JANE EYRE
First, you need to read this, as posted to Twitter a couple of days ago*:
Blog up on “Arguing with @robinmckinley (or why Rochester isn’t attractive)”– http://melissa-writing.livejournal.com/409385.html
I cackled wildly on Twitter and declared I was going to REBUT. But the fact is that I stink at debate and hated writing academic papers in college. So this isn’t going to be as amusing for the audience as you might have expected.
My bottom line is: I read what Melissa’s said and scratch my head in puzzlement. Because I can see no good reason not to believe the story as we’re told it. Which is that Mr Rochester’s first wife went mad and he keeps her in the attic—yes, locked! But you know she does things like bite her own brother—‘she worried me like a tigress’—and declare she’s going to drain his heart of blood! I think this is perhaps a good reason to keep her under some sort of restraint! She also set fire to her husband’s bedroom on a little extra-curricular jaunt! He keeps her in the attic because he doesn’t know what else to do with her! Now, granted, this doesn’t look too good—assuming for the purpose of my argument here that she is mad—but yes, what does one do with a dangerously, a violently mad wife? Sending her to an institution, such as there were in Bronte’s day, would be a lot worse—an institution that would take a homicidal madwoman?—at least in the attic she’s kept clean, warm and fed, even if her keeper’s company is a little wanting in empathy as well as reliability.
I don’t myself see that there’s any textual support** for the idea that she only wanted some independence of thought and action or some room to develop her individuality. And even if you want to discount, on the same feminist grounds, that her mother had been tossed in the booby hatch, she also has a ‘complete dumb idiot’ of a younger brother. You say: ‘We know that the things that were called “mad” in women were a bit wrong minded.’ Well, yes, but that’s not to say that ‘real’ madness, real inability to cope with the world, real murderousness didn’t exist. I have no idea where the lines run, and at some distant intersection on some invisible horizon I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that everything we called madness in the 19th century and are calling madness in the 21st could be effectively treated. But meanwhile . . . I think the first Mrs Rochester is acceptably demonstrated as mad.
I also feel there are at least two strong arguments for Edward Rochester’s character as a mostly decent bloke who loses it when he falls in love with Jane Eyre. The first one is Adele. He’s taken her in because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time—but he has taken her in, and he’s raising her as best he can, which includes hiring a governess. He admits to Jane that she might be his by-blow—but he also remarks, dispassionately, that she probably isn’t. He has still taken her in and declared her his responsibility.
The second and to me even stronger argument in ER’s favour is his relationship with Jane. His relationship with Jane indeed is why your suggestion that he might have locked his first wife up for being insufficiently passive really startles me. He falls in love with Jane for standing up to him, for answering him as one intelligent human being to another and not as a servant to the fellow who pays her salary, or as a little weak woman to a big masterful man. And I don’t see any indication—beyond, I admit, some fairly frilly 19th century language—that he’s planning to ‘break’ her once he’s married her—there’s a remarkable lack of the old spirited-mare-taming language that makes me seriously nuts in a lot of so-called romances, including recent ones (grrrrrr). “‘My bride is here,’ he said, again drawing me to him, ‘because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?’”
I admit I don’t much like unreliable narrators, and I need a really strong whap up longside the head to accept that I have to interpret a book in that light.*** But Jane Eyre doesn’t need to special-plead Rochester’s story; she put out the fire Mrs Rochester set to burn her husband in his bed; she helped bind up Mason’s bleeding arm, and watched the pretty scene when Rochester drags Jane and the three men who have exposed him to the attic where Grace Poole (mostly) keeps the inmate under control. Yes, I’ve read A MADWOMAN IN THE ATTIC†—and WIDE SARGASSO SEA††—and I’m fine with retellings and reinterpretations and inspirations—and the fact that the Victorian patriarchy was a bad thing for women. But I don’t, personally, think that either MADWOMAN or SARGASSO illuminates the original novel much. Edward Rochester’s tragedy—and Jane Eyre’s—to my eye is that Rochester is as trapped by his society as his (mad) wife is trapped in his attic. Yes, he lies, and yes, that’s his big fat ugly moral failure—that he would have married Jane on false principles if he hadn’t been caught out—and yes, that makes Jane Eyre his superior, because when she finds out, she leaves him, despite that she loves him as much as he loves her. And yes, it takes a deus ex machina fire (although to be fair we have already had the mad wife established as an arsonist, and Grace Poole as too fond of her tipple) to bring our hero and heroine finally together.††† WIDE SARGASSO SEA is a superb and affecting novel in its own right—it doesn’t change JANE EYRE. And if I’m going to go for a postmodern reinterpretation, I’ll take THE EYRE AFFAIR.‡
But I don’t object to anyone finding Con more attractive. . . . ‡‡
* * *
* One of these days I’m also going to write a Defense of Twitter. Or maybe I won’t, and once a week will give myself a Free Blog Day when I just list all the great stuff I’ve retweeted over the past week. Hmm. Decisions, decisions.
** Just using the phrase ‘textual support’ makes me feel faintly queasy.
*** One of many reasons I never liked CATCHER IN THE RYE—or WUTHERING HEIGHTS, which is one of my Most Hated, but this has little to do with questions of unreliable narration and everything to do with the utter loathsomeness of the characters. I love both TURN OF THE SCREW and HEART OF DARKNESS, but I would attempt to argue that they’re not told by true unreliable narrators because you know going in they’re not dependable by the layered narrator thing: somebody’s reading somebody else’s manuscript, somebody is listening to somebody else telling a story. —I quailed here and thought this may be my old English lit major training emerging horribly into the light of day^—back, back, thou Thing!—but no, wait, it’s common sense. It’s gossip or Chinese whispers after it’s been through a few retellers.^^ Although at this point I might suggest in a very small voice that possibly you have to assume that any narration in first person is classically ‘unreliable’ because the author is god and only one point of view is inevitably incomplete.^^^ But I’m not going to suggest it tonight.
^ Well not day precisely
^^ WUTHERING HEIGHTS goes here too, but it doesn’t need any more unreliability. Feh. People who are on Twitter may have seen the discussion about being a JANE EYRE or a WUTHERING HEIGHTS person a few weeks ago—although I’m sure this is one of those regular cultural memes that keeps turning up—you tend to be one or the other. JANE EYRE all the way, me.
^^^ Which would include JANE EYRE. And, um, SUNSHINE. And BEAUTY. And DRAGONHAVEN. And FIRST FLIGHT. And ALBION. And NOT THE WICKED STEPFATHER STORY. Maybe I just won’t suggest it.
† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Madwoman_in_the_Attic
†† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Sargasso_Sea
††† I think it’s much more interesting that Bronte felt she had to cripple him than any question of what caused Bertha’s insanity.
‡ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyre_Affair
‡‡ Kind of nuts, but . . .
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