The Victorian Female Figure in Jane Eyre

The Victorian Female Figure in Jane Eyre: The Racially Pure English Lady in Contrast with the Creole Woman*[1]

This analysis of Jane Eyre is based on the contrast between the racially and morally pure English lady and the Creole woman embodied by the character of Bertha who illustrates the Victorian female figure of self-indulgence. The contrast is to be viewed only within the context of the female doctrine of self-renunciation which Victorian women were culturally forced to embrace even if they regarded devotion to their families as self-fulfilment. According to this doctrine, women could never have direct influence in the public sphere. They could only exercise power in the social sphere through their relationship to men.

‘Since domestic women influence the public domain only in relationship to men […], they are not individuals in the sense of being moral agents. […] The paradox of being an individual in the domestic sphere is resolved by defining the English woman in relation to other women instead of men. In Jane Eyre, a domestic form of social agency is established through a national and racial splitting of femininity, with the creole woman serving as a figure of self-indulgence and the Oriental woman of self-immolation’.[2]

The Ambiguous Governess Figure in Nineteenth-Century England: Associated with and Dissociated from the Creole

The ambiguous mother/temptress figure of the nineteenth-century governess consisted of a nurturing woman appearing as a potential threat to her male employer. She was both a moral example for her young students and a temptation to which the master of the house was often exposed. She resembled a mother (through the education and care she provided for children), but was, in fact, a working-class woman who earned a salary for teaching and raising youngsters. This ambiguous role placed the governess in between social categories and, often, turned her into a type of social outcast similar to the nineteenth-century minister or priest.[3] Feminist sociological perspectives are the most relevant in terms of analysing the portrayal of the nineteenth-century governess in Jane Eyre.[4] The barrier between Jane (as a governess) and her employer – Mr. Rochester – is fictitious but it is only lowered when she inherits a fortune that allows her to marry him on equal footing.

The nineteenth-century governess was often associated with prostitutes and lunatics. This association is also noticeable in Jane Eyre because these two types of women are dramatized literally in the two characters that precede Jane as Rochester’s lovers: Bertha (the lunatic) and Céline Varens (the mistress). ‘The way Brontë works through Jane’s position as governess seems to sever the links among’ the three types of women: prostitutes, lunatics and governesses.[5] Nevertheless, despite social circumstances that impede her from being considered worthy of marrying well, the governess (and, subsequently, Jane as well) is always perceived as superior to women of colonial Europe or West India due to what the Victorians believed was racial purity.

For instance, Rochester makes it clear that he would never exchange an English lady ‘for all the women of continental Europe, represented metonymically by the French opera dancer Céline Varens and her successors, “the unprincipled and violent” Italian Giacinta, the “heavy, mindless and unimpressible” German Clara, […] and the intemperate and unchaste West Indian wife.’ In order to acquire wealth that would fit his middle-class membership, Rochester marries a Creole woman who becomes mad as a result of a suggested faulty genetic inheritance most likely coupled with syphilis acquired through her own ‘excesses’.[6] On account of the fact that Rochester cannot marry again, he settles for mistresses that are of foreign origin.

Rochester tells Jane that he sees mistresses as inferior human beings and compares them to slaves, which is suggestive of white English slave-driver mentality and aspiration to racial superiority and purity:

‘It was with me; and I didn’t like it. It was a groveling fashion of existence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and always by position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is degrading. I now hate the recollection of the time I passed with Céline, Giacinta, and now Clara.’

I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into me, as – under any pretext – with any justification – through any temptation – to become the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this conviction: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart, that it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial.[7]

However, Jane manages to dissociate herself from Bertha and Rochester’s mistresses by means of uncompromised virtue, self-control, education and racial purity. In the social context of colonial slavery, the status of the English lady is in clear contrast with that of the Creole woman. Regardless of fortune or class membership, the white English female is almost always considered superior to those of uncertain birth origins. This allows Jane to eventually marry Mr. Rochester on her own terms and even on equal footing as she acquires wealth through inheritance by the end of the novel.

In terms of the manner in which the main characters relate to mad Bertha Mason, not even Jane is able to empathize with Rochester’s wife. When he introduces Jane to Bertha, ‘she naturally feels no kinship – in truth very little human sympathy – for the woman who has become a beast, beside whom she [Jane] appears to distinct advantage.’[8] Her attitude reflects the Victorian mentality that she has fully appropriated. The heroine is seemingly challenging the social hierarchy of early nineteenth-century England, but, in reality she (along with Charlotte Brontë herself) accepts the pre-established social order and, by means of what seems as legitimate upward mobility, manages to fit in the system and even reach the top of its middle-class.

