Thesis:
No wonder, then, that Jane Eyre has come
to occupy a position of privilege in the feminist canon
Necessary back ground:
・Reading Jane's voice as a "challenge [to the] limits on female authority" and "the trope par excellence of power" (Lanser 177, 183), a tradition of feminist criticism has constructed its romance with Jane Eyre by reading it as a model of resistance, not only to "the Victorian conception of woman's place" (Christ 67) but to "women's fate within the symbolic order" (Homans 86)
・"I will tell anybody who asks me questions this exact tale," Jane warns Mrs. Reed. "People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. You are deceitful!... If any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty" (69, 68).
I think these
are necassary because the first one shows in spite of limited female authority and
symbolic order for women in tose days, Jane resists them in some way and second
one shows the example of her resistance.
The title of this paper:
The title of this paper gives the topic of
this paper and the title of the book.
Supporting argument:
"The novel is read as a
"revolutionary manifesto of the subject" (Cora Kaplan 173). Jane's
value as a feminist heroine is "figured in the ability to tell (if not
direct) her own story" (Poovey 140; see also Homans, Peters
I
think the author uses other people's opinion to support her thesis.
Work Cited
Kaplan, Carla. Girl Talk: Jane Eyre and
the Romance of Women's Narration: Duke University Press
2 comments:
Until I read your post, I did't think that Jane Eyre has a theme of woman's authority, but I understand that now. I think that Jane's words against Mrs.Reed is her residence and it was rare in that age.
Kaplan's paper is a difficult paper, and the argument is complicated. Also, it is a paper from 1996, and it follows the older style of not giving the thesis clearly early on.
When she says "No wonder, then, that Jane Eyre has come to occupy a position of privilege in the feminist canon" this is a comment about how highly feminists value Jane Eyre, but this is just part of the background. It is not what she is trying to prove in her paper.
She begins by showing how feminists have thought about Jane Eyre, and then, on page 6, she explains her disagreement with most previous feminist critics. She says, "feminist criticism's affair with Jane's voice and story has too often depended on taking the novel's own romance for granted". In other words, previous critics have focused on the fact that Jane has a voice, but they have not thought about how her voice shapes the romantic aspect of the story.
This is not exactly a thesis, but it shows what she *disagrees* with, so the reader can see that she will argue against this.
She goes on to say, at the bottom of page 6, that seeing Jane Eyre as what Showalter calls a "heroine of fulfillment" is a mistake, because it takes the focus away from the novel's "erotics of talk". She feels (page 7) that Jane does *not* entirely fulfill her aim. She also feels that Jane's talk is basically woman to woman (i.e., that it is intended for female readers), and in a sense the "romance" of the book is not entirely heterosexual.
This now shows us the direction that her paper will take; she will explain the ways in which Jane does *not* achieve fulfillment, and she will emphasize the importance of "sisterly love" (a quote from Bronte's book which Kaplan uses on page 17).
To find Kaplan's basic argument, though, we need to look at the conclusion, where she says that "Jane knows what she wants" but "the novel...does not know how to give it to her". The novel "remains unsure about how hierarchical Victorian conventions of gender, class, sexuality and status might be overturned" (p. 27). In other words, Bronte's book challenges the values of Victorian society, but does not give a clear picture of what values should take their place.
I hope this helps you to understand Kaplan's paper and also to make your own analysis of Bronte's work!
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