Abstract
This essay examines the limits of Jane Eyre’s ‘parrhesia,’ truth-telling or the courage of truth. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre has been regarded as a novel of a feminist critique against patriarchal discourses restricting women into the boundary of household where they should serve as care-givers of affection for their children and their husband. The Foucauldian notion of ‘parrhesia’ emphasizes the individual’s efforts to practise ethical self-governance. In accordance with the parrhesiates’ self-adjustment, Jane in the novel seems to express her voice of truth courageously against male figures’ dominant discourses of subordination and obedience. However, Jane unconsciously entraps herself into the mid-Victorian ideologies of political economy, domesticity, and Christian religion when she extols the fulfillment of her fantasized self-image supported by wealth and the hegemony of class consciousness.
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