,and her persistence in self-selection.Then it compares Jane,a model,a breakthrough in that time,with modern women and arrive at the conclusion that the feminist movement today is the continuation and development of that time.关键词：简爱平等自尊女性主义KEY WORDS:Jane Eyre equality self-respect feminism试析《简·爱》中的女性主义史蓓蓓四川建筑职业技术学院四川德阳618000【中图分类号】I106【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1002-2139（2009）-21-0072-04Ⅰ.Introduction1.1The Author –Charlotte BronteJane Eyre has been popular with readers all over the world since its publication in 1847.It was written by Charlotte Bronte,one of the most outstanding British writers in nineteenth century.She was a fa -mous talented realistic woman novelist.She portrayed the struggle of the individual to maintain his integrity with a dramatic intensity en -tirely new to English fiction.Charlotte Bronte was born in the family of poor country clergy -man at Thornton Yorkshire in 1816.She was the third child of the family.Her sister Emily wrote Wuthering Heights,and the other sister Anne wrote Agnes Grey.She and her sister went to a charity school with bad food and poor living conditions,then,Charlotte removed from the school to start a sketchy learning at home.Formal schooling was not much in their youth,but wide reading and home education seemed to give free play to their imagination.They wrote stories and poems.In 1842,they went to Brussels for nine months to learn French.Charlotte worked there as a teacher for one year.Charlotte died in 1855,less than one year after her marriage to a clergyman A.B,Nicholas.1.2The social background of Jane Eyre1832,the year when the first Reform Bill was passed,is usually regarded as the end of the Romantic era and the beginning of the Victorian age,although Queen Victorian did not start her reign until 1837.The Victorian age (1832-1902)was a time of profound change.The Industrial Revolution had reshaped the class structure of English society by creating the rich bourgeoisies and powerful but politically deprived proletariat who would have to fight for their right.Human knowledge also made major advances that inevitably posed as a direct challenge to the authority of religion.The Victorian age is usually subdivided into the following phases:the early victorian period,the mid-victorian period,and late victorian period.Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre in the early victorian period when the conflict between la -bor and capital was so sharp.In this period the labour cried for democracy,freedom and equality.1.3The summary of the book –Jane EyreJane Eyre is a Bildungsroman,or a coming-of-age novel,which recounts the first nineteen years of the character of Jane Eyre,in the first-person voice.Ten -year -old orphan Jane Eyre lives unhappily with her wealthy,cruel cousins and aunt at ter she is sent off to school at Lowood,but there,under the hypocritical Evangelicalism of the headmaster,Mr.Brocklehurst,she suffers further privations in the austere environment.She befriends Helen Burns,is taken under the wing of the superintendent,Miss Temple.Jane excels as a student for six years and as a teacher for two.Jane finds employment as a governess at the estate of Thornfield for a little girl,Adele.After much waiting,Jane finally meets her em -ployer,Edward Rochester,a brooding,detached man who seems to have a dark past.Other oddities around Jane develops an attraction for Rochester,not based on looks (both are considered plain)but on their intellectual communion.However,the higher social standing of the beautiful Miss Ingram seemingly vaults her above Jane.Though Rochester flirts with the idea of marrying Miss Ingram,he is aware of her financial ambitions for marriage.An old acquaintance of Rochester ’s,Richard Mason,visits Thornfield and is severely injure.Jane,baffled by the circumstances,tends to him,and Rochester con -fesses to her that he made an error in the past that he hopes to over -turn by marrying Miss Ingram.He says that he has another governess position for Jane lined up elsewhere.Jane returns to Gateshead for a while.When she returns to Thornfield,Rochester asks Jane to marry him.Jane accepts,but a month later,Mason and a solicitor,Mr.Briggs,interrupt the ceremony by revealing that Rochester already has a wife:Bertha Mason,Ma -son's sister,a lunatic who is kept in the attic in Thornfield.Rochester confesses his past misdeeds to Jane.In his youth he needed to marry the wealthy Bertha for money,but was unaware of her family ’s history of madness,and over time she became an incorrigible,dangerous part of his life which only imprisonment could solve.Despite his protests that he loves Jane,she cannot agree to marry him because of his pre -vious marriage,and leaves Thornfield.Jane arrives at the desolate crossroads of Whitcross and is re -duced to begging for food.Fortunately,the Rivers siblings (St.John,Diana,and Mary)take her into their home at Moor House.She devel -An Analysis of Fem inism in Jane Eyreops great affection for the ladies,and happily teaches at St.John’s school.Jane learns that she has inherited a vast fortune from her un-cle,and that the Rivers siblings are her cousins.She divides it among her new family and phases out her teaching duties.St.John is going to go on missionary work in India and repeat-edly asks Jane to accompany him as his wife;she refuses,since it would mean compromising her capacity for passion in