feminism, marriage and domesticity
The Chinese government has mandated Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre as reading for ninth-grade students, likely to promote traditional domestic values and marriage. While the state views the novel as a tool to combat declining birth rates, the article argues that the protagonist's journey is actually one of independence and self-respect.
Why it matters
It highlights how literature is being repurposed by state actors to influence social demographics and gender roles in modern China.
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is an unlikely heroine for a state seeking to teach young women a moderate face of feminism and the value of domesticity. Plain, financially constrained, lacking in social capital she might be, but Brontë’s heroine wasn’t short on self-awareness. She declares, “I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss.” It is probably this insistence on equality that has lent the novel such appeal in China since it was first introduced in translation in the early 1920s. Now, however, the Chinese state has made it mandatory reading for ninth-grade students, arguably for quite different reasons: Beijing is waging an uphill campaign against plummeting birth and marriage rates.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in