Carol A. Senf (Essay Date 1985)

SOURCE: Senf, Carol A. "Jane Eyre and the Evolution of A Feminist History.¹" Victorians Institute Journal 13 (1985): 67-81.

In the following essay, Senf interprets Jane Eyre as an evolutionary history, both in Jane's developing feminist consciousness and in her effort to make an egalitarian marriage.

Traditional criticism generally regards the Brontës as separate from the mainstream of Victorian literature. For example, in The Great Tradition, F. R. Leavis calls Wuthering Heights a "kind of sport" which breaks completely "both with the Scott tradition that imposed on the novelist a romantic resolution of his themes" and with the tradition that began in the eighteenth century "that demanded a plane-mirror reflection of the surface of 'real' life."² Taking a slightly different approach, Q. D. Leavis focuses on the mythic qualities of Charlotte's novels and says that Jane Eyre includes a "general confusion of...