a loveless mar-riage.Instead,she is drawn to thoughts of Rochester and,one day, after experiencing a mystical connection with him,seeks him out at Thornfield.She discovers that the estate has been burned down by Bertha,who died in the fire,and that Rochester,who was blinded in the incident,lives nearby.He is overjoyed when she locates him,and relates his side of the mystical connection Jane had.He and Jane marry and enjoy life together,and he regains his sight in one eye.1.4The role and influence of Jane EyreJane Eyre is the protagonist and narrator in this novel,she de-velops from an angry,rebellious,10-year-old orphan into a sensitive, artistic,maternal,and fiercely independent young woman.While Jane’s social class is one of her biggest barriers,it best serves to un-derscore Jane’s need for independence,both financial and emotional. She rejects marriages to Rochester and St.John because she under-stands she will have to forfeit her independence in the unions,and marries Rochester only when she has attained the financial indepen-dence and self-esteem to maintain a marriage of equality.This self-esteem is gained through Jane’s making her mark in various worlds (Lowood,Thornfield,and particularly Moor House)in which she is valued for her humanity and values.Paralleling Jane’s desire for in-dependence is her search for a proper set of religious values.She re-jects the extremist models of Brocklehurst,Helen Burns,and St.John, eventually settling on a spirituality of love and connection.The story told with terrific intensity.The suffering of Jane were presented so powerfully and in such a simple but plain language that they couldn’t be read without emotion,it was not a romance,like other novels of Charlotte Bronte.Jane Eyre was characterized by relentless truthful-ness to ordinary reality.Even when the action was most exiting,its detail was strictly true like the real life.Jane Eyre is unique in Victo-rian fiction.It was the first English novel,and perhaps even powerful and popular novel.It is a work of fiction with memorable characters and vivid scenes,written in a compelling prose style.In appealing to both the head and the heart,Jane Eyre triumphs over its flaws and remains a classic of nineteenth-century English literature and one of the most popular of all English novels.Ⅱ.Feminism in Jane Eyre2.1The definition of“feminism”Feminism is a collection of social theories,political movements, and moral philosophies largely motivated by or concerned with the liberation of women.In simple terms,feminism is the belief in social, political and economic equality of the sexes,and a movement orga-nized around the belief that gender should not be the pre-determinant factor shaping a person’s social identity or socio-political or econom-ic rights.A large portion of feminists are especially concerned with what they perceive to be the social,political and economic inequality between the sexes which favors the male gender;some have argued that gendered and sexed identities,such as“man”and“woman”,are socially constructed.Feminists disagree over the sources of inequality, how to attain equality,and the extent to which gender and gender-based identities should be questioned and critiqued.2.2Jane’s opinion of equality between man and womanThis book is written in the first person and contains some au-thentic autobiographical experiences.Jane Eyre is the leading role in this book,and she is the symbol of new female who have the courage to pursue the ideal and dare revolt.Of course,Mr.Rochester is the other important role in this novel.The author wants to portray the special character of the leading role–Jane through their love story. This contrasts with the situation of women’s low status in Victorian age,and shows the idea that women want freedom and independence. This is also the reason why this novel is popular for more than one century.In this book,author leads us to see Jane’s opinion about marriage and Jane’s attitude towards equality between man and wom-en.All of this is to show Jane struggles continually to achieve e-quality and to overcome oppression.She fights against those who be-lieve women to be inferior to men.She thinks women and men are e-qual.In chapter12Jane said“women are supposed to be very calm generally,but women feel just are 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 plan and embroidering bags.It is thoughtless to condemn them,or laugh at them,if they seek to do more or learn more that custom has pronounced necessary for their sex!”①(Charlotte Bronte,1996:53)We can see Charlotte’s opinion from Jane,the women’s status was so low that they wanted freedom and equality in the19th,be-cause of this,when Jane knew the truth of Mr.Rochester’s marriage, she left him.She was unable to express her own thoughts and feel-ings.In her quest for independence and self-knowledge,she came to Rochester only after ensuring that they may marry as equals.Jane was very sober when she towarded love,she was self-con-fident and stubborn,she did not put herself in a non-result and pas-sive status,and the most important is,Jane put the personality and self-respect first,she thought they are more important than love.In Charter23Jane said“Do you think I can stay become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?