In this particular period (nineteenth century) of the Victorian ideas, people were classed as the upper class, the middle class and the working class. You either worked or you owned workers. The upper class inherited their money or worked great jobs. The middle class owned and worked in stores where as the working class worked as a governess and so forth. One was seen as better if you inherited money, than working for you money when rich.
Gender was connected to the social role of men and woman. Woman was believed to be the passive, nurturing and emotional ones. These characteristics made woman the weaker human beings. Woman was being discriminated against. Men were the masculine ones. They were aggressive and the head of the house figures. They were apart of a patriarchal society.
As time passed however men become more feminine since they didn’t have to participate in the energizing struggle for existence. This occurrence caused many homosexual scandals and moral weakness. With the feminism movement, woman started to do more physical work and became more public, and thus more independent and masculine. Men became feminized by the undermining of their roles. Men didn’t want to reproduce anymore. Luckily new ideas came to mind and the human race was saved.
Ideology is believed to be a set of beliefs. People had the ideal idea of how they relationships should be even if it was not so in reality. In the Victorian period middle class ideology was always under construction and in the making. It was always open to change.
Charlotte Bronte wrote this preface to respond to all the criticism against the first edition of the novel. She refused to leave the insults she received on her novel just there. She wanted to show the world that she had a good story on her hands and made the critics look like the fools in the end.
In the preface Bronte wanted to clear the air, but all so actually did was to repeat their ideas. Once again her critics ended up looking fatuous. She finds the true meaning why they criticise her so much, being a woman, and mocks them. It is almost like she is looking for a response and encouraging woman to join her and find their own voices.
“Currer Bell” was the unknown name Bronte wrote by in this second addition. In that time many woman decided to write under an unknown name to prevent being degraded and not getting their work out there. This name could be either a woman’ or a man’. Many people disliked her and had bad things to say about her previous novel, so for her to maintain a normal life without any drama from critics this was the wisest thing to do.
“Name and sex of the writer is still a mystery”. This quotation is proof that the public cared a lot about the sex of the writer. According to them “throughout there is a masculine power, breadth and shrewdness, combined with masculine hardness, coarse and freedom of expression” which imply that a man wrote the novel. However “The love scenes glow with fire” is words and descriptions which only a woman would write.
“Such genuine power with such horrible taste” suggests that they had a great dislike for the writer’s sex. They are discriminating against her, because she is a woman. Even if the novel was great they would still bad mouth it, because she is a woman. “Making an unworthy character interesting in the eyes of the reader”. The public didn’t have much respect for lower class woman. They didn’t thought them worthy of anything well done, but rather considered them the lowest form of human while in fact they had true sole.
The criticism against her didn’t stop. The story she told was so filled with the truth that they were to embarrass to admit to reality. The only way for them to deal with their embarrassment was to offend her in as many ways as possible. “There is hardness in her infinite earnestness, and a spiteful precocity in her reasoning, which repulses all our sympathy.” “She has inherited in fullest measure the greatest sin of our time – the sin of pride. Jane Eyre is proud and therefore she is ungrateful too”.
For the public it was a huge shock that in that period a woman could actually write such a brilliant novel. They didn’t want this to happen again so in order to prevent another extraordinary novel written by a woman they had to criticize against her in all ways possible. For man to stay in the higher authorized position, woman’s work had to be degraded. The fact that she was from a lower class society like her character upset them even more. They couldn’t have someone that had less education be a threat to the well-educated children and colleges. In their opinion people couldn’t be influenced by this book, written by a lower class woman, so they made it sound like the worst book written.
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