Abstract
This paper focuses on the manifestation of gothic elements in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), examines the connection between the gothic and the novel’s feminism, and analyzes the author’s use of women of “color” to induce horror/terror and symbolize violence. Considering the details of the dark-skinned Bertha Mason and others contributing to the gothic theme of the novel, this research questions Brontë’s stance on racism. To what extent is the gothic differentiated from the black-white binary in Jane Eyre? How essential is having a distinct idea and consciousness about the knowledge of other types of binaries when an author attempts to write a feminist text? A qualitative content analysis method follows Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Mask (1952), Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), and the Black feminist theory to review the justification of such a binary in advocating women’s empowerment. The findings indicate that the racism in Jane Eyre is merely another kind of sexism. To sum up, the novel is an example of feminine resistance, only to women who share the whiteness of the protagonist, Jane, and it is not an ideal feminist text because of its discriminating and dehumanizing way of looking at people of color.