Abstract
Jane Eyre is an influential novel by Charlotte Bronte published in 1847 and is certainly one of the most famous classic texts of all time. It is obviously written from the person's point of view, besides, when it was initially published, the subtitle was "An autobiography".
Jane Eyre deals with the story of a girl who struggles to keep her independent spirit in spite of the problems that society throws against her. Her character also depicts maturation and development.
The subject we have to study, "Women and Space in the book Jane Eyre" links two essential notions that are mainly present in the novel. Indeed, we can observe that women are represented in a great number in comparison to men, and that their places in the novel are essential as they play a key role.
The notion of "space" is also significant in the novel. First of all, the term "space" can be associated with different meanings: it can refer to a concrete area or place (for example, a house), more generally, it can also refer to a whole area in which things, people exist: the world, the society, and at last, it could also be associated with the notion of freedom: when you need space, you need freedom.
This notion of space is central in the novel because we can observe that the story takes place in four successive places: Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield and Marsh End. Furthermore, society is at the heart of the problem in Jane Eyre, and freedom is what Jane is searching for.
We are going to study to what extent a woman occupies a central place in the spaces in the novel, and more generally, how women are being represented. In the first part, we shall first analyze the link between women and the concrete places that appear in the novel and mostly the link between Jane and these places. In the second part, we will analyze the place of women in the general space, as in society.