The Self-Indulging Figure of the Creole Woman within and Set apart from The Victorian Doctrine of Female Self-Renunciation

Victorian women were culturally forced to embrace the female doctrine of self-renunciation even if they regarded devotion to their families as self-fulfilment. According to this doctrine, women were never allowed to have direct influence in the public sphere. They could only exercise power in the social sphere through their relationship to men. ‘Since domestic women influence the public domain only in relationship to men […], they are not individuals in the sense of being moral agents. […] The paradox of being an individual in the domestic sphere is resolved by defining the English woman in relation to other women instead of men. In Jane Eyre, a domestic form of social agency is established through a national and racial splitting of femininity, with the creole woman serving as a figure of self-indulgence and the Oriental woman of self-immolation’.[9] The Creole (who serves as a figure of self-indulgence) is represented by Bertha Mason in the novel.

Jane does not embrace the concept of female self-renunciation until the end of the novel when she is willing to sacrifice herself by marrying and looking after a maimed older man. Even this postponed sacrifice becomes a means of achieving self-fulfilment as the protagonist is happy to marry Rochester on account of her romantic feelings towards him. Therefore, Jane Eyre is an unconventional domestic novel in which the virtue of self-renunciation is devalued. However, Brontë reassures her readers that this devaluation does not lead to moral chaos by creating a foil in the character of Bertha who embodies female self-indulgence/passion/sexual appetite.[10] ‘It is clear from Rochester’s description of his first wife that it is not her madness he finds so intolerable as her debauchery’:[11]

‘Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details; some strong words shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: […] her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them; and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had – and what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, – the true daughter of an infamous mother, – dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste […] a nature the most gross, impure, depraved, I ever saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings: for the doctors now discovered that my wife was mad – her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity.[12]

‘Jane I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect was all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the world, I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I resolved to be clean in my own sight – and to the last I repudiated the contamination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from connexion with her mental defects. Still, society associated my name and person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily: something of her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and besides, I remembered I had once been her husband – that recollection was then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife […].’[13]

‘It is not madness that is the cause of Bertha’s moral degeneration.’ It is the other way around. ‘Her “excesses” have strained her minuscule mind to the point of unhinging it’.[14] Jane is also capable of excesses: when she is tormented by her feelings for Rochester, she often believes that her state of mind resembles madness. However, she can dissociate herself from Bertha due to self-discipline and intellectual superiority.[15] By means of these two qualities that Jane possesses, Brontë manages to reassure the readers that the protagonist’s rejection of the doctrine of female self-renunciation cannot lead to the moral chaos reflected in the character of Bertha.[16]

Jane manages to dissociate herself from Bertha not only due to self-control and education, but also due to her racial purity: ‘the narrative function of the creole stereotype is also to disassociate a pure English race from its corrupt West Indian line’.[17] In Jamaica, the term ‘Creole’ was used to designate all native-born population that was both of African and European origin. The fact that Bertha is referred to by means of this term is indicative of her racial ambiguity. However, her moral features (which she inherited from her infamous insane mother) and her dark complexion suggest that she is black and a member of the colonised even if she is the daughter of a merchant-planter.

In the novel, racial purity is associated with English national culture and Jane – as a true English woman – embodies honesty and national pride. She embodies the English national character. As a result, narratively speaking, the Creole is sacrificed so that an English woman – who is, naturally, superior to Bertha – can take her place. Jane’s inheritance from a rich uncle in Madeira might suggest an association between the protagonist and the racial ‘other’. Nevertheless, the hardships that she suffers after leaving from Thornfield (despair, loneliness and hunger that leads to common begging) purify her soul and distance her from the class of the West Indian plantocracy.[18]

Slavery as a Figure for Gender Oppression within the Depiction of Bertha’s Madness

Despite the marginal and negative role that Bertha seems to have in the novel, some critics suggest that she may have a more important role than it would appear at first sight. Brontë uses slavery as a figure for gender oppression. This figure is illustrated by the character of Bertha. Moreover, Bertha may be said to function as the central locus of the novelist’s anxieties about oppression. Up to her emergence in the novel, these anxieties are located in the character of Jane. Once Bertha appears in the novel, the anxieties become absorbed by her and Bertha’s annihilation leads to their permanent elimination.[19]

The character of Bertha is considered of even greater importance by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar who assert that she is ‘Jane’s truest and darkest double’.[20] They read Bertha ‘as a symbolic substitute for Jane Eyre and the monstrous embodiment of unchecked female rebelliousness and sexuality’. They argue that she represents ‘the rebellious passions she [Jane] has been trying to repress since childhood. Hence, they see the madwoman’s opposition to the forthcoming wedding as a figurative and psychological manifestation of Jane’s own desires for independence that her marriage to Rochester would negate.’[21] What is also worth mentioning is that behind Jane’s revolt against gender oppression is the revolt of this black woman who achieves the most important act in the novel: the act of burning Thornfield down – by which she diminishes Rochester’s wealth and power of his gender.[22]

Conclusions

In Jane Eyre, the association of the Victorian governess with prostitutes and lunatics is noticeable in the two types of women dramatized in the two characters that precede Jane as Rochester’s lovers: Bertha (the lunatic) and Céline Varens (the mistress). However, Jane is able to dissociate herself from Rochester’s wife and mistress by means of uncompromised virtue, self-control, education and racial purity.

