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14Oriental Renaissance: Innovative, educational, natural and social sciences
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THE IMPORTANCE OF EQUALITY OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN THE WORKS OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Darvishova Gulchehra Kenjabayevna
PhD in Philology, Docent The University of Public Safety of the Republic of Uzbekistan [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Charlotte Bronte, the feminist writer who struggled for democracy and dignity of women's contribution in governmental issues such as politics, economics, and other spheres. Most of her works dedicated to importance of equality of women's rights and also can be confirmed that most of those are based on her own experiences. Jane Eyre is indisputably Charlotte Bronte's best literary production. One of the controversial problems raised in the novel is the position of woman in society. The heroine of the novel upholds that women should have equal rights with men. Also, the article is devoted to the thorough analyses of the contemporary social, historical and cultural background of the society and key points of feminism, and Jane's experiences, this research emphasizes that by the end of the actions the heroine gradually becomes a feminist in pursuing independence and equality.
Key words: image of woman, feminism, society, equality, realism, literary world.
INTRODUCTION
The role of women in society and increasing their social activity has always been a topical issue. Consequently, the image of a woman in the field of world literature plays an important role with its unparalleled aspects. It should be noted that the creation of the image of a woman indicates that she is a part of society.
Problems related to women and society in world literature have been explored in the novels of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Mary Roberts [7; 8; 10]. In world literature, the interest in the study of women in relation to society began in the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century. In the researches of such foreign literary critics as L.Ruvinsky, A.Razin, F.Brentano, M.Mayorov, L.Stolovich, E.Kukhareva, M.Zhukovsky, R.Powell, O.Drobnitsky, J.Defoe, K.Messenger studied until [4, P.16].
If we look at history, the works of writers and poets evoke tragic scenes about the role of women in society. We also witness the coverage of religious, social, racial, class aspects of the image of women. An example of this is Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.
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Charlotte Bronte is an English novelist, the eldest of the three Bronte sisters whose novels have become enduring classics of English literature. With a new kind of heroine defiantly virtuous, morally courageous and fiercely independent, Charlotte Bronte brought about change in the style of fiction of the day, presenting an unconventional woman to be admired for her ability to overcome adversity. Jane Eyre is widely acclaimed as her masterpiece. Bronte sisters grew up in a poor priestly family. Their mother died of lung cancer when the children were very young. As there was no sunlight in the depths of winter, the children's childhood was desolate and without joy. Fortunately, their father, a poor learned priest, he taught them reading, and guided them to read newspaper. This would be a relief in the midst of sadness. Because of the miserable life, Bronte sisters had spent a childhood in charity school. These experiences offered the available materials for the prospective creation. The heroine Jane Eyre is an orphan, and is ill-treated at a young age. She strives for her life, and forms a tough character. She learns how to live from her childhood's environment. Also, just for her growing experiences, it creates her strong personality, beautiful ideal and wisdom. Jane Eyre is a special image out of ordinary. She makes a life by herself, and dares to show her own voice. Under the pressure of life, she always maintains her self-respect by hard work, intelligence and tough individualism. She never gives in on her way. Though she has little figure, Jane Eyre is huge in soul. She pursues true love and is loyal and steadfast to her beloved man. Her kindness, intelligence, and independence attract the hero. At last she gets a perfect love.
Charlotte Bronte appeared on the scene of Victorian period like a flame in the darkness which lightened the tormented souls of the society. Her books put her promotion forward the role of the women in the society which were full of emotion and all protesting in the strongest practical manner against the theory that the loves and hates of men and women had been reclaimed by the development of civilization. If her works were only, as has been said of them, "a cry of pain, yet they were such a cry as once heard lingers and echoes in the mind for ever after" [3].
The next novel named Shirley where melodrama and concurrences were avoided because of what her scope widened. Setting aside a steady but rather intensified feminism Shirley is the first regional novel in English literature, full of shrewdly portrayed local material such as Yorkshire characters, church and chapel, the cloth workers and machine breakers of her father's early manhood.
The last novel of Charlotte Bronte is Villette, which reflects a realistic description of her experiences at a boarding school in Brussels. In Villette Charlotte occurred again in the Brussels setting and the first-person narrative where Shirley
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was neglected. Against that background she set the fiery heart that prevented of its intention, distinguished with the woman happily fulfilled in love.
LITERATURE REVIEW
In today's literary criticism, the scope of creativity of writers is different - it requires a special approach to each of them. Here itis important to study the creative activity of each writer, the art world. Charlotte Bronte's art world is also unique.
The world of art is the realization of the reality of the writer's imagination through artistic means, subject to the laws of literature.
When it comes to the concept of the art world, let us first focus on the meaning in which the word art is used and in what areas it is studied. Comments from dictionaries.
