“Resolute, Wild, Free”: Women’s Leisure and Avian Ecologies in Jane Eyre

When read with an ecocritical eye, Jane Eyre—and its abundant references to Thomas Bewick—provides insight into how the availability of natural history texts within the Victorian household reinforced both birds’ and women’s place within the domestic sphere, often at the cost of avian biodiversity. [...]through her leisured gaze, Jane portrays birds like herself: resistant to domestic influence despite her containment within various households. From these references to the physical volumes of A History of British Birds, Jane Eyre illustrates the natural history tome’s worthiness as a leisurely pursuit in addition to reaffirming its widespread presence within the nineteenth-century household, suggesting that the text satisfied the domesticating work of acceptable leisure rituals and served as a core part of Jane’s—and, perhaps, a multitude of other young women’s—youth. According to Bewick, the robin’s “well-known familiarity has attracted the attention and secured the protection of man in all ages,” which suggests that the robin has not only adapted to request help from humanity, but that “man,” specifically, has taken the robin under his protection in kind.