Uzbekistan state world languages university philology faculty

3. Psychoanalytic literary criticism
In respect to gender roles, bourgeois women of the 19th century were raised to be submissive and undemanding to fit the "angel in the house" (Avery, 2014) image portrayed by the media, and demanded by men, of the time.
A woman had very few rights of her own and she was expected to quietly marry off and be the domestic submissive of her husband. There were severely limited positions other than those traditionally expected to be carried out by women, like being a governess or nurse, available in the 1800s, meaning that ultimately a woman had to rely on the work of her husband or father to bring in an income, rather than working herself.
Whilst Jane attends school in the novel, university was considered lost on women because it was "reasoned that males are more evolutionarily advanced than females" (Kevics, 1986: 8) by Charles Darwin. This assertion, and previous traditional beliefs of women as inferior, led to the education of women consisting of a very limited range of subjects singing, playing piano and dancing (Lampela, 1993: 65), and certainly not to establish identity and to try to reach independency as Jane aspires to do. In more recent history, feminist ideas have since grown and condemned this old stream of thought. The women's movement, from the 1960s onwards, has created its own perspective on literature, placing novels in the context of gendered culture at the time of writing: "the images of women in literature model the way we see women, and is important to recognise and to question these images, since they provide role models and indicate what are acceptable versions of the feminine," (Barry, 2009: 117). To view Jane Eyre through a feminist lens is the simplest way to establish the attitudes and beliefs of the audience of the time and demonstrates just how estranged Jane is from the common notions of how women should have behaved.
In order to critically analyse the rejection of social identity in Jane Eyre further, another approach is psychoanalytic criticism. The psychoanalytical Freudian theory of women being castrated has been claimed to be a form of "social castration," representing a lack of social power (Barry, 2009: 125). The "penis envy" that women hold (according to Freud's theories) can be interpreted as the envy of the powerful male position in society, rather than the envy of the organ itself, just as Jane lusts after higher positions of authority at Lowood School, where she is undermined by male teachers. Psychoanalytical literary criticism is based on theories developed by Sigmund Freud and asserts how the mind works. Central concepts of Freud's theories include the idea of the id, ego and superego or the unconscious, the conscious and the conscience. To look at Jane Eyre through psychoanalytic lenses, Jane's rejection of social norms might be considered an overactive id not being mediated well enough by her superego. This would explain her rejection of traditional feminine identity as a selfish desire to be different, and to gain attention via this action. Another aspect of Freud's psychoanalytical theory is the "Freudian slip" - the idea denoting all that is repressed being eventually revealed by a slip of the tongue. According to Freud, there is an association between the novelist in the script resembling somebody that dreams (Freud, 1997: 12). A dream is an involuntary action which takes place to process the day's information, and if we are to look at Jane Eyre as a Freudian slip on Brontë's behalf we can assume that Jane's wild rejection of normal social identity reflects Brontë's own estrangement from society. Brontë, just as Jane does in the novel, rejected a marriage proposal from a priest. She wrote to Reverend Henry Nussey, declining his proposal and writing in the letter that he would find her "romantic and eccentric," (Brontë, 1848) echoing words used by Jane to reject John Rivers in the novel. Instead of marrying, Bronte worked as a teacher and governess, again replicating Jane's actions in Jane Eyre.