Abstract
Although a number of Brontë scholars have studied the many similarities between Jane Eyre and fairy tales such as Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, one significant difference between the novel and its fairy-tale influences is Jane's physical plainness. This essay examines Jane's appearance specifically as a contrast to fairy-tale heroines such as Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's Beauty in her version of 'Beauty and the Beast'. As a contrast to the fairy-tale beauties invoked throughout the novel, Jane's plainness takes on the dimension of social critique. This essay demonstrates, through an examination of the significance of female beauty in Charlotte Brontë's juvenilia and in nineteenth-century renditions of Beauty and the Beast, that Charlotte uses plainness and beauty to condemn an upper-class system of values which, by emphasizing the importance of a woman's appearance, limited her ability to develop selfhood and achieve autonomous action.
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