JANE EYRE
Can I put forth a point; that the way the Bronte sisters felt and narrated life’s experience is something singular. Love and passion may have been very sparse in their short existence, but their narrative fiction in novels like Wuthering Heights, Villette, and Jane Eyre cannot be surpassed for the sheer intensity of the prose and prolixity of psychological depth. Is Jane Eyre a love story? Is it a Bildungsroman? Is it a Gothic novel? Is it a psychological novel? It has the elements of all these aspects but cannot be classified or docked into any particular category.
As all great fiction is, it is an exploration of life, the wide world from the intense and stern, yet compassionate and not inhuman point of view of a budding, forlorn, friendless girl; Jane Eyre. Her only strength, is her moral fiber and her firm belief in her destiny; she would always follow only what her conscience told her; when she goes to meet Helen Burns on her dying day, when she defies Rochester after the stark revelation of his earlier marriage and walks her way into unknown wilderness or when she rejects St. John Rivers.
Structurally the novel is weaved deftly between two families; the family of the Eyres of which Jane Eyre is one of the members, the others being St John Rivers, Diana and Mary on the paternal side, and Mrs. Reed and her daughters, and son on the maternal side, and the Rochester family of which Mr. Edward Rochester, Mrs. Bertha Mason and others are the members. Both these families represent the two extremities that Jane experiences in life, Gates head being her physical and emotional prison which is extended to Lowood. Her state of physical deprivation and mental agony, along with her lack of love sows in her, to some extent a certain viciousness, rigidity and austerity which remain with her all through. Thorn field is her liberation from this enclosure and hence the road to realization of her inner voice, her potential, her want for love and to be loved. Her travel to Whitcross and her rehabilitation with her cousins in their small cottage after her departure from Thornfield revives her strength and shows her a fresh purpose, that her life could take, being a teacher to the rural girls.
Life throws many challenges at Charlotte Bronte’s little heroine, challenges not only of a physical kind when she has to confront her cousin John as a child, Mr. Brocklehurt at Lowood, but also of a moral nature when she has to weigh the offer of Mr. Rochester to be his wife in far off lands even as his first wife Bertha Mason, the lunatic, is alive. Again when she has to spurn the offer of marriage by St John Rivers and finally when she has to answer the call of her conscience to answer with happiness the proposal of a crippled and blinded Mr. Edward Rochester for marriage.
What strikes one very glaringly is the number of female characters in the novel Jane Eyre; characters who are portrayed extensively by the novelist starting from, Mrs. Reed, Bessie, Eliza, Georgiana, Helen Burns, Miss Temple, Celene Varens, Mrs. Fairfax, Ms Ingram, Grace pool, Bertha Mason and Jane Eyre herself. In contrast, the number of male characters who are sketched so extensively is very less with the exception of Mr. Rochester.
The female characters in the novel are a projection of one or the other facets of Jane’s personality. Miss Temple, Helen Burns, Diana, Mary and Rosamund are all characters who Jane Eyre aspires to be either on the intellectual plane or the physical plane. Hence it is to suggest that our heroine is by no means an attractive or accomplished person.
However, what keeps her uniqueness showing all through is her resoluteness, candor, her indomitable spirit, wit and courage. The other characters of Eliza, Georgiana, Mrs. Reed and, Ms Ingram are what Jane Eyre despises vehemently for their self centeredness, lack of feeling, being uncompassionate and unkind in their affairs, which tells us that Jane Eyre is a sensitive soul, ready to hear out or listen to humanity in spite of her own marginal existence. Bertha Mason is the grotesque, sardonic, and self-inflicting (masochistic) shroud of Mr. Rochester’s life and therefore indirectly penetrates Jane Eyre’s disposition. Only the death of Bertha eliminates the Gothic and the sardonic terror from the lives of both Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre.
Jane Eyre is an intense novel and the intensity comes from the heroine’s amazing intellectual prowess in looking at and looking through the characters.
The intensity does come from a conviction about what is right and what is wrong, something which the author abundantly bestows on her heroine, perhaps modeling her upon herself. But this judgment often is at conflict and usually trespasses conventionality. Charlotte Bronte famously declared “Conventionality is not morality.” When Brocklehurst says one has to be grateful to Jane’s benefactress, Jane being a destitute and an orphan, Jane’s view of things is entirely different. She declares proudly that she was never deceitful or would have said that Mrs. Reed was kind to her.
Jane Eyre is a psychological novel, in the sense that most of the novel takes place within; in Jane Eyre’s consciousness as she assiduously puts her being, her thoughts, her manifestations to test, testing herself and others in a battle of will, and resolve.
A Yorkshire novel:
“Human affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you” says Mr. Rivers to Jane. Perhaps we could qualify the statement a little further. Not only human affections but also Nature herself; the mountains, the meadows, the vales, the rivulets and the moors and the landscape of England which Jane so dearly loves and is very reluctant to exchange either for Ireland, or India or the continent permeates the mood of the novel.
When Jane walks out of Thorn field she says, “Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment – not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow – creatures are — I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose.” God the masculine is the law giver or the ordainer but Nature is the mother who offers rest and peace, whenever Jane needs her. Orphan as she is, Nature is her protector and teacher and her life follows the great laws of Nature; that spring follows winter and that no suffering is permanent.
To summarize Jane Eyre is a riveting novel. The story could be simplified as a tale of deprivation, passing through resurgence and finally consummation. But it will be remembered for its protagonist whose indomitable spirit, retaliates against circumstances that hinder and circumscribe her not due to any fortuitous turn of events but because of herself, her moral core, her independent will.