This paper describes how Charlotte Bronte uses Jane Eyre as a conduct book to describe basic virtues that women should have and to criticize the marriage of convenience, declaring that only qualities of mind prove what a woman is really worth. Conduct books criticize the notion of female bodies as o...

Jane Eyre, The Feminist Tract In 1837 critic Robert Southey wrote to Charlotte Bronte, "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a r...