What are the main moral messages of Jane Eyre? How does Charlotte Bronte convey these moral messages to her readers? To what extent is she reflecting Victorian morality in her writing?
The novel ‘Jane Eyre’ was published in 1847, which was in the Victorian era; this is a significant fact to remember while reading the novel as the storyline portrays many different moral issues in the point of view of Victorian morality, which of course is different to the view we have nowadays. This being one of the main themes of the novel, amongst: religion, social class and gender relations; all of these things give a stark contrast between the views on such subjects between the Victorian times and today. For example when in the beginning of the novel Jane is beaten as a child; this kind of behaviour would have been overlooked and considered a normal activity, where as today this kind of action would be seen as child abuse, therefore allowing the readers to empathise with Jane through their feelings of discontent towards this subject, thus giving them a taste of how turbulent her childhood was from the immorality of hitting a child. Charlotte Bronte conveys this moral message and others in many ways through her novel, of which, I shall be studying through the following essay.
The issue of morality in Victorian times was unheard of in the terms that we may think of it today, although it was a large issue in terms of religion and other such matters, for example: we wouldn’t consider pre-marital sex a big issue if we were unreligious, where as Victorian people would consider it a huge sin, from their widespread Christian attitude to life. However we would consider beating a child as a horrific act, where as the Victorians would think of it as normal. This kind of dilemma of right and wrong appears many times throughout ‘Jane Eyre’, a contrast between Victorian and modern morality is broadly shown from start to finish of the novel,