Nevertheless, despite her lady-like appearance and qualities, Jane does not embrace the concept of female self-renunciation until the end of the novel when she is willing to sacrifice herself by marrying and looking after a maimed older man. As a result, the conventional ending to the unconventional domestic novel conveys a typically Victorian message to female readers. Therefore, the devaluation of the virtue of self-renunciation is diluted by the foil created in the character of Bertha who embodies the self-indulgence/passion/sexual appetite of the Victorian female figure.[23]

Bibliography

Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre, Penguin, 1994.

Meyer, Susan L. ‘Colonialism and the Figurative Strategy of Jane Eyre’ in The Nineteenth-Century Novel: a Critical Reader. Edited by S. Regan. London: Routledge in association with The Open University. 2001.

Newman, Beth. ‘Excerpts from Subjects on Display’, in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: a Casebook. Edited by E. B. Michie. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Oates, Joyce Carol. ‘Romance and Anti-Romance: From Brontë’s Jane Eyre to Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea’, in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: a Casebook. Edited by E. B. Michie. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Poovey, Mary. ‘The Anathematized Race: The Governess and Jane Eyre’, in The Nineteenth-Century Novel: a Critical Reader. Edited by S. Regan. Routledge, 2001.

Sharpe, Jenny. “Excerpts from Allegories of Empire” in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: a Casebook. Edited by E. B. Michie. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

by Maria-Viorica Arnăutu, POSDRU/159/1.5/S/133652 Doctoral Candidate at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași

[1] *This work was supported by the strategic grant POSDRU/159/1.5/S/133652, co-financed by the European Social Fund within the Sectorial Operational Program Human Resources Development 2007 – 2013.

[2] Sharpe, J.,  ‘Excerpts from  Allegories of Empire’, in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: a Casebook, Edited by E. B. Michie, Oxford University Press, 2006,  page 89

[3] Cf. Poovey, M., ‘The Anathematized Race: The Governess and Jane Eyre’, in The Nineteenth-Century Novel: a Critical Reader, Edited by S. Regan, Routledge, 2001, pages 194-212

[4] Cf. ibid., pages 201-12

[5] ibid., page 203

[6] Newman, B., ‘Excerpts from Subjects on Display’, in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: a Casebook, Edited by E. B. Michie, Oxford University Press, 2006, page 163

[7] Brontë, C., Jane Eyre, Penguin, 1994, page 309

[8] Oates, J. C., ‘Romance and Anti-Romance: From Brontë’s Jane Eyre to Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea’, in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: a Casebook, Edited by E. B. Michie, Oxford University Press, 2006, page 201

[9] Sharpe, J.,  ‘Excerpts from Allegories of Empire’, in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: a Casebook, Edited by E. B. Michie, Oxford University Press, 2006,  page 89

[10] Cf. ibid.,  page 86

[11] ibid.,  page 87

[12] Brontë, C., Jane Eyre, Penguin, 1994, pages 303-4

[13] ibid.,  page 304

[14] Sharpe, J.,  ‘Excerpts from Allegories of Empire’, in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: a Casebook, Edited by E. B. Michie, Oxford University Press, 2006,  page 88

[15] Cf. ibid.,  page 88

[16] Cf. ibid.,  page 88

[17] Sharpe, loc. cit.

[18] Cf. ibid.,  pages 87-9

[19] Cf. Meyer, S. L., ‘Colonialism and the Figurative Strategy of Jane Eyre’, in The Nineteenth-Century Novel: a Critical Reader, Edited by S. Regan, Routledge, 2001, pages 228, 232

[20] Cf. Sharpe, op. cit., page 86

[21] Sharpe, loc. cit.

[22] Cf. Meyer, S. L., ‘Colonialism and the Figurative Strategy of Jane Eyre’, in The Nineteenth-Century Novel: a Critical Reader, Edited by S. Regan, Routledge, 2001, page 242

[23] Cf. Sharpe, op. cit.,  page 89

 

Tags: anxiety, charlotte bronte, colonialism, criticism, despair, education, feminism, governess, jane eyre, literature, loneliness, love, lunatic, lust, madness, oppression, passion, power, purity, review, sexuality, victorian age, wide sargasso sea

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