Jane Eyre critics: identity

John Kucich (1987)

“First-person form … allows Brontë to construct a narrative persona that is in a continuous state of flux and turmoil”

John Kucich (1987 psycho-analytical viewpoint)

“patterns of confinement and escape stress the authenticity of concealed desires”

Lucasta Miller (2002, historicist view)

stage adaptations of Jane Eyre in 1860s and 1870s “attempted to transform Jane into a saintly exemplar of conventional feminine virtue”

Sally Shuttleworth (1996 individual desires)

Bronte’s novels “as only how individual desires and ambitions can be achieved”

Sally Shuttleworth (1996 Jane as an outsider)

“Jane is writing as an outsider who longs to be included, but yet whose sense of self-worth stems from her position of exclusion and sense of difference”

Jina Politi (1982)

“Jane Eyre [the book] constructs a new female stereotype: the highly principled, unattractive woman”

Elaine Showalter (1977)

“Brontë attempts to depict a complete female identity”