-a machine without feelings?And can bear to have my morsel of bread,snatched from my cup?Do you think because I am poor,obscure,plain and little,I am soulless and heartless?You think wrong!And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth,I should have made it as hard for you to leave me,as it is now for me to leave you,I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom,conventionalities,nor even of mortal flesh is my spirit that addresses your spirit,just as if both had passed through the grave,and we stood at God’s feet,equal-as we are!”②(Charlotte Bronte,1996:159)Jane lived in that time,which men were the authority in a fami-ly.But the behave that Jane’s offer of marriage to Mr.Rochester showed Jane’s pursuit to happiness and reflected Jane’s expression towards equality of men and women.2.3Jane’s self-respectJane Eyre is a novel written by first person and contains an au-thentic autobiographical experience which shows a subject that human being is equal to respect and love.At the first time Jane talked with Mr.Rochester,Jane showed her own thought because she did not have low self-esteem for she was only a tutor paid for30pounds one year.And Jane did not have low self-esteem for her short stature and her ordinary appearance,but she looked down on the beautiful woman who was very vicious.In chapter18Jane described Miss Ingranm,“she was very showy, but she was not genuine;she had a fine person,many brilliant attain-ments,but her mind was poor,her heart barren by nature;nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil;no unforced natural fruit delight-ed by its freshness she was not good;she was not original;she used to repeat sounding phrases from books;she never repeated,nor had,an opinion of her own,she advocated a high tone of sentiment,but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity;tenderness and truth were not in her.Too often she betrayed this,by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele,pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she hap-pened to approach her;sometimes ordering her from the room,andalways treating her with coldness and acrimony.”③(Charlotte Bronte, 1996:124)We can see this short stature and ordinary appearance girl who is named Jane does not envy Miss Ingram who is long stature and pretty through these words.We can also see Jane’s self-esteem and self-respect,Jane did not think the most important thing to judge a person is appearance but kind heart.Jane’s self-esteem can also be sensed from her reaction to the fact that Mr.Rochester was married,she thought she must leave him. In charter27she said“I care for myself,the more solitary,the more friendless,the more unsustained Iam,the more I will respect myself,I will keep the law given by God;sanctioned by man,I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane and not mad-as I am now.”④(Charlotte Bronte,1996:196)This was the reason Jane told Mr.Rochester why she must leave, but Jane’s real reason to leave Mr.Rochester was Jane thought she got cheated,she thought her self-esteem was kidded.She loved Mr. Rochester very much,in my opinion,there was no woman who could withstand being cheated by the most trusted and closed man who she loved very much.But Jane could.And she made a very reasonable decision,she left Mr.Rochester.In such a powerful force of love un-der siege,in a beautiful,prosperous life temptation,she still persisted in the dignity of the individual,this is the charm of Jane.2.4Jane opinion of marriage and pursuit of her true loveJane Eyre is a book about love,but it is not a book about sim-ple love story discussed by some young people.The book stresses the truth,the author understands of love and the pursuit of love can be seen as a model for future generations.In Jane’s opinion the prereq-uisite of love is the two individuals to be in love,age should not be-come an obstacle,the reason why Jane agreed to marry Mr. Rochester,the most important reason was they loved each other.Mr. Rochester did not look down upon Jane because of her short stature, ordinary appearance and low social status,but treated Jane equally in spirit,so he won Jane’s love.In charter24Mr.Rochester said:“to women who please me only by their faces I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts-when they open to me an ill-temper,but to the clear eye and unadulterated tongue,to the soul made of fire,and the character that bends but does not break-at once supple and stable,tractable and consistent I am ever tender and true.”⑤(Charlotte Bronte,1996:169)These sentences showed Mr.Rochester’s attitude towards love more clearly.Jane fell in love with Mr.Rochester because of this mental communication.And Jane thought age was not premise of marriage but love.After Jane left Mr.Rochester when she knew he had married,she met her cousin ter,St.John proposed marriage to Jane,but Jane did not think St.John loved her,she said “I scorn your idea of love I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer yes St John.And I scorn you when you offer it.”⑥(Charlotte Bronte, 1996:202)These words showed Jane attitude to love–marriage should be based on true feelings,age and status are not the insuperable limits of marriage.In charter24when she told Mrs.Fairfax she loved Mr. Rochester,Mrs.Fairfax said:“There are twenty years of difference in your ages.He might al-most be you father”.⑦(Charlotte Bronte,1996:171)But Jane said:“He is nothing like my father!No one,who saw us together, would suppose it for an instant.Mr.Rochester looks as young,and is as young,as some men at five-and-twenty.”