I awoke in prison: societal dependence on female subjection in Middlemarch and Jane Eyre

This thesis attempts to analyze the structures that support and maintain the society of nineteenth-century England through the lens of the novel. Within the novels Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bront?? and Middlemarch by George Eliot there appears a specific system of societal organization that rests on female subjugation. Nineteenth-century England had retained a fear of the individual outside of societal constraint from the era of the French Revolution, and in an effort to control such and individual the social contract is enacted: the individual trades their freedom for safety within the community. In order for the male portion of the population to rest existentially with such a trade, the female section must be subjugated under male control to give the illusion that nothing was lost in the exchange. Women, studied here in the female protagonist within these two novels, thus become the crux of an entire society???s structure and survival. These protagonists serve as mirrors to their male counterparts, reflecting back an image of himself as a moral subject, and in order to keep her in such a role she is disciplined through community surveillance and her education. Within these novels male control is also maintained through domination of the verbal economy and restricting the female protagonists to very small spaces. Some of these women provide challenges to this type of control in their very sexuality, and it is thus split into the dichotomy of the saint and the harlot in order to preserve domination.CSU, Chic