Jane Eyre's Daughters: the feminist missions of Mary Carpenter and Josephine Butler in India

The nineteenth-century literature served as a theatrical space wherein culture and politics merged to constitute women's subjectivity. Charlotte Bronte's literary imagination of the heroine's ‘mission’ in Jane Eyre heralded Mary Carpenter's reform of Indian women's education and Josephine Butler's campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts in India. This article explores the way in which the writings of both feminists betray imperial/anti-imperial and domestic/political aspects of their activities, as Bronte represents such complex issues through the deliberate articulation of the protagonist's subject-position, seeking the configuration of the female political network which stemmed from Jane's individual engagement with nineteenth-century gender politics.