Although the authors and genres of the works Jane Eyre and Aurora Leigh are distinct, the messages and methods of communication within both are quite comparable. Both authors aim, among other things, to expose the plight of their contemporaries and offer strong suggestions on how the injustices faced by women might be corrected. The heroines of both stories, Jane and Aurora, face subjugation and oppression of various kinds, most of which is a direct result of their gender. Both authors similarly use certain literary devices to symbolize both incarceration and notions of liberation for their protagonists. These two aspects of the stories, slavery and freedom, continually show the main conflict in both plots: the struggle between ideal aspirations and the confinement of practicality and reality, particularly as applied to women (Pell 397). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One of the most easily recognizable symbols in both stories is the house. In Aurora Leigh and Jane Eyre, while both women are still girls, the home becomes associated with domestic slavery of various kinds. The place where Jane spent the first ten years of her life, Gateshead, was a beautiful stately home and also the most understandable object of her disgust. Her parents having died during her childhood, Jane was severely mistreated by her late maternal uncle's family. She was, amidst the splendor of wealth, physically, mentally and emotionally abused, continually reminded of her inferiority and loneliness. Despite the quality of her surroundings, Gateshead will always represent the worst period of Jane's life. Once transferred to Lowood, a poorly administered, charity-funded boarding school, Jane proclaimed, "I would not have exchanged Lowood with all its privations, for Gateshead and its daily luxuries" (Bronte 24). For Jane, the move from Gateshead to Lowood was the first small step of many towards independence. Although Jane had become happier at Lowood than she had been in her short life, after eight years the walls finally began to confine her unbearably. She complained: “I went to my window… there were Lowood skirts; there was the hilly horizon. My eye went beyond all the other objects to rest on the most remote ones, the blue peaks: they were the ones I wanted to surmount: all within their boundary of rock and moor seemed like a prison terrain, limits of exile” (Bronte 85). The physical confinement of school began to constantly remind Jane of the social limitations it placed on her; as long as she stayed, her life would never change or improve. Thornfield, the estate where Jane comes to find freedom from Lowood as a governess, provides her with a better salary, a little more independence and quality living conditions. The house, however, just like the others, still serves to remind Jane that it is not completely hers, always dependent on the protection of the rich. One day, returning home, Jane thought: “I didn't like going back to Thornfield. Crossing its threshold was a return to stagnation: crossing the silent room, climbing the dark staircase, looking for my solitary room... meant completely quelling the weak excitement awakened by my walk” (Bronte 117). Despite a happier existence, his life in Thornfield only perpetuated his lifelong "protection" from the world. Her next complaints on the subject are those she uttered not only for herself, but for all the women of herstime: "What good it would have done me at that time to have been thrown into the storms of an uncertain and struggling life, and to have been taught by hard and bitter experience to long for the calm in the midst of which I now lament! (117) ) Bronte writes, through Jane's plight, of the expected protection of women that essentially paralyzes them. Aurora Leigh also finds home to be an oppressive place, but unlike Jane, it is the idea of ​​home that confuses her more than anything else. the building itself.While she is quite young, the expected idea of ​​a home is forced upon her by her aunt in whose care she is left after her father's death. The young girl is given books which are intended to educate future little ones wives, 'books that boldly assert / their right to understand that husbands speak / when they are not too profound, and even respond / with a graceful "may you like it" or "so it is."' Her aunt assures young Aurora that all will be well with the young women “as long as they stand silently by the fire” (Browning 51). When Aurora shows resistance to this accepted and almost inevitable feminine fate, the same aunt tells her, “I know I haven't ground you enough/To flatten you and bake you into a healthy crust/For domestic uses and properties” (Browning 70 ). Thus the idea of ​​home was soon tainted in the strong, young mind of Aurora Leigh and also, through these vivid images, in the mind of every reader who comes across her story. Regardless of her aunt's teachings, Aurora is led to despise this idea. also at home with his cousin, the young Mr. Romney Leigh. She has known him for much of her life and comes to love him as a friend, even if unsuitable for any other kind of relationship. In one passage of the poem, Aurora becomes furious because her cousin refuses to take her writing seriously. It reduces the female gender to “Simple women, personal and passionate/You give us loving mothers and perfect wives” (Browning 81). In his mind, no doubt, this is a compliment, even if Aurora sees it differently. She dismisses his