J.E. #6: Creating Freedom

As an adult, Jane also makes her own escape from a world in which women are nothing but accessories to men to a world where they are powerful and valuable.

She creates this world in her drawings. Her images feature women being empowered. One woman rising into the sky is "crowned by a star" while another with only the "glassiness of despair" in her eyes bares a crescent with the "likeness of a kingly crown." Further, Jane draws supernatural images of women with "wild" eyes and of drowned corpses in green water--images not fit to come from ladies' minds.

These works of art suggest a reflection of Brontë's own desire for artistic freedom. The beautiful, powerful words which flow from her mind are not allowed to enter the world unedited. To be read by the world, they must be diluted and cut away at to fit into the mold of acceptable women's literature. Just as Jane's drawings are her escape to a more fair world, Jane is Brontë's escape as through her hand she is able to paint the pictures of truth--the pictures she could not otherwise reveal.

J.E. #5: Our Sacred Refuge and Source of Passion

As a child, Jane searches for an escape in books such as Gulliver's Travels. She draws parallels between John and a pharaoh or slave driver--parallels which women should not be able to draw as they are expected to simply accept their inferiority (Cervetti). These books and the knowledge they bring--wheather factual or imaginary--serve as Jane's refuge in a world which appears void of justice and love.

Throughout the novel, literature serves as a sort of sanctuary not only for Jane but also for the women she is close to. According to Cervetti, "reading in this novel brings women together collectively in relations of entrustment" as can be seen in her relationships with Helen Burns, Miss Temple, and her cousins. Even her relationship with Bessie is rooted in traditions of oral storytelling. These intellectual societies among women are no doubt reflections of what Brontë shared with her literary sisters.

In contrast, the novel opens with a scene in which John Reed, rather than finding the value within his books, uses them as weapons as he hurls them at his young cousin. It is through novels and stories that women are able to find an escape from men like John Reed who cannot see the value in the texts in front of them. These novels and the intellect they inspire serve to light a fire within the women in this work making them more than the submissive dolls they are expected to be.

J.E. #4: Stern Features and a Heavy Brow

Brontë rebels against the marriage plot's standards for its hero in the Byronic Rochester.

Rather than Frances Burney's Lord Orville whose "person is all elegance" or Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy with "his fine, tall person, handsome features, [and] noble mien," Brontë creates a man marked by a "dark face with stern features and a heavy brow."In composing this unattractive immoral hero, Brontë creates a man more real than the two mentioned above.

It is this reality of character which helps her bring the concepts of the marriage plot out for trial. If a man could be perfect and never make mistakes, a woman should not be opposed to becoming his dependent. If, on the other hand, a man is not perfect, if he makes mistakes and acts selfishly, what right has he to lead a woman blindly through life?

The hero Rochester is first presented on a "tall steed" with a "lion-like" dog bounding before him; his gallant entrance is foiled, however, as the horse stumbles leaving him in the care of a poor governess. Jane states that had Rochester been "a handsome, heroic looking young gentleman" she would not have had the courage to insist upon helping him against his will. This scene "sets up a relationship of dependence with which the novel ends"--a dependence which would be viewed as unacceptable by the heroes of traditional marriage plot novels (Cervetti).

Through the imperfect, unattractive Rochester, Brontë not only rebels against expectations of the marriage plot but further relates to her readers that men are not what they are in literature (a point similar to the one she makes in The Professor about women) and therefore should not be elected supreme leaders over their wives.

J.E. #3: Poor, Obscure, Plain, and Little

Brontë willingly makes her heroine a woman who does not fit into the society surrounding her. In this way, she makes a statement against the values society places on women.

Jane acknowledges that she is "poor, obscure, plain, and little." Though society sees Jane's plain face and small, weak body as unfortunate disabilities, these features act to liberate her from the binds of male desire. Beauty leads to objectification, so Jane's unattractive appearance allows her to remain a person rather than a beautiful picture (Talairach-Vielmas).

Brontë further praises Jane's humble shell by depicting the perfect beauty of women like Bertha Mason and Blanch Ingram as the house for evil spirits--spirits which gradually begin to corrupt the outer self until they create monsters so horrific they are not fit for the world to see but instead must be locked away, hidden from civilization.

Fashionable women were expected to dress in restrictive devices such as "the crinoline with a circumference sometimes exceeding five yards [which] literally transformed women into caged birds" and further was a fire hazard (Cervetti). Being fashionable and beautiful were simply camouflaged methods of subjugation. In refusing the numerous fine silks which Rochester attempts to force on her, therefore, Jane is rejecting the inferior status of her sex.

Jane's lack of exterior beauty allows the reader to fall, along with Rochester, in love with her stunning mind and radiant spirit.

J.E. #2: Marriage Plot or Bildungsroman?

In traditional marriage plot novels such as Evelina and even in Austen's works, the story begins with a girl of marriageable age and focuses around her interactions with the hero. Brontë writes the story of a girl who grows and matures throughout the novel and becomes a woman who is stronger mentally and spiritually than when we met her in chapter one.

Though she is writing a marriage plot novel, Brontë takes the liberty of depicting Jane as a person beginning the novel with a child who has significant events, other than her marriage, in her life. The reader is made aware, as Jane herself knows, that she is much more than a young woman on the marriage market.

Even after her romantic interactions with the "hero," Jane leaves for several chapters showing Brontë's independence from the expected plot her society has given her. The very structure of this novel is so rich in rebellion that it is an ideal jumping off point.

J.E. #1: Eyre of Rebellion

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is a novel of love, a novel of marriage, but most importantly, it is a novel of female rebellion. Jane Eyre relates not only the rebellion of its heroine but also the parallel rebellion of its author. While we see Jane forced to live the life of a nineteenth century woman to employ herself with "women's" tasks, Brontë is forced to work beneath the strictures of the marriage plot novel--the only type of novel it is acceptable for her to write. Both women find a means of rebelling as they push against their boundaries without "technically" breaking the rules.

My next posts will be focusing on the empowering rebellion of these two inspiring women as it is preserved for the world within this incredible novel.

For a Glimps of Soul

"I sought her eye, desireous to read there the intelligence which I could not discern in her face or hear in her conversation. It was merry, rather small. By turns I saw vivacity, vanity, coquerty, look out through its irid, but I watched in vain for a glimps of soul. ... In sunshine, prosperity, the flowers are very well; but how many wet days are there in life--November seasons of disaster, when a man's hearth and home would be cold indeed without the clear, cheering gleam of intellect!"

-Charlotte Bronte, The Professor