I was stricken at the site of gender representation at the management level in this country, for example.
Jane Eyre and characters like her made me develop a sense of reality when it came to gender roles that was partly distorted. I was of course inclined to think that I had every right to get the same opportunities as my male counterparts and generally I did in my country. but, the trust I had developed in my male coworkers and those I came in contact with was a little far stretched because of characters like Jane. The physical part of a relationship between a man and a woman was not treated in detail because the era did not allow such extravagancy, but the sexual aspects that were left unsaid or that were just alluded to...
That is why I sometimes, in my adult life, even after I had begun my sexual life, ran into situations that were ridiculous because I was still not able to grasp the meaning of the notion "sexual attraction" that was not related to other kinds of attraction specific to romance.
While I had benefited from a tremendous amount of information from the fictional works that I read, I was also disadvantaged to some point by the fact that they presented characters and situations that, although realistic, were often presented in a romantic light that shadowed the practical and more prosaic aspects related to the relationships between men and women.
