Are we reading the same text?

[Peripatetics]

What an astonishing collection of readings in Jane Eyre! Are we reading the same text? I'm delighted with the variety of impressions, since all can claim to a grain of truth. Egz.

“i think jane is a christ figure”
”i dont think feminism has a "prototype" in jane eyre at all.”

“My only worry is the way the liberals twist it all around and use it as a way to slam Christianity and promote feminism.”

“Jane Eyre, in my view, can be considered as a fictional version of J. S. Mill’s seminal work The Subjection of Women (1869).”

“It is very deep and probably too deep for anyone who hasn't really read a lot yet...”

“ An image of Paradise Lost’s Satan can also be found in the first watercolour Rochester chooses from Jane’s pile of paintings. The watercolour features a cormorant, which was Satan’s disguise in Paradise when he went to have a look how he could tempt Eve into eating the fruit of the Tree. “

“In my analysis of the text throughout this paper, I will take feminism approach. The method I will adopt is textual analysis, both interpretive textual analyses and content analysis.”

In the 04-19-2007 note, dirac1984 wrote “Jane Eyre has maintained to be a quite popular classic fiction since its publication in 1837. Even in a recent poll about reading classics in Great Britain Jane Eyre is on the third place after only Pride and Prejudice and The King of Rings.”, if valid and assuming a degree of discrimination in the reading public, I find it astonishing.
Since I'm not familiar with fantasy fiction and could not reference The King of the Rings, perhaps dirac1984 meant The Lord of the Rings by John Ronald Tolkien or is the cited author Joanne Rowling of the Harry Potter fantasy series? The three books, authors, as well as the reading public are so different. How are we to reconcile the popularity?
If dirac1984's reference is to Rowling, then I can use a most singular fact of the three authors: Joanne Rowling, 42, is the world’s richest author, $1.1 billion. A distinction that was not dreamt of by Austen or Bronte. Therefore what is the kernel of the popularity, bridging time, age and experience? I think that it is the ability to transfer an intense, direct, very subjective experience.
Charlotte Bronte is generally not regarded as equivalent to Jane Austen in style or depth of psychological exploration. In my opinion,The Professor, Shirley and Villette are minor works that do not repeat the intensity of Jane Eyre. Stylistically there is no continuity with the first novel, there is no overarching vision. One can't compare Bronte's subsequent writing to Austen's tread in Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. Yet IMHOP Jane Eyre is a masterwork and it's core is the transference of an emotional truth. A personal yet universal, subjective truth, that is more akin to poetic experience than a rational exposition.
Therefore I'll argue Jane Eyre from this subjective view point. That “i think jane is a christ figure” is closer to pluming the meaning of Jane Eyre than kiki's very interesting gloss, that there are sub plots and meanings in allusions in Jane Eyre: “but rather that there is a mythic aspect and a magic aspect both at the same time, like there are beside that allusion to the Romans, allusions to Milton, allusions to Shakespeare and many others “.
Now, I like kiki's gloss, find it much more interesting but the simplistic “i think jane is a christ figure”, is closer to the mark in understanding Jane Eyre. Contradictions in art are not easy.

[Bitterfly]

There are passages in which Jane and Jesus are identified, and her progress can be compared to a Passion of sorts. She's faced with temptation, she crosses the desert... But I think it's a reductive assimilation, and rather too easy. You often see people who, faced with a character who goes through suffering, abondonment etc., immediately reach for the "Christ figure" idea. The Christ figure in the novel seems rather to be Helen, who's compared to a martyr, who believes in mortification of the body, and whose place is not on earth but in heaven. Although even for her there may be doubts, since the point of Christ was that he was incarnated in a body - accepting it and not rejecting it as Helen does. Jane is too attached to the material world - she doesn't want a differed reward, she wants it here and now. And, details maybe, but: is she celibate? Does she accept to be crucified? Does she turn the other cheek? The Christic idea of elevation through abasement and suffering does not seem to fit her all that well.

I believe a apter comparison may be drawn between Jane and the figure of a pilgrim, feeling her way towards a city of God - a little like Pilgrim's Progress. But even there, it's again too easy to compare her to just one figure, especially as we quickly understand that the demands of the soul are quite incompatible with her other, more Romantic yearnings: to come into her identity, and to be free. She's a mixture of the angelic and the demoniac, even if she denies both facets of her character. And the novel could in part be about that: how to live according to Christian ideals and keep one's identity at the same time - in parallel with another question: how to be accepted in society and safeguard one's individuality.

[Peripatetics]

First allow me to compliment you on your conversations with kiki. I found them interesting in that they expanded my understanding of Jane Eyre and I hope that we'll engage in a discussion.
I fear that my allusion to “christ figure” idea was misunderstood, it was not religious. Rather the meaning was transformational in an emotional sense. You are right that “ The Christ figure in the novel seems rather to be Helen.”

Chapter 6, Helen - “"Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you."
But Jane - “Then I should love Mrs. Reed, which I cannot do; I should bless her son John, which is impossible."
For Jane -” make His word your rule, and His conduct your example." is not possible. Love has an immediate and emotional meaning, not a religious one. Your “Jane is too attached to the material world - she doesn't want a differed reward, she wants it here and now. “, I think correct and I'll quibble with the “too”.

[Peripatetics]

Sciencefan has provided us with a very useful guide to video adaptations: http://eyreguide.bravehost.com/ I would like to resurect some observations from Lulabelli note, New Jane Eyre adaptation.. Specifiably the Jane Eyre, 2006 adaptation, Screenplay- Sandy Welch, Directed- Susanna White, Starring- Ruth Wilson, Toby Stevens.

In a note Newcomer 01-11-2008, comments on the 2006 adaptation using Jane Austen's observation, "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.", applies equally well to film adaptations of novels. We poses highly specialized visual and language areas of the brain and derive complementary pleasure from both and it would be difficult to state which predominates. Steven Pinker writes “ Our language has a model of sex in it {actually, two models}, and conceptions of intimacy and power and fairness. Divinity, degradation, and danger are also ingrained in our mother tongue, together with a concept of well-being and a philosophy of free will.”. What a surprising and concise summation of Jane Eyre.

I think that Newcomer's comment “ as it illustrates a self righteous moral myopia, the inability to follow an aesthetic illustration of the developing character of Jane Eyre because of preconceived 'religious principles'.” is unnecessarily harsh. However kiki1982's, 06-29-2007 observation leaves me puzzled.
“They also changed a few crucial parts and above all they added the scene on her bed after the wedding was cancelled... They didn't at all get it??? I understand that for 2006-people religeous principles are not a priority, but Jane is very consequent in this, so it is absolutely unthinkable that she would have allowed him in her bedroom after that desastrous wedding, let alone lie in bed together and also let him kiss her.” What religious principles is kiki referring to? Those of 2006 or those of 1847? Those of a conventional young woman or those of a very unconventional Bronte's Jane?
Kiki were you expecting a morality play? I deeply respect your study of Jane Eyre but here I think that here you are of your mark.

kiki1982 is correct that the scene of Jane and Rochester on the bed is not in the text. However it is a prerequisite in Sandy Welch screenplay.
I'll use Newcomer 01-11-2008 post to explain:”In Moor House, in a flashback, Jane recalls her emotions when after the aborted wedding, she is caressed by Rochester and in spite of the emotional letdown, responds to him, yet makes the decision that she has to leave him. After the flashback, Jane sobs uncontrollably, overwhelmed by the memory of what she has lost. The scene is masterful conceived visualization of an inner emotional state, of her loss and of the love that she still bears him. In chapter 27 between “Mr. Rochester, I must leave you.”and “Mr. Rochester, I will not be yours”, Charlotte takes 18 pages to illustrate Jane's moral dilemma and another 8 before the resolution, “My daughter, flee temptation! “ - “Mother, I will.”. Susanna White and Sandy Welch does the same in the flashback scene. Which is more powerful, I'll leave it up to you, however the example illustrates the different requirements of prose and visualization to make an idea affective.”

To conclude “AND if they would get a woman to write the script and who can catch the reason why Jane falls in love.....”
But kiki, in the 2006 adaptation you have Sandy Welch (woman) doing the script and Susanna White (woman) directing and Ruth Wilson as a very creditable Jane, in my opinion, masterfully interpreting the conflicting emotions of Bronte's Jane.
Jane Eyre is not about Rochester, it is about Jane.

[kiki1982]

Hello! delighted with this topic.


What religious principles is kiki referring to? Those of 2006 or those of 1847? Those of a conventional young woman or those of a very unconventional Bronte's Jane?
Kiki were you expecting a morality play? I deeply respect your study of Jane Eyre but here I think that here you are of your mark.


Later on, MeWeed and I discussed this point and we cleared up the fact that it was real, what Jane dreamed in her falshback. The flashbacks were truth mixed with imagination on Jane's side. You have to read MeWeed on that. I was indeed off my mark and didn't get that, but I am not a great filmwatcher in general, so I don't get subtle things like that.

About 19th century/Victorian morality:
Firstly it was taking great liberty for a man who was (un)married to come into the bedroom of a girl who was not of his family (that is to say: wife, sister, daughter, mistress, or servant). If you notice in the book the conversation does not take place in Jane's bedroom, but in the library. Notice that Rochester never actually comes into her bedroom, only a few times at her door. The first time he knocks and asks first if she is dressed, which was vital of course for Jane's reputation. The few times after his proposal (when he comes to ask whether she is ok during the thunder storm) are probably more relaxed because she is in the meantime his fiancée, but nonetheless he doesn't enter. What would we (even) think about a man who enters a bedroom and after a while comes out?
From a costume drama, and certainly the adaptation of a book, I expect (and it should be expected!) that the moral prudish standards of the time are not violated. If they are not respected, things get confusing. If Jane wants to kiss Rochester and embraces him, why not go off to France with him?

But the bed-scene we cleared up... It was a very interesting twist from the writer...

I found 2006's Rochester too flirtatious, too good-humoured, when he was not good-humoured, he was downright rude, he was also too noble. In the end, after the cancelled wedding, he was too pittiable. I should watch it again to be able to comment properly, but to me he seemed not bad enough, not enough King Lear-ish: sad case but down to himself alone. I found that he didn't capture the very odd combination of glentleman-personality a person of that walk of life needs to have in order to live on in society. I found that Ciaran Hinds captured that much better, just a shame of his script. Toby Stephens I also found looking too young. Although the man is 40 he looks not old enough for a man of 40 of the 19th century.
For me I found that Jane wasn't naive enough, didn't look 'of another world' enough. Don't forget that Jane was supposed to have seen and known nothing of the world for the whole of her life. That is what is so tragic about the proposal of Rochester to her... She came across too feminist for me. It is not because Jane had a strong mind of her own that she knows what she wants in life... The only thing she knows is that she wants to get out of Lowood and advertises. When she leaves Thornfield she has nowhere to go and only wants to get out of there. I found that Wilson looked too much in charge of her life to play Jane. Admittedly, she was better than Stephens in his role...
Because of Stephens' looks, the eew-feeling of a relationship and marriage with an age difference of 20 years wasn't there... And believe it or not, people at the time the book came out were quite disgusted with an age-difference of 20 years. The average was 5 to 10 years. Girls marrying their 'fathers' was not at all common, contrary to what is believed about that now.
A better couple in that respect was Samantha Morton and Ciaran Hinds. Although they had a very reduced script, they did evoke that feeling of 'pedophaelia'. To a certain extent Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke were also not bad, but for Thimothy's theatricalness and Zelah's natural age. She was ten years too old for her role, but still made a good attempt to the 'childishness' of Jane. Something that is inherent to age. On the one side Jane was a headstrong person, but on the other hand she was still very young and Zelah Clarke made a good show in trying to depict that.
Rochester is a very peculiar figure. I think a little like Darcy: bordering on the uncivil sometimes, but you can't get your eyes off him. He has an amount of charisma that makes up for his bad looks, bad behaviour, arrogance... You don't want to fall in love with him, yet you are in the middle of it before you realise it... Rochester from his side can't kling onto Jane from the start. He doesn't expect to fall in love with that plain servant of his, but finds himself strangely interested, to his own amazement. I believe that he also needs to overcome certain customs of his class, like that one Mrs Fairfax calls 'gentlemen are not accustomed to marrying their governesses'. Admittedly, he looked for a second wife, but among his class. Then he had mistresses which implied women of a lower class, but as a wife he had to overcome the fact that Jane wasn't of nobility. However it was a good thing, because she didn't have any family to meddle.
Rochester should be wished for without any rational reason apart from money to be wanted: ugly, bad-tempered, dissipated (before), enigmatic sometimes, a liar, and in the end proven to be untrustworthy. Yet, he keeps his place of highest ambition and iconic man to be chosen above a priest who never hurt a fly and was never dissipated... Very curious.

