'Formed for labour, not for love': Plain Jane and the Limits of Female Beauty

Author: Cadwallader, Jen¹

Source: Bronte Studies, Volume 34, Number 3, November 2009 , pp. 234-246(13)

Publisher: Maney Publishing

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Abstract:

Although a number of Brontë scholars have studied the many similarities between Jane Eyre and fairy tales such as Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, one significant difference between the novel and its fairy-tale influences is Jane's physical plainness. This essay examines Jane's appearance specifically as a contrast to fairy-tale heroines such as Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's Beauty in her version of 'Beauty and the Beast'. As a contrast to the fairy-tale beauties invoked throughout the novel, Jane's plainness takes on the dimension of social critique. This essay demonstrates, through an examination of the significance of female beauty in Charlotte Brontë's juvenilia and in nineteenth-century renditions of Beauty and the Beast, that Charlotte uses plainness and beauty to condemn an upper-class system of values which, by emphasizing the importance of a woman's appearance, limited her ability to develop selfhood and achieve autonomous action.

Keywords: JANE EYRE; CHARLOTTE BRONTE; FAIRY TALE; BEAUTY; BEAST; PLAIN HEROINE; JUVENILIA; CLASS; EDUCATION

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1179/147489309X12470507051788

Affiliations: 1: Department of English, Randolph-Macon College, PO Box 5005, Ashland, Virginia 23005-5505

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