The Subversion of Social Constraints to Female Education in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen

This article discusses female education and punishment in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen, and considers the novelists as writers who do not only advocate for the education and empowerment of the woman, particularly the girl child but also shed light on the societal punishments and limitations imposed on them. In other words, the article shows that both authors emphasize the significance of education in empowering girls and promoting personal growth while critiquing societal restrictions and punishments that girls who desire education face. To both novelists, limited access to education for the girl child, patriarchal oppression and social stigma which characterize(d) Victorian and the post independent African societies serve as containments that attempt to suppress potentially subversive feminist narratives. Using new historicist approach, and drawing from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punishent, and his observations on the nature and purpose of punishment to show both novelists’ destabilization of class and gender hierarchies, the work offers insights into the contentious relationship between British fin de siècle and postcolonial African societies on the one hand, and the education of the girl child on the other hand, thereby questioning the authenticity and representation of society as a disciplinary unit, leading to the conclusion that Bronte and Emeheta harbor a social and cultural agenda with focus on female education.

social constraints, girl child, punishment

1. Bell lll, Calvin. “Reimaging the Carceral Landscape: From Discipline and Punishment to Social Reckoning and Radical Love in Academic Spaces.” The Macksey Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, 2022, pp. 1-11. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

2. Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Penguin Books, 2012. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

3. Deacon, Roger. “Michel Foucault on Education: A Preliminary Theoretical Overview.” South African Journal of Education, vol. 26, no. 2, 2006, pp. 177-187. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

4. Emecheta Buchi. Second Class Citizen, Collins, 1997. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

5. Mohammadi, Farid. “Ceramics in the Victorian Era: Meanings and Metaphors in Painting and Literature by Rachel Gotlieb.” Victorian Review, vol. 49, 2024, pp. 330-333. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

6. Graves, Suzuki. “The Welfare State and Women’s Citizenship in Buchi Emecheta's Second-Class Citizen.” Displacement, Belonging and Migrant Agency, Taylor and Francis Group, 2022, pp. 231-235. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

7. Gil-Naveira, Isabel. “La representación de la paternidad en Second-Class Citizen y Kehinde de [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

8. Buchi Emecheta: de la negatividad a la ausencia.” Archivum, vol. 72, 2022, pp. 229-258. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

9. Hendriani, Ria. “A Postcolonial Criticism in Jane Eyre.” Indo-MathEdu Intellectuals Journal, vol. 5, no. 1, 2024, pp 888-89. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

10. Hobbs, Katherine. “’Odd and Incorrect’: Convention and Jane Eyre’s Feminist Legacy.” Brontë Studies, vol. 49, no. 2, 2024, pp 6-23. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

11. Pizzo, Justine. “Atmospheric Exceptionalism in Jane Eyre: Charlotte Brontë’s Weather Wisdom”. PMLA, Vol. 131, No. 1, 2016, pp. 84-100. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

12. Sezer-Toraman, Şermin. “The Effect of Language and Sexual Liberation on Female Subjectivities in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s The Bridge of the Golden Horn.” Monograf Journal, vol.12, 2019, pp. 189-206. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

13. Sezer, Şermin. “Narrating the Personal History Against the Background of a Colonial History: Buchi Emecheta’s In the Ditch and The Second Class Citizen.” History in Western Literature, edited by Zekiye Antakyalıoğlu, UEM, 2014, pp. 100-115 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

14. Tello, Veronica. “Counter-Memory and and–and: Aesthetics and Temporalities for Living Together.” Memory Studies, Vol. 17, 2015, pp.1-12. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

15. Weber, Beverly M. “Work, Sex, and Socialism: Reading Beyond Cultural Hybridity in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn.” German Life and Letters, vol.63, No.1, 2010, pp. 37-53. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

• Culture: The (In) Human Engagement with Nature
• Identity Crisis in Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book: A Critical Interpretation
• Metaphor in Pop-Up Swahili Sayings: Is it a New Meaning or a New Idea?
• Racial Identity and Ecological Belonging in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: A Study through Social Identity Theory and Eco-Race Theory
• The Role of Non-Human Agency in Contemporary Literature: A Posthumanist Analysis