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Gendered identities in Jane Eyre are inseparable from Jane's working-class affiliations and from her role as a young wife to an older husband. Class and age complicate readings of masculinity and femininity in the text; and as governess and as "girl-bride," Jane evokes nineteenth-century notions of androgyny and female masculinity, effectively using what are often interpreted as her subservient positions to her advantage. Though Charlotte Bront� avoids simplistic power reversals, the novel suggests possibilities for gender subversion within a seemingly normative romance narrative.
Esther Godfrey (Thu,) studied this question.