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Originally Posted by gmw
I shouldn't really hold Helen apart as especially self-absorbed in her treatment of servants as servants; I think being self-absorbed is a condition of her class. My real reason for focusing on Helen and Rachel is only that I think if Anne Brontë had meant this book as some sort statement about women's rights then the relationship between those two women would have been different, more equal. Instead, I'm inclined to think the book, from Anne's perspective, was probably about the dangers of drink and other excesses; that it wasn't women's rights that had to change, but that men should live responsibly (in the full Christian sense of that word). It is only a modern eye that tends to look at the story from the perspective of women's rights.
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I agree with your observations about class and alcohol abuse, but would frame them differently.There is a long history within the women’s movement of linking alcohol abuse with its devastating impact on women and children. The book doesn’t have to be about ’either /or’ - it’s about both. In terms of the class relations, Brontë’s perspective reflects, and is inevitably limited by her class and the religious & social milieu of the day. Even today, many argue that Western feminism misses the central concerns of poor women and women of colour.
I think Brontë’s book is definitely concerned with women’s rights. However, that doesn’t mean contemporary readers, or even Brontë herself (I don’t know) consciously thought in terms of and used the language of women’s rights. But even if people said the book was about alcohol abuse, they recognized that many women were trapped in the situation Brontë was portraying, and that the heroine’s actions defied convention and the law. The book apparently caused a sensation.