Survey of Critical Responses
Ever since its publication in 1847, the novel Jane novel Jane Eyre by Currer Bell caused a number of diverse critical reactions. It was at t he same time rejected and praised by both its readers and critics. It was critically acclaimed in 1847 as “decidedly the best novel of the season,” by G . H. Lewes in The Westminster Review. The Victorians respected the reality of the story, however, some critics thought it to be antiChristian, and vulgar.This kind of controversy continued for the subsequent 260 years. It went through different stages in terms of critical cr itical apparatus applied on its analysis. Today, Jane Today, Jane Eyre is considered by some scholars to be the prototype of the feminist novel. Ellis and Acton Bell
However, in the same year, two other sisters of Charlotte – Ellis and Anne – also managed to have their own works published: Wuthering Heights was Heights was first published in London in 1847 by Thomas Cautley Newby, appearing as the first two volumes of a three-volume set that included Anne B rontë's Agnes rontë's Agnes Grey . The authors were printed as being Ellis and Acton Bell; Emily's real name did not appear until 1850 , when it was printed on the title page of an edited commercial e dition. They decided to use a masculine pen name because women writers were not taken seriously at that t ime in Victorian England. Charlotte used the name Currer Bell. Ann was Acton, and Emily Ellis, the initials of which were the same as their own, as in their joint book of poems from previous year. The origin of pen names
How they came by their names they t hey never revealed, but there are some strong indications. The name Bell may have been chosen by the arrival that summer of their father's new curate, Arthur Bell Nichols. While a governess at the Sidgwicks, Charlotte had certainly heard much of their neighbour, Miss Frances Mary Richardson Currer, of Eshton Hall, Skipton. Her library was famous throughout the north. She was one of the founder patrons of the Clergy Daughters' School, so that her name must have been doubly familiar to Charlotte. The poetess Eliza Acton w ho had considerable success in her day and was patronized by royalty, may have suggested Anne's pseudonym to her. There appears to be no clue to the origin of Emily's choice of name, Ellis. Possible critical interpretations A range of critical approaches to the novel:
Historical-Literary (Positivistic)
Psychoanalytical / Jungian
Traditional (Close reading)
Post-Colonial Criticism
Marxist / Materialist
Traditional literary criticism
Feminist
It covered some biographical details from the author’s life, as well as provided in -depth analysis of some
common features of the book, such as: composition/structure,
particular vs. “universal” (fantasy and prophecy)
plot/story or narrative,
pattern and rhythm (as defined by E.M. Forster in his Aspects of the Novel , 1927),
characters (flat vs. rounded ones), setting in regard to its social / cultural impact,
topics / themes, motifs, symbolism, foreshadowing, etc.
Traditional criticism
The traditional critical approach was to deal with a number of issues that had been characterised as “proper” features of the Victorian novel in its early stage. At the time, it still retained a strong connection to its Gothic tale elements, as well as Romantic treatment of unhappy heroines on their ultimate path to marriage, as “prescribed” in the popular novels by Jane Austin. Gothic Influences
Jane Eyre does, in fact, display some typical characteristics of the Gothic novel: Mysterious happenings
Gloomy landscapes
Frightening scenes
Incidents of madness
Imprisoned women
Revelations of shocking secrets
A heroine who faces danger
A romantic reconciliation
Supernatural interventions at crucial moments in the plot
More of Gothic elements
The purpose of Gothic fiction was to evoke a sense of mystery, suspense, fear and terror. It was sometimes referred to as “Dark Romanticism.”
