Books are necessary mirrors and generators of selfhood. The pages of books here predict, sponsor, create, their readers’ existence (Cunningham 1994: 342).
Her story is… a distinctly female Bildungsroman in which the problems encountered by the protagonist as she struggles from the imprisonment of her childhood toward an almost unthinkable goal of mature freedom are symptomatic of difficulties every woman in a patriarchal society must meet and overcome (Gilbert & Gubar: 339).
Moving backward in colonial history, many postcolonial literary critiques return to literature from the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries to uncover the intricacies of colonial world domination before its political and economic height. Seeking companions in texts like Austen’s Mansfield Park and Dickens’ Great Expectations, these critiques hope to expose the more covert cultural representations that consume the European and American colonial imagination. Of key importance for many of these investigations is Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Rich in its representation of colonial complexities, the texts and its characters are on a constant journey through Victorian society, looking eastward and westward to British colonies to actively define what it means to be British in the context of its global counterparts. A reader can easily underscore the allusions to despotic, Eastern tyrants and sexualized customs as well as its imagining of the West Indies as ordering mechanisms that relegate British culture to an elevated position above the primitive regions of the world. Tantamount to this conception of literary relationships is the belief that colonial ordering is predicated on the circulation and enforcement of stereotypes that strictly separate the civilized from the uncivilized. Homi Bhabha, in The Location of Culture, claims that the stereotype is its (colonial ordering) major discursive strategy; it is a “form of knowledge and identification that vacillates between what is always ‘in place’, already known, and something that must be anxiously repeated” (94). To be sure, according to Chinua Achebe’s account of Heart of Darkness and colonial literature more broadly, for colonial representations “things (and persons) being in their place is of the utmost importance” (122). He goes on to characterize the representation of natives in Conrad’s work: “it is clearly not part of Conrad’s purpose to confer language on the “rudimentary souls” of Africa. They only “exchanged short grunting phrases even among themselves but mostly they were too busy with their frenzy” (122). What Achebe and Bhabha point out in their deconstruction of colonial ordering is that, in order for stereotypes to maintain their disciplinary and ordering power, a degree of coercion must exist in which those subject to stereotypes are incapable of challenging them; that is, incapable of removing themselves from the negative associations included in narrating their own existence.
As investigations into colonial literature progress with these insights, many critiques have began to point not only to the ways Jane Eyre imagines an England by reference to its estranged, uncivilized exterior, but also by the social ordering existent within its own borders and institutions. Valentine Cunningham, squarely placing his critique in the realm of domesticity and marriage, claims that Jane Eyre, like the indigenous populations so characteristic of colonial literature, is a subject caught within inequitable social relations (1993; 1994). Focusing on the text’s representation of marriage and Jane’s conception of the missionary condition, Cunningham claims, “marriage in Britain is demonstrated to be enslaving along Eastern lines” (1993: 99). Referencing Booth’s In Darkest England and the Way Out as a corroborating social text in an archive of colonial critique, Cunningham’s analysis posits a reconfiguration of traditional conceptions of systems of colonial domination. More specifically, Cunningham’s approach to the text incorporates marginal peoples of England (the underclass, orphans, working women, etc.) as similarly placed in relationship to colonial ideologies as the ‘uncivilized populations empires claimed to be saving.’ Of key importance for postcolonial literary forms, a point Cunningham drives home when he questions, “who owns the book, who owns the meaning of books” (Cunningham 1994: 342), are the efforts made by subjugated individuals to narrate their own identity and history, both on the personal and the national level, in order to free themselves from the one-sidedness of stereotypes.
Returning to the definition of stereotype as laid out by Bhabha, this essay investigates the ways in which Jane Eyre, as a cultural artifact from colonial England, incorporates aspects of both colonial and postcolonial literary forms embedded within its feminist critique of patriarchal ordering. Delving into Jane’s relationship to the upper-class of Britain and her status as a marginal, mostly unseen character lurking in the shadows, this essay investigates Jane’s own desire to narrate her life story in the face of other agents actively narrating it for her. Working off of textual metaphors of sight (seeing/being seen) and relations of narrative authority, of key importance will be Jane’s relationship to the Reeds and their characterization of her ungodly, inhuman behavior; the Ingrams and their depiction of English governesses, and Jane’s self-motivated narration to Mr. Rochester upon her final return. It is the argument of this paper that the mid-to-late-nineteenth-century social conditions Jane Eyre depicts usher in the unique position of women in changing economic and political climates.
