Jane Eyre: Top-Scoring Sample Essay on Gender roles

Discuss the impact of gender roles in Jane Eyre.

A full length (~1,200 word) essay covering:

•      Gender roles as a mechanism of male control, through Brocklehurst's hypocritical demands at Lowood and St John's proposal made in duty rather than affection

•      Defiance as an assertion of equality, from Jane's childhood confrontation with Mrs Reed to "Do you think I am an automaton?"

•      Victorian marriage as both a site of oppression and a possible partnership of equals, through Bertha's confinement, the fire at Thornfield, and the reversal of power at the novel's close

Written by a 2025 VCE student who scored a raw 49 in English. Close symbolic work on fire as both destruction and catharsis.