Shireen Yousef Mansour

Charlotte Brontë's and George Eliot's Concept of Woman: a Study with Reference to 'jane Eyre', 'shirley', 'the Mill on the Floss' and 'middlemarch' Shireen Yousef Mansour

Both Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot depicted the suffering of unconventional heroines, who were at once forced to live very conventional lives and condemned for their difference and for their aspiration for alternative ones that were unthinkable for a 19th century woman. The author has attempted to elicit Bronte's and Eliot's concepts of woman through analyzing their views concerning some important issues related to woman such as education and employment. With so much in common, and yet so much difference, the two great novelists, whether they intended to be feminists or not, had unconventional concepts of woman to which their respective narratives gave form. They helped to change the lives of women who come after them and transform the stereotypical image of woman common in the English novel of their time.