⑧(Charlotte Bronte, 1996:171)There are only nine years of difference in Jane and St.John’s ages,but Jane did not marry with him,this showed Jane’s attitude to marriage more clearly.Jane thought true feeling was important,and the most important thing in Jane’s opinion was honesty!This was the true reason why she left Mr.Rochester.All of these showed Jane’s standpoint,which was pioneering at that time,and it also serves as a model for women in today’s time.Ⅲ.Feminism in Jane’s time and today3.1Feminism in today’s lifeWe can see the status of women has been enhanced so fast now day,but women’s status is also very low in some countries,most feminists believe discrimination against women still exists in North American and European nations,as well as worldwide.But there are many ideas within the movement regarding the severity of current problems,what the problems are,and how best to confront them.Extremes on the one hand include some radical feminists such as Gloria Allred and Mary Daly who argue that human society would be better off with dramatically fewer men.There are also dissidents,such as Christina Hoff Sommers or Camille Paglia,who identify themselves as feminist but who accuse the movement of anti-male prejudice.Many feminists question the use of the term feminist to groups or people who fail to recognize a fundamental equality between the sex-es.Some feminists,like Katha Pollitt or Nadine Strossen,consider feminism to be,solely,the view that“women are people.”Views that separate the sexes rather than unite them are considered by these people to be sexist rather than feminist.There are also debates between different feminists such as Carol Gilligan on the one hand,who believe that there are important differ-ences between the sexes,and those who believe that there are no es-sential differences between the sexes,and that the roles observed in society are due to conditioning.Carol Tavris,author of Anger:the Misunderstood Emotion and The Mismeasure of Woman:Why Women Are Not the Better Sex,the Inferior Sex,or the Opposite Sex,maintains that as long as men’s ex-periences are considered to be the default human experiences,women will always face discrimination in North America or elsewhere.She holds that too much emphasis is placed on innate differences between men and women,and that it has been used to justify the restriction of women’s rights.Because of these,we should try our best to enhance women’s rights and status,achieve actual equality between men and women.3.2Comparing Feminism in Jane’s time and today’s timeIt takes a considerable leap of the imagination for a woman of the21st century to realize what her life would have been like had she been born150years ago.We take for granted nowadays that almost any woman can have a career if she applies herself.We take for granted that women can choose whether or not to marry,and whether or not to have children, and how many.Women of the mid-19th century had no such choices.Most of them lived in a state little better than slavery.They had little choice but to obey men,because in most cases men held all the resources and women had no independent means of subsistence.A wealthy widow or spinster was a lucky exception.A woman announcing her intention to remain single would attract social disapproval and pity. She could not have children or cohabit with a man:the social penal-ties were simply too high.Nor could she follow a profession,since they were all closed to women.Girls received less education than boys,were barred from uni-versities,and could obtain only low-paid jobs.Women’s sole purpose was to marry and reproduce.At mid-century women outnumbered men by360,000and thirty percent of women over20were unmarried. In the colonies men were in the majority,and spinsters were encour-aged to emigrate.Most women had little choice but to marry and upon doing so everything they owned,inherited and earned automatically belonged to their husband.This meant that if an offence or felony was commit-ted against her,only her husband could prosecute.Furthermore,rights to the woman personally-that is,access to her body-were his.Not only was this assured by law,but the woman herself agreed to it ver-bally:written into the marriage ceremony was a vow to obey her hus-band,which every woman had to swear before God as well as earthly witnesses.Not until the late20th century did women obtain the right to omit that promise from their wedding vows.If a woman was unhappy with her situation there was,almost without exception,nothing she could do about it.Except in extremely rare cases,a woman could not obtain a divorce and,until1891,if she ran away from an intolerable marriage the police could capture and return her,and her husband could imprison her.All this was sanc-tioned by church,law,custom,history,and approved of by society in general.Nor was it the result of ancient,outdated laws:the new di-vorce act(1857)restated the moral inequality.Mere adultery was not grounds for a woman to divorce a man;however,it was sufficient grounds for a man to divorce his wife.However,the women have been enhancing their status and power gradually.Since the early days of the Industrial Revolution women in Europe and North America have made considerable progress towards equality with men,although much remains still to be done.Of course, the industrialization of