The art world has parameters and categories such as real world -space, time, psychological and moral environment. But at the same time, the artistic world of the work is not a separate system, but the result of the relationship between the author's inner world and reality.
Integration of real life of the author and the period she lived in, which were embedded in the works indicate that Charlotte organized her literary world and possessed her status in literature. Charlotte's combination of romance and satiric realism had been the mode of nearly all the women novelists for a century. Her fruitful innovations were the presentation of a tale through the sensibility of a child or young woman, her lyricism, and the picture of love from a woman's outlook. She believed that education was the key to all social problems, and that by the improvement of the school system and teaching most of the evils of capitalism could be removed.
As Charlotte remarked in one of her writings: "If you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, wretchedly insipid, you would pity and I dare say despise me," Charlotte Bronte wrote to her friend Ellen Nosey in May, 1836 (Wise and Symington 1:139). As she presents is that of a Romantic artist, entirely occupied by the flame of her imagination which makes her feel isolated from society. She is an exile because her dreams elevate her above the prosaic people around her. But we can observe the view of Wolf which states a failing grade to Jane Eyre as: « "Wuthering Heights" is a more difficult book to understand than "Jane Eyre", because Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte» [6]. Chase contrasts heroes of Wuthering Heights of Emily Bronte and Jane Eyre of Charlotte Bronte that mentions about similarity of Hitch cliff and Rochester while studying their poetics [2]. That is the Byronic Bronte who bears her mark of Cain with Satanic pride. Yet, Bronte's Romanticism is also
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informed by the other Romantics. Bronte's social protest included her objection to the situation of women, an objection that also applied to their placement within Romanticism as defined by the male poets.
Romanticism is a term that calls forth various associations. However, an exploration of the movement of Romanticism in all of its facets is beyond the scope of this study which is limited to the aspects that bear on Bronte's writing. In particular, Bronte was drawn to Romanticism for its elevation of subjectivity, the poet's creative imagination, and emotional intensity - qualities she recognized in herself. The poets who shaped English Romanticism wrote from a male perspective which excluded women from the center of the Romantic experience. This situation forced Bronte to confront what Christine Batters describes as "the problem of aligning Romantic notions of art as an instinctive, non-rational activity against need to assess reactions to a female voice" [9]. Christine Batters emphasizes that female voice became central object to Bronte's rendering of Romanticism. In order to substitute women's position of Romantic subject, rather than mere objects, Bronte had to surrender them from their isolated positions. She accomplished this objective by creating a new type of heroine, one who used her voice to express her feminized Romanticism. Her triumph is first fully realized in Jane Eyre, though the antecedents of this distinctive heroine can be traced back to the juvenilia. Throughout her writing, Charlotte Bronte develops her own formulation of Romanticism, a rendering of the advancement of the male Romantic poets into a woman's discourse. However, like the Romantic poets themselves, Bronte demonstrates an understanding of the limits of discourse. Her writing indicates an awareness of the limitations imposed on representation by language which cannot fully re-present experience, the gap between imaginative vision and its expression. The association of that understanding is the recognition that texts do not contain meaning but, rather, offer fields of interpretations.
It is worth mentioning the view of other writers such as Susan Wolfson who notices that "in English Romanticism the play of interpretive strategies emerges as a primary subject - a 'principle of action' in itself" and about the poems "dramatize the uncertainties of interpretation" [1]. As Susan Wolfson points out due to teasing quality and a remaining effect evoked on our thought Bronte's poems were realized by the society of all periods. And it overestimates her works where they provoke questions and refuse to confirm any sure points and rest places for other's statement of reasoning. Conscious of the narrator's regime of and the reader's expectation of a pointed message attached to the text, in her own writing Bronte opts for Romantic
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irony over novelistic conventions. Bronte deliberately refuses to grant the closure and defined meaning anticipated by the novel reader.
Charlotte Bronte did establish her reputation as a writer through the novel Jane Eyre which really reflects the women voice for their role in the society having equal rights to men. Literary world of Bronte is revealed by the reading list she made up for her friend Ellen Nosey in a letter dated July 4, 1837 [10]. The authors Bronte endorses include nineteenth-century writers such as Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, and, with some apologetics, Byron, but not a single woman writer. Her discussion of writers indicates that she did not perceive women to be part of the great literary tradition which concentrated on poets and was exclusively male. Helene Mogen notes about Romantic root which were reflected in the well-known book Jane Eyre of Charlotte Bronte [9]. As conceived of Irene Tayler in her study of Charlotte Bronte, Mogen restricts Bronte's Romanticism to the Byronic strain, an influence which is opposed to the novelist's feminist independence. Thus, she argues that Romanticism had to be relinquished in order for Bronte to introduce her own as a woman writer. The analysis of Tayler indicates Bronte's father as the center of her male ponder by focusing on Charlotte's dilemma of feeling constrained to choose between active "doing" and passive "being", stemming from her dual desire to emulate her father and be loved by him, which decline the creative activity.