The book/adaptation is indeed not about Rochester, but he is very important. Maybe in that he has Jane look in the face of love/happiness for a first time... Indeed, before she knew friendship, kindness, forgiveness and all such things part of life, but not love. When she says her master created it, she is right. If Rochester hadn't been there, would she have accepted St John's proposal? For her going to India to preach is not at all a problem, but it is the marriage that is the problem. After Rochester she knows what a marriage she wants, not before him. In a certain sense, Rochester is one of those people that make you think different when you meet them on your path of life. No matter what they do to you. In that he is a turning point in her life which actually makes her realise that there is more than duty/occupation to be wanted.

In 2006 they indeed did a good job of making Jane's contradicting feelings apparent, but they also need to be present in Rochester. The size only of his part is much bigger than St John's or the rest of the secondary characters. Jane and Rochester talk much more than Jane and St John, and Rochester says much more about himself than St John, consequently enabling the reader to identify more with Rochester than with St John and allowing for a deeper psychological profile than St John's. Thus he is not really a secondary character and although the title of the book reads 'Jane Eyre, an autobiography' it was not intended as one but merely given the title because it was fashionable. even when it would just be called 'Jane Eyre', she eventually became voluntarily a part of her Edward and so her Edward is more important than seems at first sight. Even from the beginning.

[Peripatetics]

Kiki delighted to have this conversation with you.

First, I do not have as thorough a knowledge of Bronte or have analyzed Jane Eyre as you, so if I go of on a tangent please keep it in mind and laugh. That is important.
Having perused your postings, we search for understanding from different perspectives. Also I love a good argument, so I'll apologize in advance if I'll offend, since I hope no offense will ever be intended.
My note of Dec. 9 was primarily concerned with the 2006 adaptation, script by Sandy Welch, and specifically with the criticism of the bedroom scene. You are quite right that it is not in Bronte's text, may be at odds with English 19th. century standards or cause confusion in certain viewers. All that's beside the point: Susanna White's direction gets the crucial emotional meaning of Charlotte's prose and text right as does Ruth Wilson Jane. I do not primarily look for textual fidelity in an adaptation, rather of an emotional transference of the authors intent. I know – it's slippery, subjective, based on our unique experience, but there you have it. I can't do better than that. The visual translation has unique requirements from that of textual historic criticism.
I hope that answers your - “From a costume drama, and certainly the adaptation of a book, I expect (and it should be expected!) that the moral prudish standards of the time are not violated. If they are not respected, things get confusing. If Jane wants to kiss Rochester and embraces him, why not go off to France with him? “
As to going off to France – that's a rhetorical question and you'll have to ask Charlotte!

Your - “For me I found that Jane wasn't naive enough, didn't look 'of another world' enough. Don't forget that Jane was supposed to have seen and known nothing of the world for the whole of her life. That is what is so tragic about the proposal of Rochester to her... She came across too feminist for me. It is not because Jane had a strong mind of her own that she knows what she wants in life... The only thing she knows is that she wants to get out of Lowood and advertises.”, is more substantive in that it touches on the core of Jane's character.
As an orphan in Mrs. Reed's house she seeks maternal love and the affection of the siblings, Eliza, John, and Georgiana. In Lowood Helen Burn's affection and friendship is snatched away by death. As a young woman Jane finds not the least, respect but emotional fulfillment and the beginnings of physical passion. Beginnings again snatched away. In Moor House she finds the love of a family, but not that of a husband. To St. John's proposal Jane answers “"I scorn your idea of love," and after a moment continues “"Forgive me the words, St. John; but it is your own fault that I have been roused to speak so unguardedly. You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance--a topic we should never discuss: the very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage--forget it." And having fled from Rochester's unlawful marriage, she hears his call and not knowing of Bertha's death, she returns to Rochester.
Jane seeks love in it's many forms, demands it against convention, that is what “she knows what she wants in life...” . Your words if not the meaning. Here we are discussing text, not adaptation.
Your - “Rochester should be wished for without any rational reason apart from money to be wanted: ugly, bad-tempered, dissipated (before), enigmatic sometimes, a liar, and in the end proven to be untrustworthy. Yet, he keeps his place of highest ambition and iconic man to be chosen above a priest who never hurt a fly and was never dissipated... Very curious. “, is enigmatic. What are you meaning by “place”? Is it of moral standing Rochester vs. St. John? If so then I disagree with your characterization of him in your note Mr. Rochester , 06-22-2008 (astonishing references, allusions and thoroughness. But in my opinion off the mark from the character that Charlotte defines.)
Returning to the adaptation - “In 2006 they indeed did a good job of making Jane's contradicting feelings apparent, but they also need to be present in Rochester.” You may be right, but that may be a visualization, script or direction limitation. But again Jane Eyre is about Jane, Rochester after all is only a male!!!!!

[kiki1982]

I agree with you that the primary concern for an adaptation is to evoke the emotions behind the text and not the text itself. For me you can change a character/story line/place/etc. if it doesn't harm the continuity or it doesn't raise extra questions which are answered in the book.
Concerning the bed scene: it is not only violating the standards of the time, but it is also confusing for viewers from the set-up only. For viewers with morals of 2006 it is from the start already not clear why Rochester can't just divorce Bertha. If they accept that, then why can't Jane stay with him because after all, she wouldn't have problems with Bertha (because she is locked up and raving mad)? So essentially, excuse the wording, Jane and Rochester only need to wait until she finally dies to get married. Nowadays, it is still shocking to cheat on your partner, but what if one is in such a situation as Rochester? To a certain extent it would be excusable for him to take a second 'wife' and no reproach woulde be in its place on Jane's part. That's where, for me, the bed scene comes too close to the mark as the bedroom in itself has a sexual connotation (what happened after the flash-back?) and even if it is seen from the yearning point of view it doesn't evoke the fact that Jane is forced to leave Rochester because of her moral standards: 'bigamy is a mortal sin and is not done'. It is not that Jane wants to leave him because she is angry/dissapointed/apalled/etc, but because she cannot marry him and that's where it stops. In the book it is clear why she goes: 'You won't kiss the husband of Bertha Mason,' Rochester says and that is indeed the reason. He is married!
If they wanted to evoke the yearning feeling in Jane they would better have done it somewhere else than in the bedroom. Why not among 'the Christmas frost', in the library, the drawing room, anywhere?
For me it must be probable in itself. Even if Jane and Rochester had kissed outside the bedroom, it could have been explained as 'a last kiss', like so many couples do.
I understand other points of view, but I'm afraid I'm a purist in that respect...
I find that the French do much more good work in that department. If they make an adaptation of a French work, they stay true to it remarkably, and if anything is changed it has an apparent reason and it contributes to the plot, doesn't raise any extra questions, but even may solve some inconsistencies that were in the book... Their adaptations are so good (mostly) that sometimes you get a totally different view on a character from the book... I think they work in great detail, whereas the Anglosaxon way is to work with the big picture. Yet, it is mostly the details that are the most important to a consistent and historically-culturally correct big picture...

About Jane's character:
I have been thinking about it and the fact that 'Jane' writes her autobiography after a ten-year marriage with Rochester, I believe tells a lot. A person who writes his/her autobiography reflects on his/her own life. That is exactly what Jane does here.
You are right that she seeks maternal affection and love from her siblings in the Reed family, yet why? Is it because she is consciously aware of her need or because she, like every child (also the ones that are badly treated by their parents) have an urge to show affection and get it. It is a fact that children long for affection from their parents, even when those beat them up. An adult person develops a dislike for people who are nasty to them... (people that get beaten up by their partners and are afraid of them and consequently kid themselves that they love them, excepted...) Children on the other hand instinctively give affection, even when they are abused, beaten, been horrible to... So I think Jane is not conscious of what she wants, but that she only knows what she doesn't want. Anything is better than Gateshead, yet she doesn't know what she misses... At Lowood, she develops a friendship with Helen and the latter dies, confronting Jane for the first time with real grief. When Miss Temple gets married, Jane wants to move on again, having lost the one person she feels affection for... At Thornfield she finds a loving environment, but I believe she is still in duty-mode so as to say... She still believes that occupation is everything, that she can lead her life trying to accomplish her greatest ambition: to get enough money together to start up a school of her own... Let's say this is the only positive feeling she has had up till then... Apart from the little friendship of Miss Temple and Helen. In a sense it is the only thing she knows she likes, for the rest she only knows what she doesn't like, and so determines by default what she must like... She has never seen a man in her life, except maybe from afar, and so she cannot say if she wants to get married or not some day, because she is not conscious of the value of love to her...
When she arrives at Thornfield she finds she likes it, and as months go by she grows happy for the first time in her life. And then she meets Rochester who awakens a feeling in her, she never had. It totally alters her view of life. A world opens up to her she never knew existed. When the wedding gets cancelled, however, she still believes she can make up for her sorrow by occupation. She keeps thinking about Rochester from time to time, but she never actually takes the decision to go and see him... Why? I don't think she has seen the importance of him to her as yet.
The real shock, to her as well, comes when St John asks to marry him. It is only then she starts to think about Rochester as the man of her life and the idea of marriage for practical purposes, a marriage without actual love or affection from the heart. By default, here again, she determines the value of love, but now is conscious of the fact that she can't live without it. She returns to Rochester without knowing what happened to Bertha.
I love to believe, although it is only speculation on my part, that she returns to him to be with him. At last she has realised what she left behind and what she actually wants in life: love. She even can wait for it several years until Bertha has died, if need be. She says to Rochester that she is not interested to get married... Indeed, if it is not to him, she will never consent. I believe she wants to be with him even if they can't have a relationship she still wants his company...
As a woman who has grown 10 years older at the time she writes her autobiography, has been married for 10 years to the man she loves, has now at least one child of her own and has family to love, she reflects on her life and what is needed for happiness. She then realises what was missing in the Reed household and patches it up with details she has retained from her childhood, what was missing even in the Leaven-household, what she was missing at Lowood, and finally what was going to be missing in the marriage with St John. Writing an autobiography is a mix of your own memory and the ideas about those things at the moment you write it. I believe that she mixed those two up and made it a Bildungsroman.

About Rochester's 'place':
Maybe you took it too literally... What I meant to say was that it is amazing, to rational standards, that Rochester is still wished for (from the reader's side and also of course from Jane's side). I am sure every reader wants Jane to go back, although he (let's face it) has been horrible to her. It is very curious to me that one can be ugly, rude, impolite, a liar, untrustworthy, a bigamist, and that he can still be sympathetic... Rationally St John is a better man to marry: he has had no mistresses (so you are less at risk as wife, to be usurped by one), he has no illegitimate child, he's got a steady job (the financial point is the only disadvantage for St John), he is beautiful to look at (certainly at the end of the book), he will never cheat on you because he is a man of God, he will never do anything wrong because he is a man of God. Yet, Rochester is a better man to be with because of the irrational approach that he is warm and St John is cold. Rochester shows affection and St John doesn't, which makes Rochester a better person on the whole, despite all of his defitiencies.

I think in the year that Jane has left him, there is a big transformation on Rochester's side. He turns back into the man he was before he married Bertha and starts is life again with Jane, having been disillusioned for the 10-15 years before. He is humbled and that is what makes the difference between 'Rochester I' and 'Rochester II'.
I think the references Charlotte gave us to look at were of use as to not be fooled by appearence.

[Peripatetics]

Kiki,
as always you bring forth a plethora of ideas that would be fascinating to follow but I'm limited in what I can digest., Your analysis of Rochester fills my plate already. Let me be frank, I disagree with it. There seems to be a bias, a predisposition to follow the dark characterization that skews the final picture. However I don't have a clear enough placement of Rochester in the novel to produce a counter argument. I'll have to do a critical reading of Jane Eyre and hopefully present a coherent argument.

Short notes I

The bedroom scene: “Jane and Rochester only need to wait until she finally dies to get married.”
It's the conventional ending, ( to satisfy the morality of the day), however the scene is necessary to underline the anguish that Jane feels in the flashback (2006 adaptation) and to underline that Jane, rejecting St. John, heads the supernatural call and abandoning all seeks Rochester. Rochester not the Byronic but the Rochester needed to complete herself.

