b. Where Jane Eyre was first published in 1847

Jane found independence in marrying Rochester, who saw her as an intellectual equal at the end of the novel. She was plain, and identified as middle-class women who found wealth. “We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and audible thinking… we are precisely suited in character” (Chapter 38, pp 519). In her relationship, she felt truly understood at an intellectual to Rochester. This made her happy. Like the suffrages at the time, women fought for the right to vote for middle-class, educated women, like Jane. Not the working-class women who lacked the time and resources to do so in the 1840s. The origin of the feminist movement in England was about the intellectual women, and the lack of education for impoverished women excluded them from the initial fight for the middle class, educated womens’ right to vote (Neale, 1967). Jane represented this educated women who deserved equality in Britain when Bronte wrote her novel. Bronte was trying to encourage a middle class crowd to fight for her vote, where Fanny Fern saw freedom in a different light as an American.

Woodhull, Victoria C. "Washington, D.C. The Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives receiving a deputation of female suffragists, January 11th - a lady delegate reading her argument in favor of woman's voting, on the basis of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Constitutional Amendments”. 1871. https://www.loc.gov/item/2004670399/ Accessed on 16 November 2020.