‘A brilliancy of their own’: Female art, beauty and sexuality in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

Abstract

This article studies the portraits of Rosamond Oliver and Blanche Ingram in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, to argue that, first, the portraits participate in the nineteenth-century dialogue about women in art and, second, capture Jane’s convictions on the theme of sexual love. This is especially so in the case of Rosamond’s miniature, which comes at a point where Jane has resolved to choose a sexual union rather than a loveless marriage. In an important sense, Jane is Rosamond; the subject (artist) identifies with the object (model) in an equation of female beauty with agency and capacity for sexual feeling.