Your reading - “That's where, for me, the bed scene comes too close to the mark as the bedroom in itself has a sexual connotation (what happened after the flash-back?) and even if it is seen from the yearning point of view it doesn't evoke the fact that Jane is forced to leave Rochester because of her moral standards: 'bigamy is a mortal sin and is not done'. It is not that Jane wants to leave him because she is angry/dissapointed/apalled/etc, but because she cannot marry him and that's where it stops.”, too modern a dilemma, too subjective a reading. Let the text speak:

Chapter 27
“But the answer my mind gave--"Leave Thornfield at once"--was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears. I said I could not bear such words now. "That I am not Edward Rochester's bride is the least part of my woe," I alleged: "that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it."

and the resolution

“not a moon, but a white human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart -
"My daughter, flee temptation."
"Mother, I will."

I read this not as a resolution of a “moral standards: 'bigamy is a mortal sin and is not done'.” but rather as a mythic insight into her soul.
And it follows chapter 35 when she hears the call – Jane, Jane.

“"Where are you?" I exclaimed.
The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back--"Where are you?" I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs: all was moorland loneliness and midnight hush.
"Down superstition!" I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the black yew at the gate. "This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did—no miracle--but her best."

And it's this best :” It was MY time to assume ascendency. MY powers were in play and in
force.” that compels Jane to seek Rochester not knowing that Bertha is dead, that there's no impediment to marrying him.

Short Notes II

You have an unfair advantage in that I have not seen nor can comment on French adaptations of historical novels. “Their adaptations are so good (mostly) that sometimes you get a totally different view on a character from the book... I think they work in great detail, whereas the Anglosaxon way is to work with the big picture.”” A fascinating observation. Yet if I recall François Truffaut's Jules and Jim, it's the theme, the big picture that's memorable.

Nice talking with you.

[kiki1982]

I am sorry, Peripatetics, but I don’t see why Jane’s leaving because she cannot marry Rochester would be a ‘modern dilemma’. Some people may see Jane leaving as a feminist action of independence, but we also have to take into account the bigger picture of the moral standards women and particularly Jane had in 1847/1836 (the time the book plays). What was there left to do for Jane after a marriage to her was obviously impossible? It is clear: becoming his mistress. Yet, this wasn’t a sure position and he could have left her when he wanted and bought her off, at best. She could have been saddled with a child, like Céline was, however she could have shipped it off to Rochester, but would one do that with a love-child? As a single mother she would have been on the bad side of society and would have carried a stigma with her all through her life. Although the dreams with the infants can be interpreted in a deeper way, they might also evoke the fear Jane has of becoming indeed a single mother and being left behind by Rochester with a child to care for and the stigma attached to that. The fact that Hannah, the maid at Moor House, doesn’t want to help her initially, is a clear sign of what might have happened if she had had a baby with her. One only needs to look at other works of the time like Les Misérables and Oliver Twist to see what happened to single mothers and illegitimate children because of society conventions regarding marriage.
At the same time, the fact that Jane doesn’t want to degrade herself to the likes of Céline and the fact that she calls it ‘forget[ting] herself’, might be connected with views of such women in general. While men who had mistresses were excused unless they committed adultery repeatedly and on a big scale, the women who were the mistresses were seen as prostitutes and had no credit. Of course this had to do with the views on virginity and marriage. A woman with such a reputation was never to become a governess again, unless she could conceal the fact that she had been a mistress, but then again it only takes one person in society who would have seen you in that role to come to the next party. Society was small, as illustrated when Rochester suddenly turns out to know a Mr Reed of Gateshead and knows about John’s escapades and Georgiana’s beauty.
On top of that, servants were hired largely by reference. In the worst case they advertised in a newspaper and were asked for references as to the truthfulness of the information they gave, which is also featured when Mrs Fairfax asks for it in Jane Eyre. It would have been very hard for Jane, indeed, to become a governess again after having been Rochester’s mistress for an amount of years. As the episode plays at the start of the Industrial Revolution, Jane could have obtained a position in an obscure factory (if there were any around), but then she would have had a much worse life than before. This under the presumption that they would have taken on an impure woman.
It is obvious that there were more practical disadvantages to agreeing to go to France with Rochester than advantages, from her point of view that is.
I don’t have to draw a picture of the world now to illustrate the dramatic difference in society concerning mistresses and the view people have of them. While nowadays, mistresses might still be blamed for wrecking a marriage (mostly by the cheated partner and her family) the mistress herself is not so much stigmatised anymore by society as a whole. As a mistress you are not forced out of work, forced out of your rented accommodation, shunned in general, and sometimes even evicted from the village or left to die of hunger and disease. Although, it should be mentioned that there were certain classes of women that were pardoned for such conduct in the 19th century and where men explicitly went to look for mistresses, like the dancer Céline. However it is clear that Jane is not a beautiful dancing or acting girl.
The fact then that Jane has ‘a dilemma’ (whether to leave Rochester or not), which is clearly already solved by her ‘brow’, as Rochester would say, clearly stems from the standards in the 19th century, rather than from a modern/feminist point of view. It would have been unwise for Jane to become his mistress, and it speaks for her that she did the right thing. ‘Flee Temptation,’ might be an insight into her soul, but we cannot forget that what is in the soul is partly due to society and that is also what Jane means if she says about becoming the successor of Céline, Clara and Giacinta: that it would be ‘forget[ting] [her]self and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into [her]’. (chapter XXVII)
If we now don’t see why she couldn’t stay with Rochester, it is because we do not have the same moral values as people had 150 years ago, nor the same social circumstances. The word ‘temptation’ says all: if Jane stays, Rochester will tempt her and she will be tempted to yield, and that is what she doesn’t want to do because of the consequences it may have. That is where the fight originates from, although it doesn’t mean that even in the hearts of the readers then there wasn’t a wish to see Jane and Rochester together, but they would certainly have realised that at that moment in time it wasn’t possible. The passage you quote is a clear sign of that:
‘But the answer my mind gave--"Leave Thornfield at once"--was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears. I said I could not bear such words now. “That I am not Edward Rochester's bride is the least part of my woe," I alleged: "that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it.”’
Indeed, Jane’s heart and mind say a different thing. While her heartstrings are still attached to Rochester’s heart, her mind orders her to leave Thornfield. Jane cannot bear to hear it because she doesn’t want to leave, yet she knows she must. The verb ‘must’ here is very important, as it evokes the idea that leaving Thornfield is an absolute necessity which cannot be avoided. Charlotte could have written ‘should’ or ‘have to’ or ‘need’, but those verbs would have made the sentence a lot less necessitous. It is indeed inevitable that Jane, although against her wish, will leave Thornfield like Christ knows that his deliverance is foretold and inevitable. Jane will not leave Rochester because it has been foretold in the Scriptures, but because ‘reason sits firm and holds the reins’ and will ‘still have the last word in every argument.’ Thus she herself (and even Rochester!) knows what will decide: Reason. If looked at rationally, the fact of becoming a mistress is at least to be called unwise and thus Jane knows it is inevitable that she will leave eventually, although it will cause her a lot of heartache which ‘[she] could bear and master’ .
If this story were taking place in these times, there would be no fight between heart and mind, because, certainly with Bertha mad and locked away, there would be no moral nor social impediment to staying with Rochester. There would be no negative consequences for Jane in case of an illegitimate child or relationship. She could have tried it, certainly because she couldn’t really have problems with Bertha, and if it didn’t work out, so be it. So your assertion that ‘bigamy is a mortal sin’ is too modern a dilemma is not quite right, I would rather say ‘too old a dilemma for a modern audience’.
Bigamy of course is a legal term, which has another connotation within it as being a crime that implies two (or more) registered marriages. However both Rochester and Jane seem to have a different opinion about bigamy altogether. Rochester clearly interprets it in its legal meaning as ‘the registration of two/more marriages’ with one partner that is the same, i.e. Rochester/Bertha and Rochester/Jane. He acknowledges it is a crime according to English Law, however he clearly thinks that he is allowed one more wife because the first one is clearly not good enough, because she doesn’t provide him solace in his leisure hours with endearments and she doesn’t embrace him the way a wife should. This all for the clear reason that she is mad. A divorce is not possible and it is clearly a problem of the law. He wished for another wife who is up to the mark, i.e. Jane, and makes a distinction between a wife and a mistress in his monologue in chapter XXVII. However Jane seems to interpret bigamy more in its religious meaning, as ‘the having of different wives’, which is not allowed by God and a practice of the heathens (i.e. Muslims). The only other option for her in her eyes is to become his mistress, but she wants to be respected by herself and by him foremost and thus not be seen as inferior, i.e. his mistress/slave. If we take Rochester’s view it is clearly possible to have two registered marriages, because one wife doesn’t perform her role well enough to be considered as one. In that sense, his reply to Briggs ‘and you thrust upon me a wife,’ is not so far-fetched, as indeed, Bertha in Rochester’s eyes cannot be seen as his wife because she doesn’t do what a wife should do. She might have that title according to law (because he cannot divorce her), but surely the law allows then another wife who does perform her role. Also notice that he always calls her Bertha Mason and not Bertha Rochester, which is now her name as a married woman and that he calls Jane already Rochester a moth before the wedding. This is a clear argument to see his conception of a wife: one who does perform her duty as one and not the one who is entitled to the role because of the law. Thus the fact that Rochester makes a distinction between the terms ‘wife’ and ‘mistress’ is also poignant. A wife performs the role of comforter when the husband is at home, runs the household, gives birth to heirs and such things. A mistress, on the other hand, provides you with company, beauty, certain favours of a sexual nature, in exchange for certain material things. A mistress is never supposed to run your household, to give birth to heirs, etc. A mistress also doesn’t live with you but is independent in a certain sense, although available when she should be needed. What role will Jane play in Rochester’s life, then? It is clear that he will not regard her as his mistress! ‘[She] will be Mrs Rochester, both virtually and nominally’. So she will perform the role of his wife, only not according to the law, but what is the value of that? If we take Jane’s view, it is clearly impossible to have two wives, because if one is married until death then the mere fact that Bertha is alive is enough to claim her role as Mrs Rochester. As a mistress is a slave in disguise as she is not equal to her partner like a wife, like Rochester intimates, it is clear that Jane can neither be Rochester’s wife (because that place has been filled) nor his mistress (as she is appalled by how he speaks about his former mistresses). As Rochester asks for Jane’s pledge, he attempts to ‘marry’ her outside the church and thus to make her his wife, so to say, and not his mistress. In a way, we could say that both characters talk beside one another: Rochester keeps saying he is unmarried and Jane keeps saying he is, all of which is due to different opinions on the matter. The practice of two characters not understanding each other, talking beside one another and a dialogue that consequently ends in disaster, calls echoes from theatrical plays, like Shakespeare’s.
The passage:
‘It was MY time to assume ascendency. MY powers were in play and in force,’ doesn’t necessarily refer to a feminist context… In the text it refers to the fact that Jane believes that St John will try to detain her and make her believe the opposite than what she wants to do and believes is right. Indeed, nature/God had done her/His best to bring Jane and Rochester’s souls together when Jane was about to consent to a marriage with St John, and thus condemn herself to become the wife of another because she is still ignorant of the fact that Rochester (the man who should be her husband because he ‘suits her to the finest fibre of [her] nature’) is now free to marry. In a certain sense we could call St John unequal to her, because he doesn’t suit her, but I disagree that he would be inferior because he is a man. That, according to me and the time the novel was written, is too modern an interpretation. The fact that St John and Jane can’t be married can better be seen in the light of the ‘wife-role’ stated above. Jane, at a certain time, says that St John is married to his profession, so in a sense he already has a wife he respects, who is a comfort and even gives him heirs if we want to see his work as a missionary as the ‘creation’ of new Christians. The role of wife is already claimed, and in that, both Rosamond and Jane are too much, and would become mere ornaments as mistresses are.
As for Rochester’s badness, I don’t think it is a bias but just an observation after a first impression and the careful study of literary allusions. Even if Charlotte put them in unconsciously (which is hardly possible), they are remarkably consistent in their badness towards Rochester. Even viewed as King Lear, Rochester from the start has a bad bunch of principles and has himself to blame for what happens to him. We don’t even need to go down the road of interpretation of allusions to be able to grasp the badness of him. What would you think if, at the altar, you found out that your nearly-spouse had been lying to you for the last 6 months and wanted to go on lying, at least for ‘one year and a day’? Jane showed a lot of courage to still love this man and Charlotte showed a lot of skill drawing him so lifelike and yet so likable, even after his escapades. If he is seen in a bad light before the curtains close for him in chapter XXVII, his transformation into amiable man turns out to be more meaningful, more fairy-tale-like, more mythical. This is, in my opinion, why he turns into this iconic man, like Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. The contrast between the person before and after is so strong that the reader gets an ideal image where all positivity grows to a mythical scale, bigger than it should be rationally. The effect is similar to renaissance paintings that evoked big places for the first time painted in perspective (making a vast space out of a canvas no wider than a few millimetres), thus the adding of the mere principle of perspective creates a vast advantage like in Veronese’s Feast in the House of Levi, originally meant as The Last Supper. For a writer the use of positivity after negativity provides the same advantage as the use of perspective on a wall or canvas: it creates something that is not there rationally. The canvas gains depth and the illusion of space; the negative character gains a iconic image. If only a figure, without perspective, is painted on the wall, it will not create extra space in the room but will be a mere ornament; if a character is merely neutral and then gains positivity, it can’t grow to iconic proportions. The practice of painting the things in front bigger than the things at the back and the geometrical placement of the lines, create the illusion of depth, whereas there is nothing behind the pillars in reality. Thus the transformation of Rochester from demonic figure into lovely distraught man gains power through the fact that positivity is the last information you get and that his past is forced along a certain understandable line. Thus the negative things become smaller than they were originally and the positive things grow bigger than the negative things a few chapters ago in our minds; only in few words the writer creates the big front of the painting, leaving the former negativity in the shadow and in the far depth of the background . Mr Darcy only takes at most one chapter and the housekeeper Mrs Reynolds and Rochester not even takes one chapter and the old butler of the house (now owner of the Rochester Arms). If the contrast hadn’t been that big, both men would have been less iconic. Although it is more obvious in Pride &Prejudice I do think the mechanism is apparent in Jane Eyre and is consistent with the repentance-idea and the allusions connected with it.

