Reader, I Had a Hard Time Getting Through This

Had a marvelous three-hour, catching-up-with-everything lunch on Monday with Lisa and Gismo, during which Lisa defined one of the major differences between men and women. I struggled to finish one of the gaps of my Victorian lit knowledge, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847), because I found everyone so passive-aggressive…the very quality which made her enjoy it so much.

Jane Eyre is one of those novels where everyone knows the story even when they haven't read it. Innocent governess, dark, handsome, mysterious, rich man, passionate love, Gothic secrets, melodramatic but happy ending. Women love this book, and I can see why…Jane Eyre is a feminist right at the dawn of the feminist era (remember, Seneca Falls was at the start of the decade), who holds true to her principles and ends up rich, happy, and in a loving marriage. Moreover, Jane's matrimony comes on her own terms. As Lucy Hughes-Hallett points out in her excellent analysis, Jane first rejects Mr. Rochester not because she doubts the sincerity of his love but because, with his insane wife still alive, the marriage is impossible. However, Rochester also at this point wants to turn Jane into a grand woman of the 1840's world, a bejeweled clotheshorse society queen like the fluffy-headed Adele dreams of becoming…something Jane is NOT. St. John Rivers proposes to Jane a marriage which will be legal, but has no passion. Jane cannot accept that. Then she has her psychosexual vision…one of the more pleasant freaks of nature in literary history…and returns to find Rochester widowed, blinded, mutilated. Now he needs her, and she can hold a measure of power over him. However, this is just what he wants…so happy ending!

The problem I had was a total inability to empathize with Bronte's populace, no matter how well she writes, and at her best she is terrific. The passage in Chapter XII where Jane stands on the roof of Thornfield and asserts her right as a woman, as a human being, to desire and hold convictions as much as any man, is one of the most spirited paragraphs in literary history. But Jane is a pill. Admirable as her self-possession and knowledge of exactly who she is and what she wants are…she's the opposite of Esther Summerson… these qualities also give her a superior air which fills up the entire book. She criticizes almost everyone she meets and often points out why she is in a better position than they are, even with the warm, loving Mrs. Fairfax. She takes a delight in arguing and contradicting, even with the saintly Helen Burns! And her relations with both Mr. Rochester and Mr. Rivers are fraught with her sarcasm, pride, and a sadistic delight in antagonizing them. For their parts, Rochester is a blustery man who plays a long, almost cruel game with Jane to test her feelings before finally admitting his love, and Rivers is so sanctimonious that even his acquiescence to Jane is laced with bitter hints of hellish doom, and he takes far too much pride in his self-denial. Every woman Jane personally doesn't like is a status-obsessed harridan, and the men, well, Jane is so wonderful that she takes no notice of men!

There are two ways of approaching Jane Eyre, however, which kept me reading until the end. I noticed both of them while making a deliberate effort to read the novel from a feminist point of view in preparation for an eventual dissection of The Madwoman in the Attic. First, the idea of the patriarchy. My initial problems with Jane Eyre came in the opening chapters, where the Reeds make Jane's life a Cinderella nightmare for no apparent reason. Then, I realized that Sarah Reed's unrelenting anger towards Jane stems from resentment over a patriarchal system: she was submissive to her husband, who insisted on taking his orphaned niece Jane into their home and extracted a deathbed promise from Sarah that Jane be raised as one of their own. Even from the grave, he still holds power over Sarah, and Jane is the living symbol of that power…her hatred only grows when her son John, Jane's total foil, lives a dissipate life which kills him early but leaves Sarah on the edge of ruin. The indirect influence of a patriarchal, oppressive society is felt elsewhere in the character of Mr. Brocklehurst, who sees women as sinful beings in need of correction and only as many necessities are needed to get by, and even in characters like Georgiana and Blanche, who are schooled to live up to a masculine expectation of the feminine and be good for nothing but looks and attractiveness as a wife…small wonder Jane holds them in disdain. Rochester himself is a victim of patriarchy, for it is giving in to his father's plans to keep the family and fortune growing that he makes the disastrous marriage to Bertha. However, Bronte's message is that you cannot deal with the patriarchy through unemotional retreat as Eliza does. You must hold fast and take a stand. You must be Jane Eyre.

Second, and I am stunned that Hughes-Hallett did not mention this in her introduction, there is a fascinating undercurrent of lesbianism in the novel. Jane may take a low opinion of her sex's character, but on her own personal level she has a strong fascination for even those she dislikes. This is most evident in the Lowood chapters. Jane's life becomes intertwined with that of Helen Burns, whom she sees as a saintly figure. On the last night of Helen's life, Jane crawls into bed with her, kisses her, and "we both soon slumbered," Jane waking up to find Helen peacefully on her arm…deceased. During Helen's final days Jane also befriends Mary Ann Wilson, whom she describes as giving her more of an education into "life" which she analyzes. Also, this may be stretching the point, but in my own soon-to-be-published novel a saintly woman's terminal illness sparks a sexual relationship with a dear friend. Times of crisis heighten emotions, and Jane's combination of love for Helen and increased worldly knowledge may have led to…? Jane also practically worships Miss Temple to the point where she never thinks of leaving Lowood until Miss Temple herself departs to marry a clergyman…an event which shakes Jane mightily. At Thornfield, Jane becomes obsessed with Blanche Ingram, drawing her portrait, unable to stop looking at her, and peppering even her criticisms and documents of Blanche's cruelty with praise of her beauty. It is as if in Blanche, Jane finds her female "other," and cannot help being entranced. Jane also describes her cousins Diana and Mary Rivers as ethereal goddesses who first emerge out of mystical candlelight in the darkness, and her caring for them goes beyond any feelings for St. John…the same for the woman who loves St. John, Rosamond Oliver, who is somewhat shallow but has enough goodness in her for Jane to gush a little. Finally, there is Bertha Mason. Jane has a fear of ghosts…her own repressed emotions which come out by and by through the novel…but after she confronts the wild, raving, "living ghost" of Bertha, a woman full of assertiveness and energy, she realizes how much passion she possesses and wants. It is this which nearly makes her forsake her ideas of Godly duty and stay with Rochester, and which does make her reject Rivers. Indeed, I wonder if this equation of ghosts and Jane's sex drive is proof in a way that Jane did sleep with Helen. How poetic that her first and probably only night of lesbian passion turns another into an actual ghost, though through no fault of Jane's own…but enough to keep her mystified until she can confront the ghost again, do penance (her flight from Thornfield), and atone.

And my female friends can attest I am NOT one of those particularly sleazy heterosexuals turned on by girl-on-girl action. This is academic thought, inspired by my own emotional reaction to the Victorian culture of repression. Charlotte Bronte was definitely a great enough writer to examine such feelings and do so in the subtlest ways possible.