The modern age is the story of the rise of the individual. From the humanism of the Renaissance to the solas of the Protestant Reformation, from the capitalistic spirit encouraged by the Puritan work ethic to the personal autonomy cultivated by mass literacy, the modern age is marked by increased significance on the individual person as an individual.

Jane Eyre was written as this seismic shift was taking place. Philosopher Charles Taylor describes a social imaginary as consisting of pre-cognitive assumptions, stories, metaphors, expectations inherited from one’s communities. While today’s modern social imaginaries would take for granted the autonomy and agency of a figure like Jane, such was yet to be the case when Bronte was writing. Jane Eyre both reflects this shift in the imagination and helps to cultivate it. Like all good art, the novel imitates life and, at the same time, encourages life to imitate the world envisioned by the novel.

What Jane Eyre teaches us about freedom.