Its other elements included: Haunted castle or house
Physical imprisonment
Dreaming and nightmares
Psychological entrapment and helplessness
Doppelgänger or alter ego
Psychology of horror and/or terror
Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot “The Female Gothic”variety of Gothic Tales ex ploited the topic of a Heroine in Distress.The main female
protagonist is pursued and persecuted by a villainous patriarchal figure in unfamiliar settings and terrifying landscape. It was best presented in The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (published in 1794). Although Jane Eyre is not considered solely a Gothic novel, Charlotte Brontë certainly employs the use of gothic elements throughout to add depth and meaning to Jane’s experiences. Among these elements are remote locations, mysteries, supernatural encounters, intricate family histories, secrets, and primordial manors, which add to the dark, mysterious mood and highlight the important moments in the plot. Architecture of the Mind Jane Eyre’ s Romantic Heritage Some of the main characteristics of Romantic literature include:
a focus on emotions and inner world;
interest in the past;
celebration of nature, beauty, and imagination;
frequent use of personification; experimental use of language and verse forms, including blank verse; and
rejection of industrialization, organized religion, rationalism, and social convention; idealization of women, children, and rural life;
emphasis on individual experience of the "sublime.".
inclusion of supernatural or mythological elements;
Conventional Romantic love plot
The story of the young heroine is , in many ways, conventional — the rise of a poor orphan girl against overwhelming odds, whose love and determination eventually redeem a tormented hero. Yet if this all there were to Jane Eyre, the novel would soon have been forgotten. I n writing her novel, Charlotte Brontë did not write a mere romantic potboiler, or a mediocre work of art aimed at commerical success. Her book has serious things to say about a number of important subjects: the relations between me n and women, women's equality, the treatment o f children and of women, religious faith and religious hypocrisy (and the difference between the t wo), the realization of selfhood, and the nature o f true love. One of the most popular of all English novels
The book is not a tract any more than it is a potboiler. It is a work of fiction with memorable characters and vivid scenes, written in a compelling prose style. In appealing to both the head and t he heart, Jane Eyre triumphs over its flaws and remains a classic of nineteenth-century English literature and one of the most popular of all English novels. A combination of Gothic and Romantic
It is identifiable by certain characte ristics of each element.The Gothic displays overblown language, bizarre characters, melodramatic incidents, menacing castles, de caying manor houses, wild landscapes, madness and secrets. The plot usually contains elements of the supernatural. The mood is usually suspenseful and mysterious. An innocent heroine is often threatened by a horror of some sort.
Setting
Thornfield Hall may be modeled on two Manor houses that Brontë was familiar with, Nortan Conyers and North Lees Hall. History books described the mistress of North Lees Hall as one Agnes Ashurst who was thought to be insane and locked up in an upstairs room. This woman died in a fire as Bertha did.
Gothic residence Thornfield is representative of a Gothic residence with its presence of Grace Poole and Bertha’s howling in the middle of the night. Regardless of the factual information of the settings mentioned in this novel,
Brontë describes each vividly to enhance the Gothic atmosphere with the reference to stock Gothic elements such as moonlight, stormy weather and dark hallways. Setting & Timing
The action takes place in Northern England during the mid 19th century. The novel covers a span of approximately 12 years. Brontë uses a succession of several main settings, primarily individual house settings for the plots main action. Each setting is described vividly to create an atmosphere as well as to give t he illusion of realism. Each setting also corresponds with a distinct phase of Jane’s life. The main setting is Gateshead, the home of Jane’s Aunt, Mrs. Reed with whom the orphaned Jane lives.
At the age of 10 she is sent to Lowood, a charity school for orphans. At the age of 18, Jane goes to Thornfield to serve as a governess to Adele Varens. When she learns of Rochester’s marriage, she flees to Moor House where she is taken in by Reverend St.
John Rivers. Towards the end of the novel she finds Rochester at his second home, Fe rndean Manor.Brontë does not use the real names for the places presented in the novel, however Lowood Institution is believe to be modeled on t he Clergy Daughters School at Cowan B ridge in Yorkshire where her sisters Maria and Elizabeth had died due to the unsanitary conditions. The Byronic Hero
Another characteristic of the Romantic genre is the secluded, isolated hero, who has a flaw that severs his ties from society. This hero is commonly known as the Byronic Hero, who is often pro ne to violent outbursts and known for being cynical , arrogant, having a ‘dark’ personality, being self critical, sophisticated and highly intelligent. This hero also appears to suffer from an awareness of his past actions. Mr. Rochester’s character closely re sembles that of a Byronic Hero in the novel. Mr. Edward Rochester Structure
There are thirty eight chapters in the novel and three distinct parts. Each part traces a pattern of conflict and resolution where Jane is faced with var ious obstacles she must strive to overcome. Running through each of these sections is Jane’s desperate effort to find a true home where she feels a sense of belonging.
