A Norm Critical Approach to Teaching Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: Exploring Gender, Heteronormativity & Ableism

Abstract: A growing concern in educational institutions is the lack of a unified collegial effort to address issues pertaining to discrimination. The Swedish National Agency of Education (SNAE) has released several reports and articles this past decade (2009, 2010, 2016), in which no significant improvement has been observed in schools with regard to discrimination pertaining to race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and disability. An important finding illustrated in all reports is that norms are the cardinal reason behind all discriminating conduct. Consequently, to address this problem, SNAE suggests that a norm-critical perspective should be implemented in order to hamper and change such behaviours (101). A core problem, however, is that not all syllabi provide specific examples of how teachers can work with norms in the classroom. Significantly, however, literature has shown to be a valuable gateway to norm-criticism as it provides students with the opportunity to critically assess problems presented in novels with a certain detachment; promoting a more objective attitude and thus a deeper understanding of their own real-life situations (Rosenblatt 47). Thus, the aim of this thesis is to provide English teachers with a more concrete point of departure in the discussion of norms by the use of literature, namely Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre (1847). More specifically, this essay critically examines the notions of heteronormativity, gender and ableism to illustrate how hetero-norms, gender-norms and disability-norms are both subverted and challenged in Jane Eyre, often in unexpected ways. The concepts of the ‘male gaze’ and the ‘Other’ are introduced, to demonstrate how this novel may be approached norm-critically in the ambition to avert discriminatory behaviour. To exemplify how the reading of each concept may have positive implications in teaching, I demonstrate how a fusion of norm-critical pedagogy, critical literacy pedagogy and reader-response theory can be fruitful to foster critical thinking.