WHAT JANE EYRE TAUGHT: THE “AUTOBIOGRAPHER’’ IN JANE EYRE AND WOMEN’S EDUCATION
WHAT JANE EYRE TAUGHT: THE “AUTOBIOGRAPHER’’ IN JANE EYRE AND WOMEN’S EDUCATION

Summary/Abstract: This article looks at Charlotte Brontë’s novel “Jane Eyre” in search of the embedded mechanisms that make changes regarding women’s role in society and their proper education emerge as logical necessities, even though, apparently, no character in this novel is a consequent supporter of change, not even Jane. Some characters advocate women’s education in order to better cope with the vicissitudes on a Christian moral level, while revealing themselves as abusers. Young Jane gets to depend on such people several times, and barely survives. Critics notice the distance between young Jane’s words, advocating the need for change, and mature Jane’s apparent abandonment of the cause for an idyllic domestic life. But the “autobiographic” formula points at different conclusions and those conclusions surpass what the characters have to say.

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