Jane Eyre is a strong, dignified individual who wants to experience love and affection as an adult to compensate for her lack of such pleasures as a child. However, due to enforcement of gender roles that catalyzes her time, Jane’s life is plagued by the standard of losing her identity, sense of control and equality to men. She narrates her life as a victim of her time who is failing to live happily against the grain of a traditional patriarchal society. 

Within a few months of settling as a Thornfield governess, Jane falls in love with Mr. Rochester, her wealthy boss, and agrees to marry him upon learning of his reciprocated love. However, instead of awaiting the wedding, Jane begins to recognize the inescapable and confining consequences of the decision, thinking, “The month of courtship had wasted: its very last hours were being numbered [...] not I, but one Jane Rochester, a person whom as yet I know not” (Bronte 279). Jane would lose the ability to recognize herself for who she truly is, losing her identity in the process of becoming dependent on and subordinate to a man, which was a quiet yet relevant fear among many English women during the Victorian Era. This could reaffirm the same oppressive societal values that Jane desired to challenge, including male superiority, the treatment of women as possessions, and societal cleavage on the basis of gender. According to historians Dorothy and Carl Schneider, such societal cleavage was, “based on the physical differences between men and women, [and] dominated thinking about gender roles throughout much of the 19th century [...] This concept has historically been used to legitimize gender-based laws” (1). By placing a contemporary and modern audience directly in the shoes of someone being stripped of their rightful identity, Bronte successfully communicates the plight of English women and sheds light on the inequality between sexes in Victorian England, resulting in greater awareness of the harm of a conservative ideology in regard to societal standards.

In Victorian England a noticeable wave of cultural enlightenment in response to social inequality fueled Bronte’s depiction of the female protagonist. What augmented the plight of women of her time is the fact they had little political power, and even attempts to increase this power led them to become trapped in marriages with men they did not actually love. According to historian James Daybell, “One of the main reasons for placing a daughter at court was to enable her to marry well. A life at court brought girls into contact with eligible, wealthy, and well-connected male suitors and offered the chance perhaps to attract the eye of the king” (1). During this period, many women married for business reasons rather than for love, despite men’s ability to do the latter. Women had been treated like servants and accessories with the purpose of belonging to wealthy and powerful men, with their beauty and talents viewed as trophies of their husbands’ success. Coming from a family that treated her like an object, Jane strives to be powerful and confident, becoming the embodiment of the hopes of Victorian women to escape the patriarchy. She calls attention to girls like Adele who are smart yet unrecognized, and cast away for being inferior in some respect, and grows close to Ms. Fairfax for being an older model in her life who is much more humble than Mr Rochester and less capable of trampling on her. Jane Eyre as a narrator distinguishes the variety of female figures in her life as a method of calling out harmful and unrealistic expectations of how women should look and behave, and as a protagonist she revolutionized England’s perception of women and their capabilities.