ALTERNATIVE MODELS OF FEMALE LIBERATION: CHALLENGING VICTORIAN EXPECTATIONS IN “JANE EYRE” AND “VANITY FAIR”

Barno Kupalova

doi:https://journal.nordicuniversity.org/

Abstract

During the 1840s in Victorian England, a new style of realistic writing started showing how women fought against male-dominated society. This study looks at two famous books from that time: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847-1848). Both stories have main characters who work as governesses and have no parents, but they deal with their difficult situations in completely different ways. The results of studying characters by looking at their backgrounds, education, friendships, and love relationships show two opposite ways of thinking: Jane Eyre follows her moral beliefs and stays true to herself, while Becky Sharp uses clever tricks and her attractiveness to climb up the social ladder. Jane refuses to let men control her and wants a marriage based on equal respect. Becky, however, uses people to get into higher social classes, but never becomes truly happy or authentic. These different paths show us the problems in Victorian society: Brontë’s character represents independent thinking and early feminist ideas, while Thackeray’s character reveals how corrupt and empty upper-class society really was. This research helps us understand how stories can show different ideas about women’s power and choices, and how Victorian culture couldn’t solve the problem of women wanting freedom while society kept them down.

Keywords

Victorian literature

female agency

critical realism

feminist narratology

moral autonomy

instrumental rationality

gender transgression

social mobility

comparative character analysis.

This research helps us understand how stories can show different ideas about women’s power and choices, and how Victorian culture couldn’t solve the problem of women wanting freedom while society kept them down.

References

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Rights & License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.