Characters They can be classified by their behaviour and the role they happen to play in Jane Eyre’s life (antagonist vs. symphatetic, “bad” vs. “good”, major vs. minor). The other classification can be done according to their gender and age (male vs. female, old vs. young), or their social or family status (relatives, spouses,
children, lovers, friends, servants, etc.) Quite an unusual heroine
Jane Eyre is described as plain-featured, and not a beauty, with an elfin look. Jane describes he rself as, "poor, obscure, plain and little." Mr. Rochester once com pliments Jane's "hazel eyes and hazel hair", but she informs the reader that Mr. Rochester was mistaken, as her eyes are not hazel; they are in fact green. She is an orphaned girl caught between class boundaries, financial situations, and her own conflicted feelings. Character of Jane Eyre
She appears to be intelligent, imaginative, and principled young woman, Jane defies many restrictive social conventions, especially those affecting women. She learns in due time to temper her passions with self-control — in the end, she controls her feelings with judgment based on self-respect and Christian humility Although she meets with a series of individuals who threaten her autonomy, Jane repeatedly succeeds at asserting herself and maintains her principles of justice, human dignity, and morality. She also values intellectual and emotional fulfillment. Her strong belief in gender and social equality challenges the Victorian prejudices against women and the poor. Some critics view Jane as the very epitome of conventional provincialism, a woman oppressed by Victorian patriarchal ideologies; whereas the others find in her a power, self-determination, and iconoclasm that smacks of early feminism. Feminist Criticism
Female literary studies focused on specifically female themes, genres, even styles, but also on the origins and development of larger female traditions. Marginalization and privatization of the protagonist In the opening chapter of Jane Eyre, a picture of “marginalization and privatization of the protagonist” has been shown. Jane aligns herself to the racial other when she says that she sits like a “Turk” or like an “Indian”. She repeatedly “inserts herself into the margin”. When Jane withdraws to seclusion to read, in her “self -marginalized uniqueness, reader and Jane become one - both are reading.” Post-Colonial Responses
Feminisr re-readings of Jane Eyre also ignited a lively discussion in emerging Post-Colonial Criticism and Theory in 1980s and 1990s. Some of the best texts, in fact, reflect several simultaneous positions in regard to theoretical assumptions and analyses, be it from overtly or combined, yet distinctly Marxist /Materialist, or Cultural Theory / New Historicism; or Feminist / Post -Colonial points of view. Some knowledge on Colonies
In her childhood and adolescence in the late 1820s and 1830s, Charlotte Brontë wrote hundreds of pages of fiction set in an imaginary British colony in Africa. Her stories demonstrate some knowledge of African history and of the recent history of British colonialism in Africa. Other aspects of Bronte's juvenile stories suggest her knowledge of events in the British West Indies as well. Colonialism in other books
Colonialism is also present - and used figuratively - in each of Bronte's major novels. In both Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853), the men with whom the heroines are in love either leave or threaten to leave Europe for places of European colonization, and both men imagine their relationships with colonized people as standing in for their re lationships with white women. In The Professor (1846), white women's resistance to male domination is more overtly f igured as "black." The novel begins as an unreceived letter, whose intended recipient has disappeared into "a g overnment appointment in one of the colonies.“ William Crimsworth's own subsequent experiences among the young women o f a Belgian pensionnat are represented as a parallel act of colonization.Crimsworth discreetly compares his BelgianCatholic girl students to blacks whom he must forcibly kee p under control. He likens one Caroline, for example, to a runaway West Indian slave when he describes her curling, "somewhat co arse hair," "rolling black eyes," and lips "as full as those of a hot-blooded Maroon. "Even in the two existing chapters of Bronte's final and unfinished novel Emma (1853), race relations seem to be about to play an important figurative role: the heroine's suddenly apparent blackness suggests her social disenfranchisement due to her gender, age, and social class.The two c hapters are set in a boarding school and focus on a little girl, known as Matilda Fitzgibbon, to be of a race, or at least a physical appearance, which renders her susceptible to t he following insult: " 'If we were only in the good old times,' said Mr Ellin, 'where we ought to be - you might just send Miss Matilda out to the Plantations in Virginia - sell her for what she's worth and pay yourself.' Colonial references