[Peripatetics]

How nice to hear from you,
Je vous souhaite un joyeux Noël.

Even when you jolt me out of my preconceived notions, even when I would rather wallow in certainties. We are reading the same text but drawing different emphasis from Charlotte's words.
Let me try to clarify, more likely expand. It seems to me that you are basing your arguments on a contemporary societal, moral and ethical interpretation (and this does not exclude your reading of what are the beliefs of a Jane of the 19th. century England), while I tend to look on Charlotte's creation of Jane who evolves but is a law onto herself. Perhaps the analogy would be to Tess d'Urbervilles, if the analogy is not stretched, since Bronte is not Hardy. Chronology has to be respected.

On Modern Dilemma

“we also have to take into account the bigger picture of the moral standards women and particularly Jane had in 1847/1836”. Aren't we being a bit Anglo-Saxon on insisting on the big picture? Like the French, I would rather focus on details: isn't it rash to assume the moral standards of Victorian women as equivalent to those of Jane? What do we know of Jane? Only what Charlotte tells us. All else is extrapolation.
It would even be rash to assume that Jane reflects the moral code of Charlotte herself much less so that of Victorian society. She is a creation of imagination, thus atypical.
Mrs. Reed on her deathbed describes the child Jane, “"I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. Such a burden to be left on my hands--and so much annoyance as she caused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of one's movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a fiend--no child ever spoke or looked as she did;” And in Sandy White's Jane Eyre the above is condensed into – You were an unnatural child – giving emphasis on the atypical. Mr. Brocklehurst defines Jane “"You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary form of childhood;...my duty to warn you, that this girl, who might be one of God's own lambs, is a little castaway; not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and an alien....this girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut--this girl is--a liar!", bared from the Christian community, “avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse”. Again the atypical.
Rochester questions her “Who are your parents?"
"I have none."
"Nor ever had, I suppose: do you remember them?"
"No."
"I thought not. And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on that stile?"
"For whom, sir?"
"For the men in green: it was a proper moonlight evening for them. Did I break through one of your rings, that you spread that damned ice on the causeway?"
In jest Rochester typifies Jane apart from the norm.

On the Whitcross moor, Jane is at the end of her resources, both physical and emotional: “Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment--not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are--none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose.” This passage is important for several reasons: first, it is Jane's own speech, coming at a moment of crisis from the core of her being, and second Charlotte explicitly introduces Rousseau like Nature that is in juxtaposition to the Christian values of Evangelicism and Calvinism that defined Jane's world. A very atypical concept for a Victorian young woman.
The quality – atypical – is fundamental in my interpretation of Jane Eyre. In Jane as well as in Rochester, for it is the force that attracts each to the other. The strongest example of the atypical in Jane is one, that at the moment I can not cite, for it has to be understood in context of a reading of the novel, it's uniqueness among Charlotte's works, the subtexts, and your definition of Rochester's character as demonic. I'm not being evasive but you'll have to give me time to organize my thoughts.

From Her Brow

You wrote “The fact then that Jane has ‘a dilemma’ (whether to leave Rochester or not), which is clearly already solved by her ‘brow’, as Rochester would say, clearly stems from the standards in the 19th century, rather than from a modern/feminist point of view.”
The rational interpretation is a safe one, however it blinds us to the allusions contained in the text. Jane's decision to distance herself from Thornfield, using all her money, to the maximum extent is not a rational one. Nor is the rejection of St. John's proposal: “"I scorn your idea of love,", rational.
In chapter 35 Jane speaks, “My heart beat fast and thick: I heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was not like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to wake. They rose expectant: eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my bones.
"What have you heard? What do you see?" asked St. John. I saw nothing, but I heard a voice somewhere cry - "Jane! Jane! Jane!"--nothing more.”

“I might have said, "Where is it?" for it did not seem in the room-- nor in the house--nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air- -nor from under the earth--nor from overhead. I had heard it-- where, or whence, for ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being--a known, loved, well-remembered voice--that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently. "I am coming!" I cried. "Wait for me! Oh, I will come!"
And refuting the rational explanation, Jane says: "Down superstition!" I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the black yew at the gate. "This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did—no miracle--but her best."

In chapter 21 Charlotte using Jane's voice gives a partial explanation: “Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man.

The quotes above should be sufficient to indicate that in Jane Eyre Charlotte didn't write a linear theme whose content could be interpreted in a rational framework. It is unique among The Professor, Shirley, Villette. It is a work that Charlotte wrote for herself as well as for the general audience.

[kiki1982]

deleted

[kiki1982]

Je vous souhaite un joyeux Noël et une bonne Année également. Bien que je distingue une petite sense de reproche dans votre poste.

We indeed draw different conclusions from this text, but that doesn’t have to be bad, though. Jane Eyre has different layers and while the rational approach is one, the supernatural one is another we all acknowledge. True, Jane is a product of the imagination, but she is still a human form made by a real human and thus she needs logic, like a human, to function. Any character which doesn’t use logic is not a good, deep character, because the reader fails to understand the logic behind the actions of that character. Even aunt Reed has her logic and John Reed has his!
My comparison between the social statuses of mistresses now and at the time Jane Eyre was written does not so much mean that I approach the question from a contemporary/21st century point of view. I merely engaged in it to illustrate the possible negative consequences for Jane, if she had engaged in a relationship with Rochester, although he probably wouldn’t have left her (because of his approach to bigamy/wifehood as stated above), and connected with that, the problems contemporary readers might have to assess her situation.
While I understand and acknowledge the ‘unnatural’-approach, it is essential, when reading a historical work, to see the bigger context: morally, ethically and socially. Jane was no doubt a modern woman for her time, yet it is impossible that she wasn’t part of society with its values as a whole. Where you find it rash to assume that Jane had 19th century principles, it is equally rash to assume that she had totally different ones to her time… Jane is undoubtedly independent with a strong will of her own and passionate (contrary to Victorian ideals), but she is still a 19th century woman: when marriage is not available she flees ‘temptation’ (which a very heavily laden word!), she acknowledges the class difference between her and Rochester/his party, she lets Rochester ask her to marry him (where she came with the idea of becoming his wife, she doesn’t ask him herself). No writer writes on an island. They can maybe criticise society, religion, etc. but they are all part of their time. Charlotte Brontë herself was part of a Victorian society with its values and moral code. While Jane can be called modern and atypical for her time she is not totally free from the Victorian morals… It is not because Jane was/’is’ controversial that she is not part of her time. She might have rejected the proposal of St John, but it doesn’t make her less of a 19th century woman. Virginity and marriage are two of the principles prominent in Jane’s story. Nowadays they do not have the same extended meaning as in the 19th century. Equally important is the debate about the slavery metaphor in Jane Eyre. If it were not for her 19th century principles Charlotte wouldn’t have paired up ‘Creole’ with madness and alcoholism. Neither would the madness of Bertha have been portrayed in a raving manner, which was even at the time the book was first published kind of old-fashioned. Even the feminist reading of Bertha as ‘the other locked up side’ of Jane, is something that fits in the 19th century views of wifehood. Even though she might not have agreed with it, she takes it as the initial point of view which she criticises. Last but not least physiognomy takes a prominent place in judging someone, also from Jane’s point of view (for example during the first proposal of Rochester). Nowadays it passes for a ‘pseudo-science’, whereas then it was taken very seriously: the class-system was justified by it, different kinds of criminals were identified, and even the discrimination of certain tribes/people like the Laps in the Scandinavian countries was justified by it. Extensive scientific papers were written to state the superiority of the Caucasian (white) race. As a result of this there are still conflicts going on in the world because of the classification in the 19th century, Congo is a good example of that. From there comes the utterance of one of the party about Jane: ‘I see all the faults of her class’. Jane Eyre clearly stands among 19th century society as a whole, with its morals, rules, conventions and values. The ‘unnatural’-approach fits in that picture because it evokes the idea that God has a hand in everything. The fact that Jane needs to end up with Rochester can be called the reason for the conflicts in the Reed family. If it were not for those conflicts she would never have gone to school, never have become a governess, and consequently never have ended up in Rochester’s house. Rochester needs to find ‘Christ’ (to make him a better person), in the shape of his plain and poor servant, like the shepherds find the Messiah in the form of ‘a baby lying wrapped in his swaddling clothes, in a manger’ (Luke 2: 12-13). It is striking in itself that Jane at Lowood suddenly gets the urge to change scenery, decides to advertise and that only one response came: the one of Mrs Fairfax. The latter even says: ‘Yes, and I am daily thankful for the choice Providence led me to make. Miss Eyre has been an invaluable companion to me, and a kind and careful teacher to Adèle.’ Rochester eventually recognises that God sent disasters to punish him, with the fire that destroyed Thornfield as the last one. While now people would dismiss that fire as an unfortunate event that was caused by Bertha because of her madness, Rochester eventually regards it as the final punishment of God for his conduct. Equally is it important to acknowledge that the souls of Jane and Rochester come together after a prayer from Rochester’s side, in other words, when Rochester finally recognises God in itself as the force that gives and takes away. Rousseau’s ‘natural religion’ which you take as an argument is not so much different from Christianity as it is part of it, with the remark that according to Rousseau Christianity was not the only true religion, as in his days it was defined and had been defined for centuries. ‘Natural religion’ was the concept of the natural unexplainable order of things and the acceptance of one’s place in it. Rousseau argued that, taking that into account, any religion that evoked that idea would be a ‘true religion’. Thus Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and other branches of them, are ‘true religions’. So in stead of juxtaposition we should rather talk about a kind of ‘dome’ over all ‘true religions’. Thus all religions have roughly the same God, but evoke Him differently. God/Nature is indeed a driving force in Jane Eyre, but it doesn’t rule out a rational approach. Both combined give a more complete picture. When Jane gives all her money away to go as far as she can from Thornfield, it can be called irrational, but it is not really. The question is, as man got a free will when he left Eden, why did she take that decision? She didn’t want to be sought by Rochester, because she would be tempted, so she fled as far away as possible. Thus she ended up, accidentally, at Moor House, notably at her cousin’s place. One could say she was sent there by God and so had to make the ‘rational’ decision to give all her money away. The giving away of all the money can be seen as the ‘divine steering’ of the thoughts of Jane, where God can of course not take her money away physically, because it is there he can make her make the decision to give all away. The same with the bread she forgets in the coach. She refuses St John’s proposal, but why? She suddenly thinks about the time with Rochester, and decides that she doesn’t want to be married to a man who doesn’t love her. While that can be called a controversial decision, it cannot be called an irrational decision. She clearly ways the pros and cons and concludes with a no, in that it is a rational decision per definition. The divine approach to life is not one we nowadays prefer, because it has its place in a society that is superstitious, unscientific, even uneducated. I mean by that, that the people belonging to that society did not have a scientific/rational approach to events. A bad harvest, disease, poverty etc. were down to divine intervention, not at all because of a rational reason. While now a bad harvest might be explained by bad weather (where it stops), they would have sought something in the bad weather itself. Nowadays we just accept that the weather was bad, and scientists even start looking for a scientific reason if the bad weather persists. As with global warming, disasters are not explained in a divine way, but rather in a scientific way (down to CO2 emissions, caused partly by industry). Jane Eyre clearly has a very divine approach to life and in that it is, again, prominently embedded in the historical point of view of events. It is clearly a historical work that uses a historical approach to things.
My comparison between the 21st century and the 19th is not so much a way of judging Jane Eyre from a contemporary point of view, like you think, but rather a way of trying to uncover the principles behind the book and where one might go wrong if having 21st century ones. If Charlotte writes that ‘the Creole’ was a drunkard and mad, she is not so much racist, as Victorian. With 21st century principles she is racist, but not with 19th century. Her view was normal, for a person who read scientific papers/books about madness. It was a general truth that black people and people who descended from blacks were prone to madness and alcoholism, more than Caucasians… A totally distorted and wrong view of things, of course, but it was generally believed under scientists.

