Jane Leigh or Aurora Eyre

A new Brontë-related thesis. From Croatia:

Education in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh

Senka Konjević

Zagreb: Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Filozofski fakultet, 2023

This thesis paper explores the themes of education in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh with a narrow focus on the two female protagonists of the eponymous novels. The aim of the paper is to analyze the parallels and divergences between the educational paths of Jane Eyre and Aurora Leigh by taking into account their position in society and the broader historical background of the nineteenth century. The educational situations of the two protagonists are reviewed and compared in detail. The paper provides further insight into the ways in which different education has shaped the characters’ vocational paths of a governess and a female poet, respectively. Additionally, both novels are connected by the coming-of-age aspects that are characteristic of the Bildungsroman genre. Both novels belong the female Bildungsroman corpus and are analysed as such. The parallel educational journeys of both Jane Eyre and Aurora Leigh alongside the differences in their upbringing are summarized in the concluding part of this paper in order to further examine the connection between Jane and Aurora’s education, their personal and professional developmen