Offering a divergent approach to Bronte's conception of herself as an author and the importance of her Romanticism the development of her writing the novels demonstrates that Bronte advances as both a Romantic and a woman writer. Bronte was conscious of herself as a writer, and her authorial identity was firmly established already in childhood. As Christine Alexander points out her honesty "in dating and signing almost all her manuscripts," even though they were not intended for publication, "reflects her early awareness of her role as an author" [9]. It is this strong sense of her authorial identity that underlies her censure of a review of Jane Eyre that "praised the book if written by a man, and pronounced it 'odious' if the work of a woman". Bronte took the inconsistency of the reviewer into her discontent, by replying with, "To you I am neither man nor woman - I come before you as an author only. It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me - the sole ground on which I accept your judgment" [10]. She refused to be labeled and consequently limited on the basis of her gender. Bronte did not wish to present herself as a woman writer but rather as an artist whose work was to be judged on its own merit, not according to the standards of female etiquette. In the writings of Bronte, the gender line was ventured to cross and to allow her own the same liberty that men are granted as artists. Presenting her novels as the works of Curer Bell,
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whom she referred to as "him" when alluding to her public role of author, Bronte refused to be cast into a gender-imposed mold. Women writers earned pretty praise for ladylike expressions suitable to their domestic sphere, so long as they celebrated home and hearth and devotion to the happiness of others; even poetry was acceptable, for they were clearly not threatening to rival the serious and political work of men. Bronte ceased with the tradition of women writers whose fear of crossing over the line kept them within the restricted sphere allocated to women in the literary world. In contrast, Bronte insisted that she must follow her imagination rather than in the footsteps of exemplary female writers.
Bronte's portrayal of the operation of the imagination copies Shelley's description of the inspired artist in his "Defense of Poetry": he goals of walking for the Romantic is not to reach a physical destination but a mental one, to free the constraints on contemplation, to "plunge into" memory, to rejuvenate the senses, and ultimately to return to the essential self. Certainly, Bronte was familiar with both the French and the English Romantic writings, but her penchant for walking is not imitative but innate.
The main reason of leading her writings by walking shadows to the freedom. As she states in Jane Eyre that walking on the day develops Jane's narrative. It opens with the declaration of the impossibility of walking. Yet the full expressiveness of the trope of walking as a reflection of the spirit is only developed in Jane Eyre, in which the significance of walks becomes notably prominent. Charlotte's protagonists particularly favor walks, and their own feet bring them to the critical junctures of their quests. Many walks cause the progression of Jane's spiritual journey and her state of mind.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
Aim of research - comparative, typological and evaluative study of the works of Charlotte Bronte, through various analyses distinguish the historical establishment of the role of women in the society and the way of their transference in literature. Object of the research is English and other poets' and writers' viewpoints. Subject of the Research are the works of Charlotte Bronte, particularly main accent was drawn into "Jane Eyre".
Methods of the Research: In covering the topic historical and, quantitative evaluation, qualitative evaluation, comparative historical and etymological methods have been based on. The research was accomplished on the basis of contemplation of scholars and criteria which were worked out by them. The thesis was carried out under the topics "Women Voice" and "Etiquette of women in XIX c." The results of the research can be implemented in carrying out the research in world literature, the
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history of literature and English literature. The thesis determines the future trend of science to certain extant, that is in future research on the topic "The Role of Women in Society" and "Modern Literature" can be carried out. The practical importance of the thesis can be identified by the use of its conclusion in teaching "World Literature", "The History of Literature" and "English Literature" and conducting special courses.
CONCLUSION
The analyses of Charlotte Bronte's works indicate that her works represent her reality and soul which undervalued in the society of her presence. Bronte contends that writers produce their best work under an influence which becomes their master and which will have its own way canceling their consideration. According to Bronte's view, the creative imagination adopts the composition, obscuring the authorial self and, by extension the author's gendered identity. Therefore, she maintains that she cannot think of what is appropriate for her to write as a woman when she composes, for she is overtaken by her imaginative spirit, which exceeds her gender. In her point of view observing control of composition to the influence has positive effect. Charlotte does not consume that it should be countered.
Accomplished Charlotte's writings were highly lauded by such authors as William Makepeace Thackeray, and has since inspired numerous adaptations for television and film, and numerous other author's works including Jean Rhys' 'prequel' Wide Sargasso Sea.
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