Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is often described as a novel of female protest. The female experience in the novel is shown in many different ways. The spaces Jane occupies, both narratively and literally, as well as the polarization of women, are key to showing the female role in contemporary Bronte society. The parallels presented between Jane and Bertha Mason are also important in showing the expectations and failures of women across society and the cover-up behind the publication of "Jane Eyre" also presents the limitations faced by women in trying to experience and express themselves. key role in female experience and role of women in 19th century society. From the beginning of the novel, Jane finds herself in a predominantly female environment with her cousin John being the only male in the house. However, even though Gateshead is dominated by women, it is not a female space as John is seen as the one in charge no matter how immoral his actions towards others, especially Jane, may be as he notes that "the servants did not like to offend their master taking my side against him, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject: she never saw him beat me or insult me; though he did both from time to time in her own presence” (Smith 2008, 10). the patriarchal society in which Jane lives and the oppression suffered by a male character who is therefore excluded from punishment This prevents Jane from expressing herself and feeling comfortable in her surroundings to experience new things, instead remaining confined both by society. than from her immediate home environment. Unfortunately for Jane, this environment does not change... half of paper... ...any event and location and ends in a gender-balanced marriage in which the man is that women depend equally on each other. Works Cited Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre, (Oxford Worlds Classics, 2008) Diamond, Arlyn and Edwards, Lee R, The Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism, (University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), p. 140Gilbert, Sandra M and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, (Yale University Press, 11 July 2000), p. 198 and 348Lydon, Susan, 'Bronte Studies', Abandoning and Re-inhabiting Domestic Space in Jane Eyre, Villette and Wide Sargasso Sea, Volume 35 Issue 1 (01 March 2010), pp. 23-29Rhys, Jean, Wide Sargasso Sea, (Norton, 1966) Showalter, Elaine, A Literature Of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing, (Virago 7 May 2009) Pg. 98