READING PATTERNS AND EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES IN JANE EYRE
READING PATTERNS AND EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES IN JANE EYRE

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with the reading histories of a formally-educated fictional woman within the pages of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). Jane Eyre’s reading habits raise questions concerning the dissemination of texts, the anxieties surrounding intellectual, lively women in the 19th century and the moral, spiritual and psychological repercussions of their reading interests in an era predominantly defined by anti-fiction prejudices. Although between the 1860s and the 1890s novels partially stopped raising eyebrows; sentimental fiction, Gothic romances and other popular genres were still associated with outrageous actions and promiscuous scenarios. Reading was affiliated with passivity, escapism, delusion and rebelliousness, no matter how hard novelists tried to bail their texts out and make a bona fide effort to encourage active, critical reading. Nowadays, the controversial status of female readers has not melted away completely, it has only avoided attracting attention to itself. The present paper shows how Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre serve as a gateway to the cultural and political atmosphere of the 19th century and, by extension, assesses the reading practices enacted by women in the informing context of the Victorian period.

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