On modern dilemma:
It is important to accept the details always make up the consistent, full, big picture. A person who lives in a society is influenced by it, safe if he is a hermit or excludes himself from the world, which cannot be said about Charlotte. One can disagree, one can criticise, but one will always be influenced by the views one was taught. Even Rousseau distinguished between women and men. Although he argued that both sexes depend on one another because they desire one another, it wouldn’t be normal nowadays to make a division between educations of men and women ‘to suit each other’ and to prepare the woman for her wife-role (do women have nothing else to prepare for?). A writer is a person who can write his views down, but it doesn’t exclude him from the general feeling and views of his time. Whatever the result, the novel is a creation of a big consistent idea that concludes in a lot of details. If it were written from the detailed point of view only, it could never become consistent. A coat can never become a nicely tailored coat unless, from an initial design, it is made into paper parts for cutting and then sewn together and fitted on the person. At the same time, a book cannot become a good book, without initial idea and ripening in the mind. A book doesn’t create itself and thus it is prone to influence from the writer, and through the writer, influence from society/religion/ethics/etc.
The passages you cite are an example of both the atypical and rational approach, because all of them get a rational explanation/clearance afterwards:
Aunt Reed cannot understand why Jane was so passionate, yet she says before she dies herself: ‘How for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I can never comprehend.’ Then Jane answers: ‘Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt.’ In a way, here and before in the book, aunt Reed acknowledges to herself that she treated Jane badly. Jane tells her that her aunt didn’t allow to love her and so she didn’t show affection. In stead, the child submitted to bad treatment, and then the bomb burst after nine years. Even for readers it is understandable why Jane grows ‘aggressive’. Who wouldn’t you (even a child in the 19th century) if your cousin throws a book at you and you are in pain because you hit your head? Yet no-one is prepared to punish John for it. It is unjust. So atypical as a rule?
Brocklehurst identifies Jane as a kind of possessed child (which is still seen in Africa now). Yet Miss Temple refuses to believe that and puts it down to believing everything the aunt said (something that is true). She consults Mr Lloyd, the apothecary who attended to Jane when she was still at Gateshead, and ‘[she], having assembled the whole school, announced that inquiry had been made into the charges alleged against Jane Eyre, and that she was most happy to be able to pronounce her completely cleared from every imputation. The teachers then shook hands with [Jane] and kissed [her], and a murmur of pleasure ran through the ranks of [her] companions.’ It is clear, certainly here, that the ‘atypicalness’ is a fantasy from Mrs Reed’s side, it is not believed by Mr Lloyd, nor by Miss Temple. Miss Temple, hearing the story of the Red-room, also finds it unjust, and so the view Mrs Reed has and which you cited is dismissed.
Indeed, Rochester seems to prefer a supernatural Jane (maybe because of his narcissistic Manfred-like tendencies), but Jane dismisses that: ‘The men in green all forsook England a hundred years ago, and not even in Hay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace of them. I don’t think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will ever shine on their revels more.’ The men in green have all gone, so she can’t be part of them. Rochester keeps insisting on her being a fairy, but even when Jane returns to Fearndean she says that she is not a ghost.
The passage you cite indeed seems what you claim it is, yet a little later Jane says:

‘Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness.’

And:

‘Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky-way. Remembering what it was—what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light—I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe; he was God’s, and by God would he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long in sleep forgot sorrow.’

Here we can see clearly see that Jane (if not Charlotte…) pairs up Rousseau’s view of ‘natural religion’ and the Christian God, as embedded in ‘natural religion’. Jane says clearly that people will mistrust her, and in that ‘not a tie holds [her] to human society’. Juxtaposition is clearly not in its place as in the same chapter Jane talks about both Nature and God. The combination of both She and He can better be seen like the Holy Trinity. God equals Father, Son and Holy Spirit; yet He is the Son, He is the Father and He is the Holy Spirit. It is a very difficult concept and nearly no-one understands it truly, but in that Nature is God and God is Nature. Like that it is also explainable how it is possible that when Jane asks herself whether it is the will of God to marry St John, that she hears the call of Rochester, although he prayed to God and not to Nature. Jane says: ‘She was roused…’. As Nature is God, God gives her the sign she asked for: it is not God’s will that she marry St John. When she then prays to the Mighty Spirit, and rushes out her soul at His feet, Charlotte makes the picture of God complete.

It is clear that God is prominent in Jane Eyre, however it is very narrow-minded to see the novel as totally apart from everything in society or psychology as a whole. The approach is unique, but every person is unique and therefore every writer. Charlotte indeed wrote the work for herself as well as for the general audience and in that she needed to put it in the 19th century standards, in 19th century society and human psychology then available. Otherwise it is impossible as reader to understand it, and therefore impossible for a publisher to publish it, because no-one would read it as they wouldn't be able understand it.

[Peripatetics]

Come on people join the fray!
Surely you have an opinion or do you find it boring?
Flederhuss, Biterfly - “He he, but that's the beauty of literary analysis, isn't it? One word or phrase sets you off on a whole new exciting train of ideas”

[Peripatetics]

Reply to 19-12

“Bien que je distingue une petite sense de reproche dans votre poste.”
Au contraire, l'admiration de la complexité serait plus approprié. Nous en désaccord, mais j'espère que des lectures analytiques.

“We indeed draw different conclusions from this text, but that doesn’t have to be bad, though. Jane Eyre has different layers and while the rational approach is one, the supernatural one is another “ Yes Charlotte incorporated different layers”, here we agree but if you identify them as rational vs. supernatural, we diverge. I would characterize them as Evangelical reliance on the Old Testament to interpret the New and the Natural religion based on non-revelatory evidence. It doesn't rely on testimony or doctrine. “With Rousseau natural religion takes on a new meaning; "nature" is no longer universality or rationality in the cosmic order, in contrast to special supernatural and positive phenomena, but primitive simplicity and sincerity, in contrast to artificiality and studied reflection.”1
In Victorian beliefs the “Here we can see clearly see that Jane (if not Charlotte…) pairs up Rousseau’s view of ‘natural religion’ and the Christian God, as embedded in ‘natural religion’. “, in reading the text simply is not possible. If Charlotte makes a point of it, it is important in the theme.
In the segment ‘Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky-way. Remembering what it was—what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light—I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe; he was God’s, and by God would he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long in sleep forgot sorrow.’2
I would note several contrasting themes: the phrase “ I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made” as background belief, ie. of the Victorian social mores, while “ convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured.”, expresses the Natural religion as defined by Rousseau and “Mr. Rochester was safe; he was God’s, and by God would he be guarded. “, expresses Jane's loneliness separated from Rochester. If we are to adopt a critical reading of the text, such differences should be respected.
Preceding the quoted passage is “My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords.**It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its
shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him. “2
In light of the complete passage kiki's note: “ Here we can see clearly see that Jane (if not Charlotte…) pairs up Rousseau’s view of ‘natural religion’ and the Christian God, as embedded in ‘natural religion’.” is a very subjective, a theistic reading. It is also at odds with a contemporary criticism: “It is true Jane does right, and exerts great moral strength, but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law unto itself. No Christian grace is perceptible upon her.
Altogether the autobiography of Jane Eyre is preeminently an anti-Christian composition.”3
Your note “ Last but not least physiognomy takes a prominent place in judging someone, also from Jane’s point of view (for example during the first proposal of Rochester). Nowadays it passes for a ‘pseudo-science’, whereas then it was taken very seriously: the class-system was justified by it, different kinds of criminals were identified, and even the discrimination of certain”, is very interesting. Especially in your view that Bertha's treatment was inhumane and that she would have received better treatment in an asylum. Physiognomy illustrates the limits of the Victorian understanding of the mind and consequently of mental disease treatment.
In my note, On Modern Dilemma I tried to give an indication that criticism based on the Evangelical analysis of the novel results in incomplete and contradictory views. Jane Eyre is a love story in full complexity of the word. If you can not answer the question why Jane loved Rochester in view of his betrayal of her trust, the bigamous marriage, then you have not grappled with the fundamental subtext of that Charlotte wove into the text. I do not think that can be done from a theistic Christian reading. It requires a different perspective.
I hope that I can present a coherent argument for this view in a future note.


PS.S'il vous plaît jeter un coup d'oeil à Messages Privés lorsque vous vous connectez. Une citation que mai aider dans votre recherche. Bonne chance.

Notes

1.http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/deismfre.htm
2.Jane Eyre, chapter 28.
3.http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/bronte.html - 20k

[kiki1982]

Reply to 19-12

It is also at odds with a contemporary criticism: “It is true Jane does right, and exerts great moral strength, but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law unto itself. No Christian grace is perceptible upon her.
Altogether the autobiography of Jane Eyre is preeminently an anti-Christian composition.”

Your note “ Last but not least physiognomy takes a prominent place in judging someone, also from Jane’s point of view (for example during the first proposal of Rochester). Nowadays it passes for a ‘pseudo-science’, whereas then it was taken very seriously: the class-system was justified by it, different kinds of criminals were identified, and even the discrimination of certain”, is very interesting. Especially in your view that Bertha's treatment was inhumane and that she would have received better treatment in an asylum. Physiognomy illustrates the limits of the Victorian understanding of the mind and consequently of mental disease treatment.


As to the first comment I quoted. I am sorry but I find that the most biassed, most ignorant assertion I have ever heard. If I offend with the language I used, I am very very sorry, but I cannot find other words to express my feelings of shock and disbelief.
If Jane prays to God, can we then say that she is a heathen?? Can we ever say that a person who was raised by a parson and knew no other religion, went to church at least once a weak (which is known by fact!), had several Bibles in her house, all heavily marked; can we ever suppose that she would only be seen with a heathen?
The book, for me (and I am certain like for many others), has a profound force in the background, as the world has it for religious people. Someone who doesn't want to acknowledge that clearly displays great ignorance.
It is also at odds with texts as Paradise Lost, the Pilgrim's Progress (thank you Bitterfly!) and Greek mythology (when it comes to the mere divine influence in society). I think there are enough references which make it clear that Jane has a great Christian touch.
Only the assertion that Jane is a Christ-figure doesn't suit her heathendom.

Physiognomy illustrates not so much the limits of Victorian society to understand the mind, but it illustrates the biasses people had towards people of a lower class, criminals, primitive tribes (as 'tribes that are not so far advanced as the Victorians'), classification... Physiognomy was a fundamental outer symptom of the Victorian mania to organise/classify/define. It was a way of dealing with the growing problem of criminality in cities, the growing amount of mad people (only because there was an advance in diagnosing people and providing care for them), the colonisation and superiority. Only putting it down to the mind is narrow-minded. Before people came to the cities in big crowds, they didn't see those problems so dramatically, because they were spread over the country. In the cities the problems started to stick together and became bigger. The rich and leading classes couldn't shut their eyes for it. They tried to justify it by classifying people as 'hopeless cases', because they had a combination of facial marks and were destined to become a murderer. Therefore, one couldn't do anything about him muderering people, because he was born that way. Like that also with the poor and the colonised nations. Victorians were naturally superior to the blacks, because they had better features... So it was natural, and even better for the blacks, that they dominated them, because they were hopeless...
About the mad:
Already in 1798 reform started by the Quakers as to the care for the mad. Where they were before merely seen as the receivers of a punishment of God, now they were regarded as sick people. Charlotte must have been aware of that, because at the time she was writing her book, there was a commission visiting asylums in order to make an Act of Parliament to organise (the Victorian ideal!) the care for the mad/mentally ill. Things were published in newspapers as a reslt of it. She knew about psychology, so I can't see why she could have been so wrong as to intending the treatment of Bertha good. What's more it is totally at odds with the notion that Rochester has demonic tendencies.
Although we might look now at Victorian methods and find them cruel they were a lot better than just locking someone away and forget about them as was done in the 18th century.
The original method of moral management, though, is still operational in the Friends Retreat at York. They have a website, if you are interested.
Victorians didn't lock people up anymore, and if they did, it was found cruel and bad treatment. There are a few sites of universities that are dedicated to this.
The myth about bad treatment for lunatics probably results from Dickensian scenes, which took place in places like Bedlam pauper lunatic hospital, which was even at the time notorious for its bad care. The fact that it was a pauper hospital might also be a clue as to the treatment of the rich. William Makepeace Thackeray also locked up his wife... after having sought half of the world for treatment for her, having seen everything fail, he locked her up... let's say he confined her to a house... which is of course a lot better than Bertha in her permanently dark room. One can get mad because of that.

