An Exploration of Protest Against Female Subjugation in Charlotte Bronte's The Professor

Abstract

This research work is a study on Charlotte Bronte’s The Professor a novel that projects dynamic and courageous women as resisting the traditional masculine roles, based on conventional patriarchal ideology. Charlotte Bronte has demonstrated the strong women who are versatile with daring and revolutionary spirits against the ideology of patriarchal society. In addition to this, their extramarital affairs, negligence of social prohibition, established of their own identity and having mortally offend against powerful males, exploring in different parts in search of job and being the head minister of the school are some of the evidence which constructs how has the traditional masculine roles been challenged. The patriarchal ideology is operating as the hegemony, which is the internalized concept of man as superior and women as inferior. So, to deconstruct it, women consciousness and their resisting activities and behaviors are highly advocated in the novel by portraying strong women characters, Mrs. Crimsworth, Zoraid Reuter, and Francis Evan Henri. They are rebellious women who seek to subvert the male hegemonic supremacy existing in the society. They are the stream of freedom and women’s liberation; they also encourage all the women towards their path of liberation and autonomous identity. Thus, they are the symbolic representation of feminine strength and power.