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Plain Jane's Progress
Sandra M. Gilbert
779
780 Gilbert Plain Jane'sProgress
Mrs. Oliphant related in 1855 that "ten years ago we professed an or-
thodox systemof novel-making.Our lovers were humble and devoted
... and the onlytrue love worthhavingwas that... chivalroustrue love
which consecrated all womankind ... when suddenlyJane Eyre stole
upon the scene, and the most alarming revolutionof modern timeshas
followedthe invasion ofJane Eyre."5
We tend todayto thinkofJaneEyreas moral Gothic,"mythdomesti-
cated,"Pamela's daughter and Rebecca'saunt, the archetypalscenario for
all those mildly thrilling romantic encounters between a scowling
Byronic hero (who owns a gloomy mansion) and a tremblingheroine
(who can't quite figureout the mansion's floorplan). Or, if we're more
sophisticated,we concede Bronti's strategicas well as mythicabilities,
studythe patternsof her imagery,and count the number of times she
addresses the reader. But still we overlook the "alarming
revolution"-even Mrs. Oliphant's terminologyis suggestive-which
"followed the invasion of Jane Eyre." "Well, obviouslyJane Eyre is a
feministtract,an argumentforthe social bettermentof governessesand
equal rightsforwomen," Richard Chase grudginglyadmittedin 1948.6
But like most other modern critics,he believed that the novel's power
arose from its mythologizingof Jane's confrontationwith masculine
sexuality.
Yet curiously enough, it was not primarilyJane Eyre's sexuality
which shocked Victorian reviewersbut its "anti-Christian"refusal to
accept the forms and customs of society-in short, its rebellious
feminism.They were disturbed not so much by the proud, Byronic
sexual energyof Rochesteras by the Byronicpride and passion of Jane
herself,not so much by the asocial sexual vibrationsbetween hero and
heroine as by the heroine's refusalto submitto her social destiny."She
has inheritedin fullestmeasure the worstsin of our fallennature-the
sin of pride," declared Mrs. Rigby."Jane Eyre is proud, and therefore
she is ungrateful,too. It pleased God to make her an orphan, friendless,
and penniless-yet she thanksnobody,and least of all Him, forthe food
and raiment,the friends,companions, and instructorsof her helpless
youth.... On the contrary,she looks upon all thathas been done forher
not only as her undoubted right,but as fallingfarshortof it."7In other
words,what horrifiedthe VictorianswasJane's anger. And perhaps they
rather than more recent criticswere correct in their response to the
5. Blackwood'sMagazine 77 (May 1855): 554-68.
6. Richard Chase, "The Brontes,or MythDomesticated,"inJaneEyre,ed. RichardJ.
Dunn (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1971), pp. 468, 464 (firstpublished in Formsof
ModernFiction,ed. William V. O'Connor [Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press,
1948]).
7. Quarterly Review84 (December 1848): 173-74. That Charlotte Bronte was herself
quite conscious of the "revolutionary"nature of many of her ideas is clearlyindicated by
the factthat she puts some of Mrs. Rigby'swords into the mouth of the unpleasant Miss
Hardman in Shirley.
Signs Summer1977 781
book. For while the mythologizingof repressed rage may parallel the
mythologizingof repressed sexuality,it is far more dangerous to the
order of society.The occasional woman who has a weakness for black-
browed Byronic heroes can be accommodated in novels and even in
some drawing rooms; the woman who yearns to escape entirelyfrom
drawing rooms and patriarchalmansions obviously cannot. And Jane
Eyre, as MatthewArnold, Mrs. Rigby,Mrs. Mozley, and Mrs. Oliphant
suspected, was such a woman.
Her story,providing a pattern for countless others, is a storyof
enclosure and escape, a distinctively
femaleBildungsroman in which the
problems encountered by the protagonistas she strugglesfromthe im-
prisonmentof her childhood toward an almost unthinkablegoal of ma-
ture freedom are symptomaticof difficultiesEverywoman in a pa-
triarchalsocietymust meet and overcome: oppression (at Gateshead),
starvation(at Lowood), madness (at Thornfield),and coldness (at Marsh
End). Most important,her confrontationnot with Rochester but with
Rochester's mad wife, Bertha, is the book's central confrontation,an
encounter not with her own sexuality but with her own imprisoned
"hunger, rebellion, and rage," a secret dialogue of self and soul on
whose outcome, as we shall see, the novel's plot, Rochester's fate, and
Jane's coming of age all depend.
dering light,as of the moon on the ceiling, she notices that "my heart
beat thick,myhead grewhot; a sound filledmyears, whichI deemed the
rushing of wings; somethingseemed near me; I was oppressed, suffo-
cated: endurance broke down." The child screams and sobs in anguish,
and then,adds the narratorcoolly,"I suppose I had a species of fit,"for
her next memoryis of waking in the nursery"and seeing before me a
terrible red glare crossed with thick black bars" (p. 15)-merely the
nurseryfire,of course, but to Jane Eyre the child a terriblereminderof
the experience she has just had and to Jane Eyre the adult narratoran
even more dreadful omen of experiences to come.