I keep my opinion that it is essential to see a book in its time. I have seen enough information to state that Jane is a religious person (how could she not be, being educated for 8 years at a religious boarding school) and to see the true nature of Bertha's treatment as at least old-fashioned and an act of denial from Rochester's side (Kind Lear).


In order to get a better view, google on things like this.

I seem to think we have met somewhere before, but I can't remember. Maybe you could clarify... (je crois distinguer le style du nouveau venu. Sinon comment savez-vous que je parle le français?)

[Peripatetics]

I am confused! Why the tone of moral outrage - “my feelings of shock and disbelief - I am sorry but I find that the most biassed, most ignorant assertion I have ever heard. “

When Elizabeth Rigby in the 1846 review said - “Altogether the autobiography of Jane Eyre is preeminently an anti-Christian composition.”, it is a historically factual critique of the novel. Whether we agree or disagree with it, is irrelevant. Rigby represented an Evangelical faction of the Victorian public that found any questioning of Biblical truth offensive. Are you of the opinion that such a remark should not be repeated?

In my reading, Charlotte draws an 'atypical' Jane, atypical from the young woman formed by the beliefs/prejudices of the early Victorian era. Mary Schwingen, on the Victorian Web in the analysis: Religious Belief in Jane Eyre, wrote: “In Jane Eyre Brontë often juxtaposes Jane with characters who espouse strikingly different religious beliefs. Where Jane is seen as searching and questioning, these other characters hold strongly to one form or another of Evangelical protestantism, the religion that Helen Burns espouses.”
Note in chapter 9, Helen Burns says:”i believe; i have faith: i am going to god.
Whereby Jane questions: "where is god? what is god “, who is god?”
And it is such tone that E. Rigby found uncomfortable. Sufficiently offensive to label Jane Eyre, the novel, as anti-Christian. The novel, not necessarily Jane Eyre the character.

When you write ”If Jane prays to God, can we then say that she is a heathen?? “, are you confusing the character with the novel? In what context is the prayer? And to what God? The Evangelical God or the god of Rousseau Nature? In moments of crisis Jane asks for guidance from both. We can not be sure of Jane's intent. Charlotte is ambiguous on this point, deliberately so. Deliberately, as in the reference to Latmos – Selene, is the moon goddess but is literally defined as 'the moon'. In the Homeric hymn - Selene, freshly washed in the waters of Earth-circling Ocean, daughter of Zeus -. And the juxtaposition of Jane and the moon is too numerous, too associated with instances of moral crisis, that we can suppose that Charlotte's intent was accidental. If such a reading is possible, then yes we can suppose that in Jane there is an element that can be labeled as 'heathen' and that Rigby sensed it and found objectionable.

Charlotte is not ambiguous in two segments of the novel that define Jane's beliefs. The examination of her drawings and her rejection of St. John's proposal. When Rochester says to Mrs. Fairfax:”"Don't trouble yourself to give her a character,".... "eulogiums will not bias me; I shall judge for myself. “, and proceeds to examine Jane's drawings, he is attempting to gaze into her subconscious by guessing what motivated her to create them.
He asks :”Were you happy when you painted these pictures?" indicating that it's not the skill that interests him but rather the mind of Jane. And states it explicitly : “ you have secured the shadow of your thought; but no more, probably. You had not enough of the artist's skill and science to give it full being: yet the drawings are, for a schoolgirl, peculiar. As to the thoughts, they are elfish.” Analogous to the dogmatic Evangelism, Jane's beliefs are elfish. And in the three paintings, in an elfish manner Charlotte summarizes the central theme of the novel - love.

The second example is of St. John's Evangelicism which Jane rejects. Jane relates, “I first got an idea of its calibre when I heard him preach in his own church at Morton. “ ... “I was sure St. John Rivers--pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was--had not yet found that peace of God”2.
When St. John proposes, Jane answers:"I scorn your idea of love,"3
To your question: “Can we ever say that a person who was raised by a parson and knew no other religion, went to church at least once a weak (which is known by fact!), had several Bibles in her house, all heavily marked; can we ever suppose that she would only be seen with a heathen?” I'll emphatically answer YES, but we differ on what the word heathen implies.
First allow me to note that you are confusing Charlotte's beliefs with those of Jane's. Jane is drawn from imagination and reflects the personality of the author only vaguely and difficult to pinpoint to the degree. Charlotte was not a Bible thumping Christian, which your statement implies. Her education was not confined to her father's parsonage but to sampling of a foreign culture in her stay in Belgium. A more cosmopolitan exposure than of a poor parish of north of England.

Testifying to the fluidity of Charlotte's religiosity is the note of Foley, T. P., ‘John Elliot Cairnes’ Visit to Haworth Parsonage’ : “Amongst others I noticed the Life of Sterling, Sartor Resartus, Newman on the Soul, & books of that cast, her fondness for which shewed what a great revolution her religious views had undergone from that early time, when she used to correspond with “E.[N.]” in the sickly pietistic strain — a revolution, by the way, of the progress of which it wd have been most interesting to have some record, but which Mrs Gaskell scarcely seemed to be aware of, leaving her readers to discover it only by its results.”

Your note that Charlotte had several Bibles heavily marked, implying that her intellectual grasp was heavily influenced by biblical content is refuted on the site – the brontes - http://www.thebrontes.net/reading/, that lists a catalog of books of the Brontes. As kiki notes, there were several Bibles in the Bronte family1, however there is no indications that they were “all heavily marked;” which would imply a fundamentalist reliance by Charlotte on Biblical truth in the creation of Jane Eyre.

The Oxford Companion to the Brontës. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, by Alexander, Christine and Margaret Smith sets the correct tone by :”For all the Brontës, familiarity with the Bible was inevitable, brought up as they were in the home of a Protestant minister whose own writings, and of course his preaching, were permeated by biblical language. … For Charlotte, the Bible was part of her patriotic Englishness … She responded emotionally and imaginatively to its poetry and profundity” and “Recognition of biblical allusions, readily picked up by most 19th-century readers, is essential to a full appreciation of the Brontës writings. Without it, the resonance and nuances deriving from the biblical context cannot be savoured, ironies may be missed, emotional depth reduced, and the nature of characters like St. John Rivers not fully understood.” The emphasis is on understanding of nuances and ironies by the 19th.-century reader, that is of aesthetics and not of Charlotte's personal beliefs.

In my reading of Jane, her beliefs evolve from the simple Evangelical piety of Lowood. Past the moral crisis of Thornfield Hall, apply named, past narrow moral strictures, to a profound understanding of love.
When dealing in interpretation, I'll stick with (Stevie Davies. Emily Brontë: Heretic*. (1994)), “There is … the healthy desire to stick to known ‘facts’ but … records are by their very nature not systematic but … arbitrary survivals. Borrowing a parable from Wuthering Heights, we may compare the records with the guide-posts that so confounded Lockwood in his attempt to negotiate his way through the snow whose swells and falls betrayed the real rises and depressions in the ground, and which had mostly (not quite all) vanished, ‘excepting a dirty dot pointing up here and there’

Notes

1. Catalog of Bronte family Bibles.
[Bible editions of the Brontë family, now in the BPM*:]**
Bible, [in French], no title-page, begins ‘Les Actes des Apostres’ (bb96)
Lord Wharton Bible (bb1)
Bible, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1845 (bb2) ‘contains inscription in hand of Charlotte Brontë’ (BoB?)
Bible, Oxford: S. P. C. K., 1852 (bb94) ‘Given by A. B. Nicholls to Michael Binns’ (BoB?)
Das neue Testament, London: Printed for the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1835. (bb98) signed ‘C. B.’ and inscribed ‘in German script’: ‘Herr Heger hat mir dieses Buch gegeben | Brußel | Mai 1843’ (LCB?, I, 318.)
Bible, Old Testament, [Jeremiah to Malachi only], c. 1820. (bb209, Bonnell 37) ‘annotated throughout by Patrick Brontë’ (BoB?)
Bible, New Testament, [in Latin] title-page missing, (bb4) contains ‘Pencil sketches in style of P. B. Brontë, c. 1829, on inside front cover’ (BoB?). ‘Inscribed on rear fly-leaf, in Charlotte’s longhand, in pencil: “April 12th On the afternoon of the 12th of April 1833. the Sage Branwellius. had a vision in which he beheld Lord Althorpe … ”’ (Art?, 429.)
Bible, New Testament, [in English] title-page missing, (bb5) contains various sketches, probably by PBB?; one sketch, dated and signed ‘1829/PBB’. ‘Inscribed on first page of text, in margin, in Branwell’s script: “P. B. Brontë Began Matthew. Nov 13. 1829 in latin”. Throughout the text Branwell has made similar inscriptions recording the progress of his translation from English into Latin.’ (Art?, 429.)
Le Nouveau Testament … Edition stereotype, A. Edimbourg, G. Cowie & Co., 1829. (bb6) CB?’s prize from Miss Wooler (1831)

[Bible editions, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library*:]**
The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ … Cambridge, 1823. [CB?’s copy with her autograph on flyleaf.] – Source: Corsair – The Online Catalog of the Pierpont Morgan Library*, Guided Search: Search for PML 17787, Search in Accession Number.
The Holy Bible: containing the Old and New Testaments … Stereotype Edition. London: Printed by G. Eyre and A. Strahan, for the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1821. [AB?’s copy with her pencilled notes on the flyleaves. It was given to her by her godmother Elizabeth Firth, who instructed her father to give it to her at “10 years of age”’ (Oxford Companion?, 52.)] – Source: Corsair – The Online Catalog of the Pierpont Morgan Library*,

2. JE chapter 30.
3. JE chapter 34.

Bonne année ma amie.

[Peripatetics]

My comparison between the social statuses of mistresses now and at the time Jane Eyre was written does not so much mean that I approach the question from a contemporary/21st century point of view. I merely engaged in it to illustrate the possible negative consequences for Jane, if she had engaged in a relationship with Rochester, although he probably wouldn’t have left her (because of his approach to bigamy/wifehood as stated above), and connected with that, the problems contemporary readers might have to assess her situation.
While I understand and acknowledge the ‘unnatural’-approach, it is essential, when reading a historical work, to see the bigger context: morally, ethically and socially. Jane was no doubt a modern woman for her time, yet it is impossible that she wasn’t part of society with its values as a whole. Where you find it rash to assume that Jane had 19th century principles, it is equally rash to assume that she had totally different ones to her time… Jane is undoubtedly independent with a strong will of her own and passionate (contrary to Victorian ideals), but she is still a 19th century woman: when marriage is not available she flees ‘temptation’ (which a very heavily laden word!), she acknowledges the class difference between her and Rochester/his party, she lets Rochester ask her to marry him (where she came with the idea of becoming his wife, she doesn’t ask him herself). No writer writes on an island. They can maybe criticise society, religion, etc. but they are all part of their time. Charlotte Brontë herself was part of a Victorian society with its values and moral code. While Jane can be called modern and atypical for her time she is not totally free from the Victorian morals… It is not because Jane was/’is’ controversial that she is not part of her time. She might have rejected the proposal of St John, but it doesn’t make her less of a 19th century woman. Virginity and marriage are two of the principles prominent in Jane’s story.

Sorry for the late reply but my mind has been distracted and as I said before you bring up more interesting issues than I can digest at once.
We do approach the issue of veracity of a character from different view points. You insist on the bigger picture (how Anglo-Saxon), while I give the authoress poetic license (how French). Je suis le rire, mais doucement, parce que, bien que sur les côtés opposés, nous remettent en question l'orthodoxie.
I think that Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre because she had to, a way of exorcising a personal daemon. Also that it was an intellectual opus, more akin to a musical composition where the logical consistency was within a particular movement such as a coda following a sonata, than from a socio-economic view point. It exist but it is more of a background, décor where the action takes place, than the theme.
Your point: “when marriage is not available she flees ‘temptation’ “. Temptation can be interpreted in multiple ways. An interesting one is the argument presented by Avoiding Dangerous Sexuality in Jane Eyre by Debra Waller.
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/cbronte/waller4.html

Your point:”She might have rejected the proposal of St John, but it doesn’t make her less of a 19th century woman. “ Not less of a !9th. Century woman, but certainly not a Victorian Evangelical one. Conversion of the heathen was a central tenet of the Evangelicals and when Jane places love over missionary vocation, she not only rejects St. John but at the same time the Evangelical doctrine. Tis is a specific example of the evolution of Jane's religiosity. In Lowood the young Jane questions: what is god, who is god, ( note the small case used by Charlotte) but in chapter 35 when Jane says “it was my time to assume ascendency. my powers were in play “, I think that we can safely read this as a Jane who no longer is in doubt and relaying on convention.

