EVALUATIVE ADJECTIVES AND GENDERED IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN CHARLOTTE BRONTE’S JANE EYRE: A CORPUS-BASED STYLISTIC ANALYSIS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/philspu/2025.12.2Keywords:
evaluative adjectives, gendered identity construction, Jane Eyre, corpus stylistics, Appraisal Theory, Victorian literature, feminist linguisticsAbstract
This corpus-based stylistic study examines evaluative adjectives as mechanisms of gendered identity construction in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847). Employing Appraisal Theory within a Systemic Functional Linguistics framework, the research systematically codes 71 evaluative adjectives across three characterisation perspectives: Jane’s self-descriptions (26 instances), Jane’s portrayals of Rochester (34 cases), and Rochester’s characterisations of Jane (11 instances). Quantitative analysis reveals striking gendered asymmetries in polarity distribution: Jane’s self-characterisation demonstrates 61% negative valence dominated by physical descriptors (“plain”, “poor”, “little”, “obscure”), while Rochester’s evaluation employs 73% positive adjectives emphasising aesthetic idealisation. The study identifies a systematic compensation mechanism wherein Jane concedes physical inadequacy while asserting moral superiority (“soul”, “heart”, “independent”), enabling resistance to Victorian beauty ideology without direct ideological transgression. Jane constructs Rochester as an Аnti-romantic hero through negative formulations (“not handsome”, “neither tall nor graceful”) that paradoxically establish masculine authority, revealing how identical linguistic structures carry asymmetric gendered meanings. The research demonstrates that evaluative language functions as an ideological negotiation site rather than mere reflection: Bronte creates a narrative voice simultaneously embedded in and resistant to Victorian gender constraints, revealing linguistic agency within structural limitations. Methodologically, the study advances literary linguistics by demonstrating that corpus-based approaches productively illuminate individual literary texts through mixed-methods synthesis of quantitative pattern identification and qualitative contextual interpretation, providing empirical grounding for feminist literary criticism.
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