For the littledrama enacted on "that day" whichopensJane Eyreis
in itselfa paradigm of the larger drama that occupies the entirebook:
Jane's anomalous, orphaned positionin society;her enclosure in stultify-
ing roles and houses; and her attemptsto escape throughflight,starva-
tion, and-in a sense which will be explained-madness. And that
Bronte quite consciouslyintended the incidentof the red-roomto serve
as a paradigm for the larger plot of her novel is clear not only fromits
position in the narrativebut also fromJane's own recollectionof the
experience at crucial moments throughout the book: when she is
humiliatedat Lowood, for instance,and later,on the nightshe decides
to leave Thornfield. In between these moments,moreover,Jane's pil-
grimage consists of a series of experiences which are in one way or
another variationson the central red-room motifof enclosure and es-
cape.
has doubts about Rochester the husband even before she learns about
Bertha. In her world,she senses, even the equalityof love betweentrue
minds leads to the minor despotismsof marriage."'For a littlewhile,'"
she sayscynicallyto Rochester,"'you willperhaps be as you are now but
... I suppose your love will effervescein six months,or less. I have
observed in books writtenby men, thatperiod assigned as the farthestto
which a husband's ardor extends'" (p. 228). He of course vigorously
repudiates this prediction,but his argument--" '.. . You masterme be-
cause you seem to submit'"-implies a kind of Lawrentian sexual ten-
sion and only makes thingsworse. For when he asks, "'What does that
inexplicable . . . turn of countenance mean?' " Jane's ironic smile,rem-
iniscentof Bertha's mirthlesslaugh, signals a subtlyhostile thoughtof
"Hercules and Samson withtheircharmers."And thathostilitybecomes
overt at the silk warehouse, where she notes that "the more he bought
me, the more mycheek burned witha sense of annoyance and degrada-
tion . ." (p. 236).
Jane's whole lifepilgrimagehas of course prepared her to be angry
in this way at Rochester's-and society's-concept of marriage.
Rochester'sloving tyrannyrecallsJohn Reed's unlovingdespotism,and
the erraticnature of his favors("In my secretsoul I knew thathis great
kindnessto me was balanced by unjust severityto manyothers"[p. 129])
recalls Brocklehurst'shypocrisy.It is no wonder,then,thatas her anger
and fear intensifyJane begins to be symbolicallydrawn back into her
own past and specificallyto reexperience the dangerous sense of dou-
bleness thatbegan in the red-room.The firstsign thatthisis happening
is the powerfullydepicted recurrentdream of a child she begins to have
as she driftsinto a romance withher master.
Significantly, Jane tellsus thatshe "was awakened fromcompanion-
ship with this baby-phantom"on the night Bertha attacked Richard
Mason, and "on the afternoonof the day following"she is actuallycalled
back into her past, back to Gateshead to see dying Mrs. Reed, who will
remindher again of what she once was and potentiallystillis: "'Are you
Jane Eyre? ... I declare she talked to me once like somethingmad, or
like a fiend'" (p. 203). Even more significantly, the phantomchild reap-
pears in two dramatic dreams Jane has on the nightbeforeher wedding
eve, duringwhichshe experiences "a strange,regretfulconsciousnessof
some barrier"dividingher fromRochester.In the first,"burdened" with
the small, wailing creature, she is "followingthe windings of an un-
knownroad" in cold, rainyweather,strainingto catch up withher future
husband but unable to reach him. In the second, she is walkingamong
the ruinsof Thornfield,stillcarrying"the unknownlittlechild" and still
followingRochester;as he disappears around "an angle in the road," she
tells him, "I bend forwardto take a last look; the wall crumbled; I was
shaken; the child rolled frommyknee, I lostmybalance, fell,and woke"
(pp. 247-49).
Signs Summer1977 795
21. Ibid.
800 Gilbert Plain Jane'sProgress
the gospel according to Saint John ("In the beginningwas the Word")
and the misogynyof SaintJohn the Baptist,whose patristicand evangel-
ical contemptforthe fleshmanifesteditselfmostpowerfullyin contempt
for the female. Like Salome, whose rebellion against such misogyny
Oscar Wilde was also to associate withthe risingmoon of female power,
Jane must symbolically, if not literally,behead the abstractprinciplesof
this man before she can finallyachieve her true independence.
