Jane Eyre

Abstract

Abstract In jane eyre bronte extends her analysis of the ways in which ideological pressures of class, gender, and economics are played out in the domain of subjectivity. Traditional readings of the novel which regard it primarily as a drama of the psyche, where society is consigned to the role of backdrop, fail to register the ways in which the language of psychology in the novel is itself politically defined and charged. Similarly feminist celebrations of Brontë’s depictions of sexual rebellion fail to take into account the ways in which the novel is framed by the discourses of Victorian psychology. Medical texts of the era foregrounded the same three concerns which dominate Brontë’s novel: the mechanics of self-control, the female body and sexuality, and the insurgence of insanity.