By Tricia Ares
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre was an innovative work conceived in Romanticism and delivered into Victorian sensibilities. The novel received a cold welcome by many of her contemporaries. To understand why, the modern reader must examine not only what the author says, but how. By exploring Brontë’s narrative strategy, we will see how it contributed to the defiant tone of the novel.
Although Jane Eyre was written in 1847, at the cusp of two literary periods, Brontë’s use of Romantic elements is essential to the psychological make up of her heroine. Romanticism is not merely a literary style but a philosophy which:
tends to see the individual at the very center of all life and all experience, . . . making literature most valuable as an expression of his unique feelings and particular attitudes.” (Thrall 431, italics mine)
This philosophy was not coveted by all of Brontë’s peers. According to The Women of England (1839), it was a woman’s duty to “devote [oneself] to the general good of the whole” (Ellis 24). By combining the Romantic notion of the individual with the voice of a female narrator, Brontë creates a self-willed character who defies conventional English society.
This Romantic voice reveals itself immediately with its nature motifs and references to exotic locations. The first chapter then erupts into an emotionally charged conflict between a young, orphaned Jane Eyre and her cousin John. After John, the heir of Gateshead, throws a book at her head, Jane becomes indignant with her social superior and fisticuffs ensue. Jane is reprimanded for the severe breach of conduct:
For shame! for shame!’ cried the lady’s-maid. ‘What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress’s son! Your young master!’ [Jane replies] ‘Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?’” (Brontë 19)
This scene demonstrates Jane’s sense of justice and self-worth, as the narrator focuses on her own emotions and individual needs. Unfortunately, for this narrator, the sins of asserting her individual rights are two-fold. Had both characters been young boys, this exchange would merely be a breach of class etiquette. However, since Brontë’s ‘autobiographical’ voice is a female, it becomes doubly offensive. Jane not only oversteps her social rank, she also defies her prescribed feminine role requiring “gentleness and timidity, a noble gift of their sex” (Rapp quoted in Boxer 116). To compound the indecency, the narrator remains completely unrepentant.
Although Jane does note (while confined in the Red Room) that, “All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so” (Brontë 23), this should not be taken as any sign of remorse. Jane admits that this is a (romantically) emotional response brought about by her “habitual mood of humiliation and self-doubt” (Brontë 23). When terrified, she cries out for pity and forgiveness, but never apologizes. The narrator never softens her history with reflections that bring her adult point of view in line with society. This, no doubt, contributes to the charge of Chartism against the author.
Jane admits she is a “discord” at Gateshead, and apparently among members of Victorian society. Contemporary critic Elizabeth Rigby writes of this defiant Jane, “There is a hardness in her infantine earnestness, and a spiteful precocity in her reasoning, which repulses all our sympathy” (http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/peter.friesen/default.asp?go=252).
This early conflict serves as an example of the narrative strategy Brontë used in writing Jane Eyre. By infusing a female voice with Romantic ideals, Brontë created a complex character whose search for love as well as autonomy, created a narrative tension that would irk many of her critics.
Works Cited
Boxer, Marilyn J., and Jean H. Quataert. Connecting Spheres. New York: Oxford University Press. 1987.
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc. 1996.
Brontë Sources, Texts, and Criticism . 10 Feb. 2000. Peter Friesen. 3 March 2006.
Ellis, Sara Stickney. The Women of England, Their social Duties and domestic Habits.
London: Fisher, Son & Co. 1839. Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington, IN. 3 March 2006 <http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/ellis/womeneng.html>.
Thrall, William Flint, and Addison Hibbard. A Handbook to Literature. New York: Odyssey Press, 1960.