Colonial territories are referred to in many nineteenth-century novels.In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (1814), Sir Thomas Bertram's wealth derives from his sugar plantations in the West Indies, which he visits in the course of the novel. In W. M. Thackeray's Vanity Fai r (1847), Jos Sedley returns from India with enormous amounts of money, and there is a fellow-pupil at Amelia Sedley's school who is clearly of mixed race. The aspects of Jane Eyre that would be susceptible to a post-colonial approach are its connection with the West Indies, w ith the island of Madeira and with India: Rochester is sent to the West Indies as a young man and is t ricked into marrying Bertha Mason. There is a se nse that her madness is somehow related to her birthplace, which is thus represented as wild and barbaric. The life in Madeira in the novel is a source of wealth, accumulated by John Eyre and passed on to hi s niece Jane. The imagery of slavery is both pervasive and closely tied to colonial actualities. When Rochester narrates the story of his life to Jane,his words take on a startling resonance in the context of the story he has just told. Rochester acquired a West Indian fortune by marrying a Jamaican wife and subsequently lived in Jamaica for four years. A wealthy white man living in Jamaica before emancipation would undoubtedly have had slaves to wait upon him, and his Jamaican fortune would of course have been the product of slave labor, so when Rochester discusses what it is like to buy and live with slaves he knows what he is talking about India is St. John Rivers' intended missionary destination, where he hopes to bring the light of Christianity
to a heathen country and to its “Hindoostani” natives. Its need of such enlightenment is insisted upon in the novel and so too are its dangers for English people. It seems to be regarded as almost inevitable that Jane would soon die if she went t here and the same fate seems to await St. John at the end of the book. Race issues in Jane Eyre
The figurative use of race is very important to Jane Eyre the figure is enacted on the level of character. In representing an actual Jamaican black woman, Brontë finds herse lf confronting the non-figurative reality of British race relations. Class and gender oppression
And Brontë's figurative use of blackness in part arises from the history of British colonialism: the function of racial "otherness" in the novel is to signify a generalized oppression. But Brontë makes class and gender oppression the overt significance of racial "otherness," displacing the historical reasons why colonized races would suggest oppression, at some level of consciousness, to nineteenth-century British readers. Spivak on Bertha
Spivak describes Bertha as at once a white woman and a colonized "native," that is, as what she terms, with little definition, a "native 'subject.' She is thus able to designate Bertha as either native or white in order to criticize both Bronte's Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea as manifestations of exclusive feminist individualism. The story from Bertha's perspective
Jane Eyre, she argues, gives the white Jane individuality at the expense of the "native" Bertha; Wide Sargasso Sea, on the other hand, she contends, retells the story of Jane Eyre from Bertha's perspective and thus merely "rewrites a canonical English text within the European novelistic tradition in the interest of the white Creole rather than the native." Colonialism and the Figurative Strategy in Jane Eyre
Susan Meyer thinks that the historical alliance between the ideology of male domination and the ideology of colonial domination which in-forms the metaphors of so many texts of the European colonial period in fact resulted in a very different relation between imperialism and the developing resistance of nineteenth-century British women to the gender hierarchy. Making sense of Bertha Mason Rochester
An interpretation of the significance of the British empire in Jane Eyre must begin by making sense of Bertha Mason Rochester, the mad, drunken West Indian wife whom Rochester keeps locked up on the third floor of his ancestral mansion. Bertha functions in the novel as the central locus of Brontë's anxieties about oppression, anxieties that motivate the plot and drive it to its conclusion. The conclusion settles these anxieties partly by elim inating the character who seems to embody them. Yet Bertha only comes into the novel after about a third of its action has taken place. As she emerges, anxieties which have been located elsewhere, notably in the character of Jane herself, become absorbed and centralized in the figure of Bertha, thus preparing the way for her final annihilation.