Your point:”Virginity and marriage are two of the principles prominent in Jane’s story.”. We disagree, love is, not marriage, certainly not virginity.( see ref.)
Yes Jane's dream of a bride in a white veil is shattered by the realization of a bigamous marriage, however that is too narrow, too conventional (Victorian), an interpretation of Jane's morality. That describes Jane in the second part of the structure of the novel. Jane evolves. In the third part, when she hears the voice “Jane, Jane”, she does not struggle with a moral quandary whether she should or can go back to Rochester. When she decides to go back to Rochester, she is not aware of Bertha's death, she no longer has to flee 'temptation'.
If 'marriage is the prominent principle' how do you account for chapter 34 when Rochester questions “and trusted that she would not leave me." and Jane replies, "Which I never will, sir, from this day." and when Jane says "I don't care about being married.".
A pretty dilemma for a logical explanation! Or shall you concede that Jane does not exist in a rational explanation, that she is what Charlotte imagined, an 'atypical' Jane.

Ref.- The Brontes: A Centennial Observance.
Charlotte in a letter to a friend wrote “If he were a clever man and loved me, the whole world weight in balance against his slightest wish should be light as air.”
Richard Chase in The Brontes: A Centennial Observance, drew the conclusion that “in their intellectual parsonage, the sisters came to admire and fear most: sexual and intellectual energy.”

Puisque vous avez dit que vous êtes belge et des références à la culture française, j'ai supposé que vous étiez Wallon. Si je suis confondu svp pardonnez-moi, il était une petite erreur puisque le Français est une si belle langue. Je ne crois pas que nous avons correspondu avant depuis que j'aurais noté votre modèle cultivé d'expression.
Les meilleurs voeux pendant la nouvelle année. J'espère que nous aurons beaucoup plus de désaccords heureux et je rirai.

[kiki1982]

About the alleged anti-Christianness of Jane Eyre:

It was indeed 'the most biased, most ignorant assertion I have ever heard.' I over-reacted, but I still find it so. I'll tell you why it should not be taken into consideration and why it was biased. Elizabeth Rigby was a raging conservative, also politically, and she was Lady Eastlake (married to Sir Eastlake), so belonged to a certain class. After the quote you took, she writes further:

‘There is throughout it a murmuring against the comforts of the rich and against the privations of the poor, which, as far as each individual is concerned, is a murmuring against God's appointment--there is a proud and perpetual assertion of the rights of man, for which we find no authority either in God's word or in God's providence--there is that pervading tone of ungodly discontent which is at once the most prominent and the most subtle evil which the law and the pulpit, which all civilized society in fact, has at the present day to contend with. We do not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism and rebellion at home is the same which has also written Jane Eyre (1847).’

She clearly states that Jane Eyre had a political undertone, which is not at all the case. Elizabeth's judgment of the book is clearly inspired by political fear on her part: the Chartists, which she clearly puts the writer of Jane Eyre amongst, were seen as revolutionaries that threatened the foundation of government and order, but in reality they only wanted such things as the voting right for working men, a shorter work week and a secret ballot (socialists avant-la-lettre so to say). There was social unrest at the time Rigby wrote this and so many revolutions broke out in 1848 on the Continent that historians call it the Year of Revolutions. As Lady Eastlake, naturally, she felt threatened in her (privileged) position. The order in society then was God's work and so it could not be challenged. It is clearly not a well-weighed and unbiased judgment and therefore it should be dismissed on the grounds that the comment was inspired by political views and didn't take a neutral approach to the matter, not even a very Christian one if that needs to be said... Inspired by political opinions of herself and maybe very narrow views of religion itself as well she failed to see the wider extent of both religion and the political movements she was criticising. She attracted much attention with her opinion of that book. Just because it is so extraordinary that she called one of the greatest books in English literature, written by a parson’s daughter of all people (who then after that married a parson, which brings with it loads of dedication. We should mention that), an anti-Christian composition. For me that is a contradiction in terms. Only if Charlotte had rebelled and totally gone the other way I could consider that book as anti-Christian, but that is not the case, as she writes in a letter to W.S. Williams on 31st of December 1847: ‘You do very rightly and very kindly to tell me the objections made against Jane Eyre—they are more essential than the praises. I feel a sort of heart-ache when I hear the book called “godless” and “pernicious” by good and earnest-minded men; but I know that heart-ache will be salutary—at least I trust so.’ On the 4th of January 1848 she writes to the same man: ‘It would take a great deal to crush me, because I know, in the first place, that my own intentions were correct, that I feel in my heart a deep reverence for religion, that impiety is very abhorrent to me; and in the second, I place firm reliance on the judgment of some who have encouraged me.’ If ‘impiety is abhorrent to [her]’, why would she create a heathen character or anti-Christian book? Why would she feel heartache when her book is called ‘godless’ if it was like that? Furthermore, in a preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre published in December 1847, Charlotte Brontë herself writes: ‘Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.’ Thus it is not because men like Rochester had mistresses like him that it should be excuses and seen as ok, but on the other hand it doesn’t mean that because Jane flees Rochester because she doesn’t want to be a mistress that she does not follow morals. There is indeed a distinction between moral things that are inherently good and should be done and conventional things that are not necessarily good but are found normal. If looked at Bertha as the mad other of Jane, it is not right that a woman must be idle and be ‘locked up’ in her marriage, but on the other hand it doesn’t put ‘free women’ like Céline on a pedestal. Rigby was seriously mistaken and the passage which you quoted shouldn’t be taken into consideration concerning any interpretation of any character in that book whatsoever.

Your list of bibles at least evokes the fact that the bibles were used and didn't merely stand on the shelf, like in most families now. They were read, carried around and given as presents. Hence also the numerous bible allusions in Jane Eyre.

At Lowood, religion is obviously present in the man Brocklehurst, when Jane has finally grown up, she doesn’t need guidance any longer, so religion takes on a less obvious, but not less important role. The bible with its allusions is omnipresent (1) as a tool for (19th century) readers to follow and interpret the book. While the allusions for Rochester and Jane mainly focus on the Old Testament, the allusions relative to St John are taken from the New Testament. If this weren’t done on purpose, it would be very accidental indeed! But that is not the case, because using Old Testament references for Jane and Rochester allowed Charlotte to highlight their suffering and searching for truth as Christians, as in the Pilgrim’s Progress, while of course St John is free from a journey as he is a clergyman and doesn’t need to be convinced of religion anymore. Indeed, Charlotte put him in the New Testament leading the flock and puts him in the shoes of the warrior Greatheart, who accompanies Christian and Christiana in the Pilgrim’s Progress.

The fact that you quote Jane as being different from the other Christians in the book then, is not necessarily due to the fact that she is anti-Christian or a-typical to the extreme, but maybe down to her Quaker-beliefs which are certainly present and are Christian, but in a less austere way. (2) Quakers were certainly known in Yorkshire, as that was the birthplace of the religion. York was also where the first humane lunatic hospital (a fruit of a prominent Quaker) was founded. Quakers were puritanical Christians, but not as bad as Evangelical Brocklehurst or St John with his Calvinistic aproach. They were in favour of simplicity, but not of austerity; they didn’t totally rule out any earthly joys. These principles seem to be embraced in Jane Eyre as an alternative for the principles both Brocklehurst and St John hold. Jane doesn’t only dress and speak quakerish, but also follows others of their values that are less obvious. When she says she can’t marry Rochester because ‘[his] bride stands between [them]’, she actually seems to follow the doctrines of the Quakers stating that engagement is as serious as marriage. Barber and Frost say about finding a partner: ‘[Quakers] wanted marriage for love, but love was defined as stemming from a spiritual harmony between the persons and resting upon similarities in religious feelings, outwards temperament, and class. [Quakers] spoke out against marriages of rich and poor, steady and frivolous, old and young, and Quaker and non-Quaker, but only the latter constituted a disownable offense. (112)’ It is striking that even here Jane Eyre follows the Quaker-line: Jane indeed wants to marry for love, and marries Rochester because ‘he is of [her] kind’. Admittedly, Quakers were not in favour of marriages between old and young, but this was a marriage for love and both Jane and Rochester will be very happy after that. Throughout the book Jane holds her principles that will reward her in the end. Indeed, when she leaves Thornfield she eventually comes to a good home and gets to know her family; when she refuses St John’s proposal, she’ll gain Rochester for it. Even when she advertises for a pupil up to 14 years old, she follows Quaker-doctrine as to be ‘cautious not to launch into business beyond what [she could] do’ (Barbour and Frost 109). Jane found that she was too young to teach an older girl, not because she wasn’t educated enough but because o her own age, and thus is realistic as to her abilities.
Jane certainly follows these principles and also gets rewarded for using them and following them, even in bad times. Of course, then she is different from St John and Brocklehurst, but not less religious or Christian for it.

As for Rousseau's God: he is not different from God himself, in fact He is the same. As I said before, natural religion does not at all mean that normal organised religion goes out the window, certainly not as Rousseau himself was a devout catholic. It is a concept that explains the existence of several religions and that allows all those religions to be true. Therefore it is indeed possible for Jane to pray to God and Nature at the same time, or pray to God and get something back from Nature, because both are one and the same. It could also explain the lack of organised religion in the book in combination with a church wedding. Rousseau’s natural religion allows to worship at the same time inside an organisation (as the Anglican Church) and outside of it, but doesn’t make life godless in itself. Thus it is possible for Jane to get married before God in a church while it is never mentioned she goes there to worship on Sundays - although the chapel is only down the hill and it has a curate – and beside that to still know the bible well.

When Jane asks Helen 'where is God? what is God?' etc. – I just have to say here that my edition features God with a capital G, it is a edition of 1897, but I think printed according to the third edition which Brontë herself approved -, it shouldn't necessarily be called anti-religious. Rousseau in his time was already aware of the fact that children up to 15 years of age cannot understand difficult and abstract concepts like God (even!)/sin/hell/heaven/etc. They just repeat what has been told them. That idea is also evoked in the scene when Brocklehurst asks Jane what happens to wicked girls and Jane replies: 'they go to hell,' nicely repeating what she was told. Brocklehurst then asks what she must do in order not to go to hell and she says something like: 'I must keep breathing and not die.' Of course, for a child this is a very reasonable and clever reply, but totally irreligious and not good enough for Brocklehurst, although Jane clearly thinks about her answer she clearly doesn’t understand the concept sin which implies going to hell. At the time Helen dies, Helen is older and starts to understand the concept of faith/death/heaven/etc. whereas Jane is still at a younger age, unable to understand. This approach might better explain the irreligious child Jane and the Quakerish governess Jane who turns to God at a time of crisis, not to pray for herself, but to pray for Rochester and having faith that God will protect him... If we take the Quaker-approach the contrast between St John and Jane can also be explained. The fact that Quakers were not against all earthly joys and married for love, even acknowledged that love could be passionate, is more appropriate for me than the anti-Christian one. Even Quakerism can be called a natural religion and so Rousseau is still relevant. Thus the fact that Jane is stamped as passionate (even as a child), wants a marriage for love, refuses austere St John, refuses too many frills and dresses Rochester wants to buy her, but doesn’t totally refuse any earthly pleasure/passion can be set in a religious context, one that is very appropriate even to Charlotte Brontë herself and the region she lived in. In combination with Rousseau’s look on children and religion in his Emile it is understandable that Jane can’t grasp those religious concepts, but does certainly so at a later age. Emile himself ends up in the country, understanding God, but not worshipping in church as such. However this doesn’t make him the worse for it. Indeed, it also happens to Jane: she is one who knows the bible, one who lives according to certain principles and rules, one who understands God and finds it important to follow his path, but doesn’t worship in church.

