Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, which challenges the rigid gender constructions of femininity and the Victorian societal constraints designed to keep women enclosed, ultimately re-inscribes some of those very conventions that the author defies. Brontë's novel examines the pervasive, repressive, and controlling ideology of the "angel in the house" through female characters who embody the construct as they subvert it. At Thornfield, Jane, along with a "range of fallen women," searches for the key to release them from the containment of their "metaphorical attics" (Logan 23). And yet, despite the novel's subversive nature, Brontë's narrative ultimately functions as a warning against female rage which the author communicates through the racially inscribed character of Bertha Mason. In the end, Brontë demonstrates that women's anger is very political and to be an angry woman in nineteenth-century England is next-door to insanity.
Appropriately, Brontë utilizes the metaphor of houses, rooms, and enclosures throughout the novel to symbolize the patriarchal structures within society that inhibit or negate the possibility of female liberty. For Jane "the fresh air and open countryside remain . . . symbols of personal freedom and independence" (Meyer 85). In the red room Jane learns that she is without a place in society--"No, you are less than a servant" (Brontë 6). The interior of the red room reflects coldness, despite the fiery colour. Not an angel but a "revolted slave" (Brontë 9) presides over this hearth; a hearth which has not warmed the room for quite some time. Jane quickly assesses that "no jail was ever more secure" (9). The author evokes a pervasive atmosphere of suffocation, the inability to breathe, or to only breathe dead air--for in this chamber where Mr. Reed "breathed his last" (8). Although much has been made of Jane Eyre's name, it bears repeating that both her ire (Gilbert and Gubar 349 ) and the need to breathe fresh air drive this young girl and prevent her from embodying the construct of the "angel in the house."