Ambiguity of race
Bertha's odd ambiguity of race - an ambiguity which is marked within the text itself, rather than one which needs to be mapped onto it - as directly related to her function as a representative of dangers which threaten the world of the novel. Bertha Mason
She is the heiress to a West Indian fortune, the daughter of a father who is a West Indian planter and merchant, and the sister of the yellow-skinned yet socially white Mr. Mason. She is also a woman whom the younger son of an aristocratic British family would consider marrying, and so she is clearly imagined as white - or as passing as white - in the novel's retrospective narrative. What race Bertha belongs to?
Critics of the novel have consistently assumed that Ber tha is a white woman, basing the assumption on this part of the narrative, although Be rtha has often been described as a "swarthy" or "dark" w hite woman. But when she actually emerges in the course of the action, the narrative associates her with blacks, particularly with the black Jamaican antislavery rebels, the Maroons. In the form in which she becomes visible in the novel, Bertha has become black as she is constructed by the narrative, much as Matilda Fitzgibbon becomes black in Emma. Bertha Mason Rochester Descriptions of Bertha
Even in Rochester's account of the t ime before their marriage, when Bertha Mason was "a fine woman, in the style of Blanche Ingram: tall, dark, and majestic," there are hints, as there are in the early descriptions of Matilda Fitzgibbon, of the ambiguity of her race. Immediately after Rochester describes Ber tha as "tall, dark, and majestic," he continues: "her family wished to secure me because I was of a good race." “White but not quite”
Rochester's phrase achieves a significance beyond its immediate reference to his old family name. In this context the phrase suggests that Bertha herself may not be of as "good" a race as he. Bertha is the daughter, as Richard Mason oddly and apparently unnecessarily declares in his official attestation to her marriage with Rochester, "of Jonas Mason, merchant, and of Antoinetta Mason, his wife, a Creole." "Creole"
The ambiguity of Bertha's race is m arked by this designation of her mother as a "Creole." The word "creole" was used in the nineteenth ce ntury to refer to both blacks and w hites born in the West Indies, a usage which caused some confusion: for instance, in its definition of the word the OED cites a nineteenth-century history of the U.S. in which the author writes: "There are creole whites, creole negroes, creole horses, &c.; and creole whites, are, of all persons, the most anxious to be deemed of pure white blood."
