The 'Woman Question' and Charlotte Bronte

This article puts Charlotte Bronte's feminism into its historical perspective, revisiting and celebrating her response to the 'Woman Question' that engulfed Britain throughout the nineteenth century. Born out of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Enlightenment and Evangelical Christianity, these political and social changes rebranded women as agents of England's moral rehabilitation, Charlotte's novels adopting this image and contributing to the legacy of women as powerful figures of morality and reform.