In a decisive break from archetypal Bronte scholarship, feminist theorist and literary critic Sharon Marcus analyzed how Janes identity becomes framed in terms of abstractions” (i.e. printed texts, ads, portraits, shortened names, etc.), using Marxist criticism to explicate the process of Jane alienating herself through such abstractions, particularly advertising, in order to gain agency within a patriarchal and imperial Victorian market. Entering the text of Jane Eyre through an elucidation of advertisements as a form of agency, within the context of an emerging capitalist system, provides the opportunity to reposition the text within the framework of class in order to further investigate the nexus between race, gender, and class. While Gilbert and Gubar revolutionized the way we read the madwoman as a divided, gendered self and Susan Meyer dissected the racial trope as figurative strategy in Jane Eyre, my interrogative reading begins from the vantage point of the Victorian market and class politics through the commodification and marketing strategies of governesses.British historians, economists, sociologists, and others can convincingly trace the current explosion of globalization back to English imperialism in the nineteenth century. The rise of capitalism opened new waves of communication, technology, and transformation—advertising consequently increased. One of the first historians to contemplate the birth of advertising in Britain, Terence Nevett, illuminated how the rise of advertising was a result of two thematic events: a shift in focus from seller to consumer (with the rise of the bourgeoisie) and a surplus in goods (a result of the ability to mass produce during the industrial revolution). Ironically this surplus of goods also rose during the 1840s, or hungry 40s, when there was a decrease in jobs. Governess jobs were no exception. But a surplus of governesses provided a different sort of anxiety, however real or imagined, for Victorians; the governess represented what it meant to be part of the middle class, and yet her own class was indefinable (Poovey). Middle-class Victorians fretted about the infiltration by the lower classes through the job of the governess while demanding that governesses provide a type of labor trivially associated with lower class work (i.e. needlework). Not only was governess work reminiscent of the lower classes, it also visibly threatened to collapse the separation between the masculine (market) and feminine (domestic) spheres through the exchange of money for service (Poovey, 144). The existence of a marriage market and a surplus of women were evident in an 1851 census; with less middle-class wives, there were fewer jobs for governesses. The men to women population disparity was a product of unstable business, higher life expectancy rates for women, a tendency for men to marry later in life, and the emigration of single men from England to the colonies (Peterson, 6).