At first,however, it seems that St. John is offeringJane a viable
alternativeto the way of life proposed by Rochester.For where Roches-
ter, like his dissolute namesake, ended up appearing to offera life of
pleasure, a path of roses (albeit withconcealed thorns),and a marriage
of passion, St.John seems to propose a lifeof principle,a path of thorns
(with no concealed roses), and a marriage of spirituality.His self-
abnegating rejectionof the worldlybeauty Rosamund Oliver-another
characterwith a strikinglyresonant name-is disconcertingto the pas-
sionate and Byronicpart of Jane; but at least it shows that,unlike hypo-
critical Brocklehurst, he practices what he preaches. And what he
preaches is the Carlylean sermon of self-actualizationthrough work:
"Work while it is called today,forthe nightcomethwhereinno man can
work."22If she follows him, Jane realizes, she will substitutea divine
Master for the master she served at Thornfield and replace love with
labor-for " 'you are formedforlabour,not forlove,' " St.John tellsher.
Yet when, long ago at Lowood, she asked for"a new servitude,"was not
some such solution half in her mind? When pacing the battlementsat
Thornfield she insisted that "women need a field for their effortsas
much as their brothers do" (p. 96), did she not long for some such
practical "exercise"? "Still will my Father, with promise and
blessing,/Take to his bosom the poor orphan child," Bessie's song had
predicted. Is not Marsh End, then,the promised end and St.John'sway
the way to His bosom?
Jane's earlyrepudiationof the spiritualharmoniesofferedby Helen
Burns and Miss Temple is the firsthint that,while St. John's way will
tempther, she must resistit. That, like Rochester,he is "akin" to her is
clear. But where Rochesterrepresentsthe fireof her nature, her cousin
representsthe ice. And while for some women ice may "suffice,"for
Jane, who has struggledall her life,like a sane versionof Bertha,against
the polar cold of a loveless world, it clearlywill not. As she falls more
deeply under St. John's "freezingspell," she realizes increasinglythatto
please him "I mustdisown halfmynature." In fact,as St.John'swifeshe
will be enteringinto a union even more unequal than that proposed by
Rochester,a marriagereflectingonce again her absolute exclusion from
the lifeof wholenesstowardwhichher pilgrimagehas been directed.For
despite the integrityof principle that distinguishedhim from Brock-
[each other's] bone, fleshof [each other's] flesh"(p. 397); and here the
healing powers of nature will eventually restore the sight of one of
Rochester'seyes. Here, in other words, nature, unleashed from social
restrictions,will do "no miracle-but her best" (p. 370). For not the
Celestial City but a natural paradise, the countryof Beulah "upon the
borders of heaven," where "the contractbetweenbride and bridegroom
[is] renewed," has all along been, as we now realize, the goal of Jane's
pilgrimage.26
As for the Celestial City itself, that goal, Bronte implies here
(though she will later have second thoughts),is the dream of those who
accept inequitieson earth, one of the many tools used by patriarchyto
keep, say, governesses in their "place." Because she believes this so
deeply, she quite consciously concludes Jane Eyre with an allusion to
Pilgrim'sProgressand a half-ironicapostrophe to thatapostle of celestial
transcendence,thatshadow of "the warriorGreatheart,"St.John Rivers.
"His," she tells us, "is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for
Christwhen he says-'Whosoever willcome afterme, let him deny him-
self and take up his cross and followme'" (p. 398). For it was finallyto
repudiate such a crucifyingdenial of the self that Bronte's "hunger,
rebellion,and rage" led her to writeJane Eyre in the firstplace and to
make it an "irreligious" redefinition-almost a parody-of John
Bunyan's vision.27And the astoundingprogresstowardequalityof plain
Jane Eyre,whom Mrs. Rigbycorrectlysaw as "the personificationof an
unregenerateand undisciplinedspirit,"answers by itsoutcome the bet-
ter question Emily Dickinson was to ask fifteenyears later: "'My
Husband'-women say-/ Strokingthe Melody-/ Is this-the way?'"28
No, Jane declares in her flightfromThornfield,thatis not the way.This,
she says-this marriage of true minds at Ferndean-this is the way.
Qualified and isolated as her way may be, it is at least an emblem of
hope. Certainly Bronte was never again to indulge in quite such an
optimisticimagining.
Department ofEnglish
ofCalifornia,Davis
University