comments, explaining that women, though they often prove to be just what he says they are, become that way due to some negligence. She argues that “A woman is always younger than a man/At the same age because she is not allowed/To mature in the sun and open air,/And kept in long dresses beyond walking age” (Browning 85) . Ironically, this conversation also includes a marriage proposal from Romney, an invitation to Aurora to become part of that expected family unit that she had already begun to despise. She predictably and firmly refuses, knowing that the proposal is merely a social element of fairness and economy, rather than a gesture motivated by love or passion, for which she might consider entering into such a contract. In addition to home and marriage becoming symbols of constraint for Aurora, she also speaks of Britain as a sort of domesticated country that has imposed itself and its expectations on her. She was born and partly raised in Italy, something her aunt continually tries to make her forget, finding the influences too reminiscent of the unapproved woman her brother, Aurora's father, chose to marry. However, it is in these memories of the Tuscan landscape that Aurora feels free. Although he learns to love Britain, he sees it as “Not a grand nature. Not my chestnut-woods/Of Vallombrosa” (Browning 57). Just as Aurora's memories of nature in Italy provide her with a sense of inner freedom, so Jane Eyre's reflections on her natural environment bring hints of liberation. In her description of the Moor-House, the place where she comes to live after Thornfield, Jane uses mainly natural language, treating the house asif it were a part of nature itself. “They loved their seized home. I too was in that grey, small, ancient structure, with its low roof, its railings, its ruined walls, its avenue of centuries-old fir trees grown askew under the pressure of the mountain winds; his garden, dark with yew and holly - and where no flowers bloomed except the most rustic species - found a charm, powerful and permanent” (Bronte 354). This is Jane's most positive and sentimental description of the homes in which she resides. Is it because the house itself had a special charm? Maybe, but more likely because it was the first place where he felt a real affinity and therefore a small sense of independence. It is no wonder that Jane chose to associate a place dear to her with nature since it is clear, throughout the novel, that nature is her only ever-present comfort. He explains that “I have no relative except the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask for rest… Nature seemed benign and good to me: I thought she loved me, marginalized as I was; and I, from whom man could expect nothing but distrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial affection” (Bronte 328). At one point in the story, as Jane becomes more and more submissive to the prospect of accepting the marriage proposal of her cousin, St. John Rivers, against her better judgment, nature, in a sense, frees her by bringing her the voice of his life. true love in the wind, reminding her where her heart is, “It's nature's work. He woke up and did, no miracle, but his best” (Bronte 425). Although Jane ultimately finds independence in money, kinship in newfound family, and happiness in the arms of the man she loves, nature sustains her and pushes her toward greater things from the beginning of her life onward. Among Jane and Aurora's small victories, the desperation of women with limited financial means is a theme that pervades both stories. Jane Eyre, from her early years, is constantly reminded by those around her that, due to her poor financial situation, she will always be forced to live in service to others. One of her least favorite Gateshead servants, Miss Abbot, explains to her that "they will have a great deal of money, and you will not have any: it is your job to be humble and try to make yourself agreeable." to them" (Bronte 13). Even Bessie, the most well-meaning and thoughtful of Jane's childhood companions, advises her "You should try to be useful and pleasant, then perhaps you will always have a home here" (Bronte 13). Because of her situation, young Jane is prevented from even dreaming of the independence she will one day achieve. When she is older, Jane will remember her childhood thoughts of “Freedom, Excitement, Fun – sounds really delicious; but to me it is nothing more than a sound; and so empty and fleeting that it is a mere waste of time to listen to them. But servitude! This must be a fact” (Bronte 86). The importance of wealth was made abundantly clear to Jane as a child. Her doctor, in response to her expression of intense personal misery, asks the ten-year-old if she would like to seek out and live with some paternal relatives, even though they would probably be poor. Jane cannot see beyond her upbringing and assumes that these people are incapable of love or kindness. This unfounded judgment prolongs his imprisonment in Gateshead (Bronte 24). Likewise, Aurora Leigh faces the inevitable trials of a woman of little means and connections. When she rejects the marriage proposal of Romney Leigh, a man who does not love her and whom she does not love, Aurora is scolded by her aunt, since she believes that marriage, for the poor, is a question of economic position, not of love. She scolds “Do you think, perhaps, / That you… / Are rich and free to choose a way of walking?” (Browning, 31:4 (1977): 397-420