Western countries at first had not improved the status of women,but had degraded them even further by exploiting them and their children in factories as cheap labor.In the preceding relatively prosperous agrarian culture women had worked on an al-most equal footing with men and had been skilled in many occupa-tions.Families were still“producing units”,and women received recognition for contributing their substantial share.The factory system changed all that by breaking up the traditional extended family with its large household and by giving people specialized monotonous tasks behind perpetually moving machines.Women and children were, however,paid much less for such work than men,and thus their eco-nomic“value”declined.It took many decades of struggle before u-nionization and legal reform ended the crassest form of this discrimi-nation.At the same time,middle and upper-class women were increas-ingly confined to the home with little to do except to take care of their children.Their husbands no longer worked inside the house,but were absent during most of the day.These idle women often played the role of frail,sensitive creatures who had“the vapors”and fainted in any “indelicate”situation.On the other hand,many of them also became critical of their position in society.They found time to devote them-selves to various religious and moral causes and even to become in-terested in abolition and the women's rights movement.Eventually, both working-class and bourgeois women insisted on change and contributed to the success of feminism.This success still is not total, and,as we all know,even in the industrialized countries women con-tinue to fight for equal rights.Today,however,in addition to econom-ic issues,problems of sexual self-determination have come to the foreground.It must be remembered,of course,that the relatively liberated and affluent women of Europe and North America are only a small minority of women in the world today.Women in many non-Western countries and in the so-called Third World generally live in a state of subjection and misery.Most of their energy is consumed by hard and unrelenting struggle for sheer survival.Thus,for them,any talk about “sexual liberation”in the Western sense sounds,at best,irrelevant and,at worst,frivolous.Their concerns are more elementary and more pressing.This became disturbingly obvious,for example,when,in 1975,the United Nations sponsored an“International Women’s Con-ference”in Mexico City.This conference demonstrated a serious communication gap between women from industrial and agrarian soci-eties.It also revealed a stark global picture:More than a billion wom-en(the majority of the world’s female population)live in poor,rural areas.Most of them are illiterate,malnourished,exhausted,or even ill,and are forced to work long hours for little reward.Naturally,men share many of these hardships,but women still bear the greatest bur-den.In nearly all“underdeveloped”countries boys are favored over girls from the moment of birth,since parents consider sons as a guar-antee for their economic security in old age.Girls,on the other hand, marry into some other family.Thus,even under conditions of abject poverty,boys are better fed,clothed,and educated than girls.In e-mergencies and in case of natural disasters,female needs also take second place.Furthermore,in many poor countries women have few rights and are early given away in marriage with hardly a voice in the matter.Backbreaking work and constant pregnancies then keep them weak and dependent.Attempts by governments and international a-gencies to raise the general standard of living in poor communities may well have the opposite effect on women by increasing their work-load.Under such depressing circumstances,"women's liberation"has a special meaning and,indeed,poses a challenge to the women's movement in the rich and powerful West.Some of the poor countries have,in the meantime,made great strides toward economic progress and,in some cases,such as in the People’s Republic of China,a considerable degree of sexual equality has been achieved.It is also interesting to note that in recent times some“developing”nations, such as India,Sri Lanka,and Israel have chosen women as heads of state,an example that still waits to be emulated in Europe and Amer-ica.On the whole,one might say that the emancipation of women is no longer a“Western”issue,and that its global implications are in-creasingly being recognized.There also seems little doubt that the demand for sexual equality will persist until it has fully been granted everywhere.Ⅳ.ConclusionFrom the above we can see Jane is a good model for women in all aspects of her self-esteem,self-confidence,respect,indepen-dence,her views on love,her courage,her spirit and ideas.We can also see a new women’s contemporary image from Jane:self-esteem, self-respect,self-reliance,self-improvement,and for its own person-ality,emotional,life,judgment and choice of the firm ideals and per-sistent pursuit.This is the charisma of Jane Eyre,as well as the pur-pose of this paper.Bibliography:[1]Charlotte Bronte.Jane Eyre[M].Shanghai:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.1996[2]Helena Wojtczak.Women of Victorian Sussex[M].London: Hastings Press,2003[3]Irene Dankelman.Joan Davidson.Women and Environment in the Third World:Alliance for the Future[M].New 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