Jane Eyre opens with a conflict strictly bound within the realm of narrative authority. As a child Jane is consistently characterized as an evil, impish creature from the non-human world who must learn, through many painful interactions, to hold her tongue and permit others to narrate her life circumstances for her. The novel begins with the child Jane reflecting on Mrs. Reed’s claim that “until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation that [Jane] was endeavoring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and child-like disposition…she really must exclude [Jane] from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children” (I, 7). Isolating herself from such characterizations, Jane seeks solace behind the curtains of a breakfast room window, taking pleasure in reading books that do not belong to her. As John Reed searches the house for the “bad animal” (I, 9) Jane reveals her location with the anticipation of impending violence. She claims, “accustomed to John Reed’s abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it; my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult” (I, 10). John’s insult does eventually come, squarely placing Jane in the role of a dependent. John, the substitute patriarch for the Reed family, exclaims, “you have no business to take our books: you are a dependent, mama says…now I’ll teach you to rummage my book-shelves: for they are mine” (I, 11). His gesticulations are immediately followed by a physical attack on Jane’s body. In the subsequent resolution, Jane is incapable of narrating the actual events to Mrs. Reed who, in all actuality, is wholly disinterested in understanding Jane’s position within the fray. In his description John establishes a direct connection between Jane’s inferior social status and her inability to master the art of self-narration. Encapsulated in the image of the book, Jane’s social literacy is bound by her position as socially inferior. According to Cunningham’s analysis, “the male book becomes a male weapon against the female who has had the temerity to appropriate it and its meanings for herself” (1994: 345). As the books that fill Jane’s childhood are stripped from her possession, both in the physical and in Cunningham’s metaphorical, intellectual sense, she becomes increasingly incapable of dictating on what grounds she will be characterized.
A minor example early on in the text, Jane’s interaction with John and her subsequent isolation establish a paradigm that is consistently a point of return throughout the novel, to characterize Jane’s inferior position and her ensuing inability to dictate on what grounds her life is narrated. In most instances in which readers find Jane incapable of narrating herself there is a direct connection between Jane’s physical location or her proximity to individuals more elevated on the social hierarchy, and the silence she is forced to endure. Jumping ahead to her career as Adèle’s governess, a reader finds Jane yet again in situations of social inequity, bereft of the ability to construct her own identity. For example, in most of her early interactions with Mr. Rochester, her preferred modus operandi is to listen while Rochester describes in detail his opinion of her character. On the first night of their interaction, Rochester requests of Jane to “draw your chair still a little further forward: you are yet too far back; I cannot see you without disturbing my position” (XIV 130). Jane, still grappling with her desire to remain hidden and estranged from the upper class that shuns her, claims, “I would rather have remained somewhat in the shade” (XIV 130).
This tendency is repeated when Jane is forced to sit and observe Rochester and his group of socialites during one of their extended visits to Thornfield. It is at this point that Jane’s inferior position is most shrewdly highlighted by those superior to her, crafting a relationship between varying classes of British citizens similar to many colonial relationships of so much importance for postcolonial critiques. Concealed in a window-seat, reminiscent of the same location from which Jane removed herself from sight in the opening of the novel, Jane is both metaphorically and physically isolated from the upper-class denizens that surround her. Early on in their festivities, the Ingrams initiate a conversation detailing the social evils of governesses, before recognizing Jane’s physical presence. Gesticulating on the characteristics of governesses, the Ingrams state,
I noticed her: I am a judge of physiognomy, and in hers I see all the faults of her class (II, 177),
I have just one word to say of the whole tribe: they are a nuisance (II, 177),
Spare us the enumeration! Au reste, we all know them: danger of bad example to innocence of childhood; distraction and consequent neglect of duty on the part of the attached; mutual alliance and reliance; confidence thense resulting—insolence accompanying—mutiny and general blow-up” (II, 178).1
Here, again, someone hardly acquainted with Jane’s true character is compelled to narrate her existence. The Ingrams, little concerned with the intricacies of Jane’s personality, wipe away any individuating characteristics in favor of more generalized, blanket descriptions of governesses. Returning to the stereotype’s functioning, these statements made by the Ingram family construct a dichotomous separation between Jane, as representative of some lower “tribe” of peoples, and the ranks of British citizens that compose the upper class. Like Achebe’s claim that Conrad’s text is incapable of eliciting a voice, or language more generally, from the natives’ perspective, so too Jane is incapable of announcing her presence, both linguistically and physically, in the face of such degrading and inhuman descriptions. Instead, governesses, according to this representation, are so far removed from standard “Britishness” that one could define their behavior by their bodily shape—a trope all too long associated with colonial stereotypes of primitive cultures. One need only think of the Hottentot’s larger-than-life vagina and buttocks and the birth of pseudoscientific schools of thought like phrenology to witness the similarities in the ordering mechanisms at play. Likewise, lumping Jane into categories like “class,” “tribe,” and “them,” their language is too similar to the Manichean colonial ordering not to be grouped together with it.
A reader, confronted with instance after instance of Jane’s subservient narrative position, must eventually question the success of the novel. As many critics have highlighted, the original title of the novel was Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, supposedly edited by a man, but surely written by a woman. Subsequently, working off the title alone, a reader can surmise that Charlotte Brontë intends Jane to have some narrative authority within the self-titled text. Gilbert and Gubar, in The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, shed some light on the circumstances that permit Jane’s eventual narrative authority. “For having left Rochester, having torn off the crown of thorns he offered and repudiated the unequal charade of marriage he proposed, Jane now has gained the strength to begin to discover her real place in the world” (Gilbert & Gubar: 364). What Gilbert and Gubar point to is the shift that occurs late in Jane Eyre in which Jane becomes fully independent for the first time. Leaving Rochester, Jane unwittingly stumbles upon the family of equals she has longed for her entire life. Amongst equals, Jane achieves independence primarily through economic independence. Working contentedly as a schoolteacher in an all-girls school she operates herself, Jane actualizes her path to independence well before her acquisition of her uncle’s fortune, through labor that is unique to a woman. Here, too, is Jane’s first opportunity to narrate her life story in the way she sees fit.