When Rochester exclaims of Bertha that "she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!" he locates both m adness and drunkenness in his wife's maternal line, which is again emphatically and ambiguously labeled "Creole." By doing so, he associates that line with two of the most common stereoty pes associated with blacks in the nineteenth century.As Bertha emerges as a character in the novel, her blackness is made more explicit, despite Rochester's wish to c onvince Jane, and perhaps temporarily himself, that "the swelled black face" and "exaggerated stature " of the woman she has seen are "figments of imagination, results of nightmare." But when Jane describes to Rochester the face she has seen reflected in the mirror, the description of racial "otherness" are very evident: she tells him that the face was
Racist language
The emphasis on Bertha's coloring in this passage - she is emphatically not "pale" but "discoloured," "purple," "blackened" - the reference to rolling eyes and to "swelled," "dark" lips all insistently and stereotypically mark Bertha as non-white. Jane's use of the word "savage" underlines the implication of her description of Bertha's features, and the redness which she sees in Bertha's rolling eyes suggests the drunkenness which, following the common racist convention, Bronte has associated with blacks since her childhood. Brontë finished writing Jane Eyre in 1846, eight years after the full emancipation of the British West Indian slaves in 1838. But the novel itself is definitely set before t he emancipation, which was declared in 1834 but only fulfilled in 1838. In 1846 it was evident that the British West Indian colonies were failing rapidly, and the focus of B ritish colonial attention was shifting to India. While the novel's use of colonialism is most overtly figurative, nonetheless it in part does engage colonialism on a nonfigurative level. Dark-skinned people
Jane Eyre associates dark-skinned peoples with oppression by drawing parallels between the black slaves, in particular, and those oppressed by the hierarchies of social class and gender in Britain. The narrative function of the dark-featured Ber tha and of the novel's allusions to colonialism and slavery has a certain fidelity to history, although as the association between blacks and apes reveals (to t ake only one example), these analogies are not free from racism. In addition, this use of the slave as a metaphor focuses attention not so much on the o ppression of blacks as on the situation of oppressed whites in Britain. Blanche Ingram
The haughty Blanche, with her "dark and imperious" eye, whose behavior makes Jane so painfully aware of her own social inferiority, seems mainly to illustrate class oppression. Yet when Mrs. Fairfax describes B lanche to Jane, she emphasizes her darkness: "she was dre ssed in pure white," Mrs. Fairfax relates, she had an "olive complexion, dark and clear," "hair raven-black ... and in front the longest, the glossiest curls I ever saw." When Jane first sees Blanche, she too emphasizes her darkness - "Miss Ingram was dark as a Spaniard," Jane notes - adding that Blanche has the "low brow" which, like dark skin, was a mar k of racial inferiority according to nineteenth-century race-science. Rochester directly associates Blanche with Africa: he
might be speaking of Bertha when he tells Jane, with unnecessary nastiness, that his apparent fiancée is "a real strapper ... big, brown, and buxom; w ith hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. "Racial "otherness" becomes also the signifier of the oppressor. By using dark-skinned peoples to signify not only the oppressed but also the oppressor, Brontë dramatically empties the signifier of dark skin in her novel of any of its meaning in historical reality and makes it merely expressive of "otherness." By assigning these two contradictory meanings to the signifier "non-white," the novel follows this logic: oppression in any of its manifestations is "other" to the English world of the novel, thus racial "otherness" signifies oppression. During the period of Rochester's and Jane's betrothal, Brontë continues to use the imagery of slavery to represent Jane's lesser power in the relationship. But she veers away from making a direct parallel with the British enslavement of Africans by associating Rochester's dominating masculine power over Jane with that not of a British but of an Eastern slave master. This part of the novel is rich in images of Turkish and Persian despots, sultans who reward their favorite slaves with jewels, Indian wives forced to die in "suttee," and women enslaved in Eastern harems.The novel persistently displaces the blame for slavery onto the "dark races" them- selves, only alluding to slavery directly as a practice of dark-skinned people. At one point, the novel uses strong and shocking imagery of slavery to describe the position of wives, but despite references to such aspect s of British slavery as slave markets, fetters, and mutiny, the scenario invoked represents not British colonial domination but the despotic, oppressive customs of non-whites. Rochester has just c ompared himself to "the Grand Turk," declaring that he pre fers his "one little English girl" to the Turk's "whole seraglio." The ending of the novel
In the ending of the novel, Bronte creates the world she can imagine free of the forms of oppression the novel most passionately protests against: gender oppression and the economic oppression of the lower middle class. In the novel's utopian closure lies much of the revolutionary energy that made its contemporary readers anxious: the novel enacts B rontë's conception of a gender and middle-class revolution. "I am,my own mistress." The mutilation of Rochester (which interestingly has made critics of the novel far more uneasy than the killing of Bertha) and the loss of his property in Thornfield redistributes power between him and the newly-propertied Jane. Jane tells her former "master" emphatically that she is now both independent and rich: "I am," she says, "my own mistress."
