Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe: Against Society’s Rule

Even though female protagonists are nowadays common in literature, not enough books are presented to show that they can handle the outside world of adventurism and instead are “required” to stay at home because of their promiscuity of being the gender that is based on staying home. Well there is a fault towards making this the only “occupation” that can fit the female protagonist. It would make the protagonist ignorant and angry because they would want a respectful position in society, no matter what the male protagonist says in regards to it.

These main female protagonists are the characters who want to contend with the process of oppression, discrimination and prejudice. They do not want or like to be controlled over the clothes that they wear or when they should speak for example. Doing so would minimize their influence upon their own standards of thinking, which from the protagonist’s standpoint, would not be allowed.

For the concept of female main protagonists being rebellious over society and from their male counterparts, one writer comes to mind for me: Charlotte Bronte.

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Charlotte Bronte, in her wisdom of being part of a famous last name, makes her presence felt in her writing in regards to early feminism. She makes the position of making sure that the female protagonists in her two books Jane Eyre and Villette would rather go against society’s rule set and mindset and instead have their own rule set and mindset over a male dominated figure. While Jane Eyre (the main protagonist over the novel that “titles’” her name) constitutes as an early feminist touchstone over the placement of where you reside through society, her Bronte “sister” Lucy Snowe (the main protagonist over the novel Villette) is seen as a non-threatening character at first, but over the course of the novel, begins to shown an empowering discord towards those male enforced rules that govern her.

Both these characters, like the Hermione and Lisbeth examples, are two women who want to appreciate gender equality and want to prove that they can function as the main protagonists of their respective novels. Jane and Lucy are not your typical “stay at home and do the dishes” type females. Moreso, there two women are the archetypes of doing their best to abolish gender roles and to prove that just being a female does not mean that you can easily be eliminated to try and distort their freedom. Jane and Lucy overcome gender duality and not resorting themselves as equal to men, but being more sufficient and in a sense, more inclined to abolish gender roles. They want to obtain freedom through being self-proficient, but Jane and Lucy know that they do not only want to show that they can attempt to be masculine, but to be against the masculine idea of converting them (the female protagonists) into what they (the male characters) would want in a formation of the female gender.