A stranger to the Rivers family, Jane is capable (albeit for a brief period of time) of concealing her dark history and fabricating a completely new one. However, much discussion has occurred surrounding St. John Rivers’s eventual discovery of Jane’s true identity. Of special concern for many of these investigations is the return of a dominant male figure capable of seeing Jane, narrating her social presence. St. John Rivers’s discovery of Jane’s true identity, however, must not be seen as yet another example of patriarchal authority narrating Jane into existence. What is critically important to Rivers’ narration of Jane’s social presence is his ability to actively see Jane for what she really is; that is, he breaks away from the functioning of stereotypes in generally describing Jane’s character to a full narration of Jane’s history, complete with her relationship with the Reed family, her time spent at boarding school and subsequent training to become a governess, as well as her unfortunate exit from Thornfield. In fact, St. John Rivers’s narration is so accurate it uncovers aspects of Jane’s character of which she herself is unaware, namely her familial connection with the Rivers and subsequent inheritance of a large sum of money.
It is here that Jane actualizes her road to independence. At Marsh End Jane is among equals in many senses: she is among a family that actively includes her as as such, in contrast to her earliest encounters with the Reed family, bent on excluding her from their ranks. Likewise, Jane is among economic equals when she divides her inheritance amongst the Rivers family. No longer a member of the social underclass, struggling to provide for herself in one of the only ways available to women at her time in history, Jane is now capable of standing up to the social ranks formerly bent on excluding her. It is at this point in the novel’s development that Jane is capable of returning to Rochester as his equal. Likewise, it is upon her return to the crippled Rochester that Jane is capable, for the first time, of narrating her social presence on her own terms. Asked to explain to Rochester the occurrences Jane experienced in between the time she left Thornfield to her eventual return, Jane demands that the story be told according to her own prerogatives. She states, after relaying a portion of her physical and spiritual journey, “to leave my tale half-told will, you know, be a sort of security that I shall appear at your breakfast-table to finish it” (XI, 438). Jane now withholds large amounts of social currency that buttress her presence as an equal among Rochester’s elevated ranks, like the monetary currency she recently obtained. Not only is she capable of narrating her story on her own grounds for the first time in her life, Jane, as Cunningham notes (1993; 1994), now holds the power over the pen; that is, Jane is not only capable of narrating herself, she also controls, in light of Rochester’s blindness, the ability to write and read for him. Symbolically, therefore, Jane has come into control of the masculine pen that for centuries has held sole ownership over social and cultural narrative authority. In direct contrast to the books that were stripped from her possession as a child and the books she only held partial control over as an educator, Jane now has complete mastery of the “male books” formerly used as a form of social control against those females hoping to appropriate their grammar and verbage.
Understood from this perspective, Jane Eyre stands as an excellent example of an early feminist rereading of dominant masculine cultural tropes. As Jane continues to battle with life’s inequalities, as an orphaned, dependent child to an abandoned governess desperately searching for survival, she comes progressively closer to mastering the master’s tools. Once the social conditions formerly responsible for the wide gulf of separation between characters, like the governess Jane and her wealthy, aristocratic lover Mr. Rochester, or dependent Jane and the maniacal, disinterested Reeds are transcended, Jane is capable of telling her true life story. A narrative about narrative authority, Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman that charts the progression of an abandoned social outcast, everywhere present yet nowhere seen, who struggles to control the grounds on which her presence, both within the text as well as more broadly in social conditions, is noted. Like the postcolonial literary forms which this paper argues Jane Eyre actively engages, the novel envisions a transgressive social space capable of articulating subaltern experiences. Addressing the text in this manner broadens the canon of postcolonial literary forms to include texts formerly conceived as colonial artifacts. It also increases our contemporary understanding of the vastness and intricacy of colonial systems of domination, positing it is a truly global phenomenon capable of influencing social relations as much at home as abroad.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. 1990. “An Image of Africa” in Joseph Conrad: Third World Perspectives (ed) Hamner, R. Washington: Three Continents Press.
Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge Classics.
Brontë, Charlotte. 1969. Jane Eyre. Oxford World Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cunningham, Valentine. 1993. “God and Nature Intended You for a Missionary Wife’: Mary Hill, Jane Eyre and Other Missionary Women in the 1840’s” in Women and Missions: Past and Present (eds) Bowie, Fiona, Deborah Kirkwood and Shirley Ardener. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Cunningham, Valentine. 1994. in the Reading Gaol: postmodernity, texts, and history. Oxford: Blackwells.
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. 1979. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press.