Silencing the Voice of the Subaltern in Bronte's Jane Eyre

Authors

  • Marwan Harb Alqaryouti ,Nurshafawati Binti Ahmad Sani ,Hanita Hanim Ismail

Keywords:

Charlotte Brontë, Bauvoir, Currer Bell

Abstract

This paper aims at exploring Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre from a feminist perspective that presents the character of Jane as a silenced subaltern who strives to speak against the patriarchal power of her society. The paper views the dilemma of Jane in the novel as representative of the dilemma of women in the Victorian age, including Charlotte Brontë herself, who first published the novel under the pseudo name Currer Bell in 1847. The paper reads the novel from a feminist perspective based on an existentialism framework of Simon de Bauvoir (Simons, 1996; Simons, 2010). This is an unusual reading since this novel is usually associated with other prespictives such as colonialism; the paper asserts, however, that women at that time were marginalized and silenced to be dipcted as 'other'. Such oppression makes women imprisoned in the sense that they are misrepresented and objectified.

Published

2021-11-07