Summary AQA English Literature: Jane Eyre - contextual notes

JANE EYRE RESEARCH ☺
DEFINITIONS
WOMEN
Doppelganger: Person/ Spirit look-alikes who
Ideal women
are not biologically related.

Byronic Hero: An anti-hero who rejects social ● Victorian feminism emerged as a
normalities, lacking conventional heroic potential political threat
qualities and is deeply flawed.
● Limited opportunities, women
TYPICAL CHARACTERISTICS (home), men (business, politics,
- Rebellious society)
- Arrogant Queen Victoria = femininity + domesticity
Mrs Frances Goodby -> accepted domestic
- Anti-social
role in sexual hierarchy, devoted to
- In exile
husband/God BUT upright and independent
- Haunted by past wrongs on own strength
(traumatised)
- Intelligent ● Homes elaborately decorated =
- Educated Female Fashion (sexual, symbol of
- Attractive towards heroines social function, constricted activities)
(seductive) ● Maintaining house = physical labour
- Self-serving
for women/ servants -> welcoming
Romanticism: Literary movement emphasising haven for man
individualism and emotion through an ● Domestic sphere = women
imaginative form.
demonstrate power -> domestic
Satire: Criticising people/ideas in a humorous industry
way, especially to make a political point
● Middle class women helped the poor
The other: Individual/group perceived as in child care, cleanliness
different, foreign in reference to society.
● Religious commitment + moral
Bildungsroman: Coming of age novel. superiority = service + self-sacrifice ->
Gothic Literature: Fiction genre including dark gain better education, employment,
and frightening themes, settings and working conditions, wages & right to
characters, employing a sense of fear and vote
haunting.
Motherhood
COVENTIONS ● Affirmation of identity
- Darkness/night
● Highest achievement
- Death
- Innocent victims ● Responsibility (natural->job) in
- Good vs evil
response to high mortality rates -
- Romance
> poor mothers breast-fed &
- Abandoned settings
taught child care
- Supernatural beings
- Phobias ● Expectation

, JANE EYRE RESEARCH ☺
● Single childless women ● Teacher
encouraged into child care
● Lodging house keeper: maintain
professions
rooms within a hotel/house
● Commitment incompatible with
labour! working class called Lower class
irresponsible ● Seamstresses
● Milliners
● Farm/factory/mine workers
● Washer women
Careers for women ● Domestic servants

Upper class Underclass
● Royalty e.g. Queen ● Unemployed
● Nobility ● Underemployed
● Aristocracy: the highest class in ● Victims of injury/illness
certain societies, typically comprising
people of noble birth holding ● Prostitution: the practice or
hereditary titles and offices occupation of engaging in sexual
activity with someone for payment
● Gentry: people of good social
Insanity/madness/ asylums
position, specifically the class of
● Victorian era no. in asylums
people next below the nobility in
position and birth increased drastically

● Ladies of Uplands/Lawn -> villas built ● Upper/ middle class admitted
for wealthy women family members with mental
trauma
● Nurses eg. Florence Nightingale
● Working class admitted as
Middle Class paupers: a very poor person

● Writers ● Prisons disguised as hospitals

● Doctors ● Removed poor/incurable/
unwanted wives from society
● Member of religious order
● Woman considered hysterical if
● Families of professions (physicians, not polite/ agreeable/ desire for
attorneys ect.) education
● Women spent most time indoors
Lower middle class & Ambiguous class
in asylums (laundry, needle work,
● Hoteliers
cleaning)
● Publicans: a person who owns or
Physical treatments for mental illness
manages a pub
● Restraints
● Governess