It seems that not only Rousseau’s ‘natural religion’ and Quakerism are relevant, but even the Stoic Philosophy of antiquity is important in the approach to Jane… As I discovered, Emily got from Miss Wooler at Roe Head a prize book with the philosophy of Epictetus, a late stoic philosopher. Although mainly Emily is considered as having a ‘stoic’ approach to life, I believe that Charlotte’s Jane Eyre also definitely wears a ‘stoic’ stamp. The Stoics taught that Nature or God was a material, reasoning substance, in short the Universe, which consisted out of a passive and active part. The passive part was the matter, the physical things and beings like the planets, stars, but also people, animals and plants (their physical appearance, not to be confused with the soul). The active component of the Universe was Fate or Universal Reason that acts on the (passive) matter. The Universe is subject to Universal Reason because it is itself, and so acts to its own needs as well as to its own reason. It does what should be done on its logical true grounds, thus coincidence does not exist, though we, who do not know Universal Reason to the full, might not understand the grounds for things that happen. People and animals are also an inherent part of the Universe and so are also subject to the laws of Fate or Universal Reason. As good Reason is the foundation of everything, the goal of life is to live according to that, or according to Nature/God. From there we can see where the Nature-God connection in Jane comes from: it is one and the same, as it is for Rousseau. It is clear that Jane in the beginning doesn’t know what to do with negative feelings and she learns from Helen how to bear them. If we go further into the Stoic philosophy it can shed a light on the conflicts Jane faces within herself. The Stoics preached freedom from passions, meaning freedom from suffering (the ancient meaning of the word ‘passion’), not freedom from any emotion as it was later wrongfully translated. Emotion occurred, but by employing Logic, reflection and concentration one should come to a clear judgment and inner calm. When Jane grows jealous of Ingram, she applies Logic and comes to the conclusion that Ingram is the one that Rochester is marrying and there is an end to it. Thanks to that reflection and clear judgment she can face the courtship of Rochester and Ingram with ‘decent calm’, although not without emotion. Similarly, when the wedding is cancelled in such an appalling way, she faces it with decent calm where Rochester expected the ‘hot rain of tears’. There is a clear judgment, she must ‘flee Temptation’, although her heart wants to stay. Jane must follow Reason. Not only through reasoning herself, but also in the sense that she must follow God/Nature and Universal Reason that is in her, otherwise she will suffer. In opposition to Universal Reason that brings happiness, suffering and evil are the result of ignorance, the ignorance of Universal Reason within oneself. Unhappiness results from the ignorance of Nature’s/God’s workings, and thus the failure to follow Universal Reason. Thus the solution is to know where one went wrong, where one’s reason went against Universal Reason. This is what Helen tells Jane when they are discussing Miss Scatcherd’s beating of Helen. Helen says that it is her own fault and after that advises to forget the conduct of her aunt and the passions (sufferings) connected with it. Jane suffering as a child results from both her aunt’s ignorance of her Universal Reason within her (unkindness), and Jane’s rebellion against her lot (failure to follow Universal Reason); a lot that will allow her to meet life-changing Helen, to meet her future husband, to gain family and a fortune. Aunt Reed couldn’t understand why her husband should like to be kind to his niece. If approached from the Stoic side it reveals that the late John Reed was aware of his Universal Reason and followed it, loving his sister, speaking out against her being refused her dowry and eventually taking care of Jane. Aunt Reed is clearly not aware of her Universal Reason as she is unkind to Jane, doesn’t treat her the same as her own children, and can even be called a little jealous of Jane, at least she says that her own children didn’t get so much attention as Jane when her husband John was still alive. Aunt Reed will suffer greatly: getting into debt for John Reed the younger, becoming ill, dying in sadness and refusing to reconcile with Jane, even when Jane forgives her. The children John, Eliza and Georgiana are clearly not aware of Reason either as they themselves suffer as well. John by his lack of will and failure to tackle his naivety (remember he got ‘plucked’), Georgiana by her loneliness and Eliza by her failure to face the world. They are all locked up in their ‘golden cage’ of high society, but fail to get out of it by looking for the course of Reason. They all fail to live happily together, an aim, the Stoics taught that was the manifestation of the knowledge of Universal Reason that is in all of us. When Aunt Reed asks for Jane in order to give her the details of her uncle John Eyre, it is the first sign of trying to live according to Reason, although she is still not aware of it within herself, but it proves that she is looking over her actions in the past. She eventually recognises that she did wrong in proclaiming Jane dead and refusing her the kindness (which is of course a manifestation of awareness of Universal Reason) of her uncle John Eyre. Sadly she dies before she finds ‘peace of mind’ or apatheia, without passion/suffering, a state of mind attained by the applying of Logic, reflection and concentration. Similarly, Rochester has himself to blame for his suffering, because he went for Bertha’s beauty and money which is essentially a very vain reason to get married, but more importantly does not reveal any clear judgment about the person herself at all. After that, when he grows unhappy, in stead of examining the cause of it (which would be the lack of clear judgment, and the refusal of undergoing his fate without suffering) he goes against Nature/God again by not caring for her in a loving way and by trying bigamy of all things. All people are manifestations of the Universal Reason and should live together in brotherly love, even if they are slaves. We don’t have to comment concerning that about Rochester’s assertion that he hates Bertha and not because she is mad… When Jane has left, he still refuses to examine his suffering and its causes, but after the fire which destroys Thornfield, he finally does so, decides that he was unhappy because he himself chose to marry for the wrong reasons, and prays to God to ask for relief. At the same moment Jane receives her vision because of St John. She has refused once after contemplation but is now struggling and doubts whether she was actually following Reason by refusing St John (a conclusion made because of Logic, reflection and concentration, thus a clear judgment). As those two souls on the same second are looking for Universal Reason, they find it and come together in the same place: Nature/God/Reason what you will, the place where Truth is. Here Fate/Universal Reason did act on matter if we see the electric shock Jane describes as Fate/Universal Reason that shook her, so to say. As Universal Reason is in all people the voice of Rochester that Jane hears ‘within [her]’ can be explained without the supposition of superstition. How else was Jane able to hear Rochester’s voice within her, if it were not her own fantasy (which is proven that it is certainly not after Rochester’s own explanation)? Now, Christianity is not the same as Stoicism but Christianity took a lot from Stoicism. The major difference between the two is that Stoicism doesn’t see Nature/God as a person, but rather as the Universe itself. It also doesn’t evoke the idea that the world will end or the idea of the afterlife. Other than that, a Christian God doesn’t totally rule out the consideration of society and nature as ‘God’s order and work’, which even Elizabeth Rigby stated. Nor does it rule out a Universal Reason-following and finding truth approach if we take into account the Pilgrim’s Progress-subtext which Bitterfly kindly pointed out.

Even the Stoic approach I couldn’t call anti-Christian as Stoicism is very much incorporated in the Christian belief-system...

Furthermore if an author puts in allusions to the Book of Esther and the Book of Kings, it cannot be accidental. The author needs to have read the text, studied it in order to make a good reference as to the end of the character, the truth of what he is doing and the personality. Otherwise, the allusion is worth nothing. The same for theatrical and literary allusions. It is very clear that Charlotte knew what she wrote and when she calls Rochester Ahasuerus, she does mean Ahasuerus: the king who disowned his wife because she refused to show herself before his guests, who married Esther in stead and then had the Jews almost massacred because of a lie of one of his servants because this one had grown jealous of a Jew (accidentally Esther’s uncle), although this person had saved the king’s life. The servant will eventually be executed learn his lesson and the Jews will be allowed to kill in return because of Esther’s interference. He will in the end end up as a king, who has his kingdom ruled by Esther’s uncle. In a sense he is a bad king because he is led by others rather than by himself and does not at all fulfil his role of ruler. Indeed, Rochester was also led, had his own responsibility but went the easy way and let his life be lived. He ultimately faced the consequences. Charlotte was maybe not a puritanical Christian and certainly not bible-bashing, but she certainly knew what she was talking about, unlike many of us now. If the interpretations were of use for the readers, she put them in consciously, and so she had them in mind when she wrote her book. Essentially this dismisses the idea totally that Jane Eyre, would be an anti-Christian composition, as it would make use of Christian references to make an anti-Christian composition?

True, Charlotte’s education was not confined to Haworth Parsonage, but Brussels was not a very cosmopolitan city at the time. It was the capital of a newly founded country, very Catholic, which found the Brontë sisters peculiar with their protestant ways, as evoked in The Professor. London was more cosmopolitan than Brussels at the time. Brussels was a provincial town that had been bombarded capital of Belgium and had been that for about ten years when Charlotte landed there in the school of Mr Héger and a further 15 years under the government of the Netherlands. Thus it was a middle-class bastion. She learned French properly there and read French literature, encouraged by Mr Héger himself but I would hardly call that cosmopolitan… Her cosmopolitan education, so to say, then rather consists out of the studying of various objects and loads of books which she formed her opinion of, which was a very eloquent and liberal opinion. Thus I would call Charlotte a self-confident, eloquent, clever, even philosophical woman who was not afraid to speak her mind, even on issues that were considered as normal, but that does not at all mean that she was against everything.

An author never writes a book totally alien to him/herself. Not only the section at Lowood is autobiographical. Political views of authors like Hugo filter through in their work, and Charlotte no doubt put religious views in her book. Writing in a bible doesn’t mean that one is fundamentalist. Theologians write in their bibles and they are not necessarily fundamentalist, mostly the opposite. Writing and notes in a bible merely mean that they are read seriously, like Charlotte made notes in her copy of Paradise Lost. Jane is maybe a little more modern, but I wouldn’t say she is irreligious, as I said before. It is unthinkable that a character acts on his/her own. A character is not a person and thus the creator (the author in this case) has an influence on it, its actions and its personality. A character can be conformist or non-conformist. Jane is not totally conformist, but is not a total rebel either. In the end she is ‘an independent woman’, but there were a lot of heiresses like that, it was a position to cherish (for after marriage you lost all your rights to your money), but not less probable and more feministic for it. In the creation of a woman alone in the world: left by her aunt, an orphan and finally heiress, Charlotte created the possibility for self-decision for Jane, however that is severely narrowed by the fact that she is forced into serving as she needs to work for her money and doesn’t inherit it straight away. Thus she creates a character that does live actively in society as it is, ‘insipid’. You say yourself that Charlotte was deliberately ambiguous when she made Jane pray to God and Nature. If you say that, you acknowledge that she deliberately created certain situations and deliberately wrote certain sentences and that is what I imply when I say that it is improbable for Charlotte to have created Jane as a heathen as Charlotte herself grew up in a very religious environment. A religious approach doesn’t rule out a philosophical approach to life, but on the other side the philosophical approach doesn’t rule out a religious approach, or the existence of God. The Stoic approach is a way of life in which Christianity and a belief in God can be incorporated without holding either of both back.
All these reasons above should lead us to the Universal Reason that Charlotte did not at all mean to write an anti-Christian work, far from it even. The a-typicality for me doesn’t lie in the rejection of religion, but rather in her approach to it, which is Charlotte’s approach undoubtedly if we take her own preface seriously.

The sentence you state: ‘And if he were a clever man, and loved me, the whole world weighed in the balance against his smallest wish should be light as air.’ was written on 12th March 1839 to Ellen Nussey about her refusing the marriage proposal of Henry Nussey, the former’s borther. It is taken out of context because in that letter she intimates that a woman should love/adore her husband so she would be prepared to die for him (as showing how much dedication should be involved). She wrote Ellen’s brother a letter back refusing his proposal and arguing that another woman would make him far happier, because, she implies, he is too serious and grave for her. Apparently she gave to him the outlines of a character that might suit him better than hers. Indeed, six months later she sent him congratulations on his engagement… Of course, love is at the centre of Jane Eyre, but connected with that are marriage and virginity, as marriage equals love (Quakers) and as sexual passion is only temptation. The reference you take is one of 1947, and since then a lot more research has been done about the Brontës which revealed that they were not as dispassionate as Gaskell made them out to be, and Charlotte in particular. Charlotte herself had her doubts about the image Gaskell was creating of her when she wrote to her publisher Mr Smith: ‘[Mrs Gaskell] seems determined that I shall be a sort of invalid. Why may I not be well like other people?’ That image of secluded, shy, eerie, dispassionate woman Charlotte has long prevailed, and no doubt the reference is an example of that. In reality she wrote to a friend: ‘If you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, wretchedly insipid, you would pity and I dare say despise me.’ in 1836. Gaskell puts it ‘wisely’ down to ‘nervous disturbance’, excluded the letters to Monsieur Héger and George Smith and wrote about the former to her own publisher: ‘I cannot tell you how I should deprecate anything leading to the publication of these letters.’ It seems that Mrs Gaskell was out to make an ‘asexual’ image of Charlotte, unlike the ‘coarseness’ with which Jane Eyre was criticised. However, being passionate does not imply being ‘immoral’ for the time. She might have found society dull, she is also aware of the duty and dedication that is wanted of a wife and that is why she wants to adore her husband. This does not imply that she would have approved of giving in to sexual passion on its own, i.e. Jane staying with Rochester out of wedlock. D. Waller of the Leeds Metropolitan University points that out: ‘Like St John Rivers, she is not immune to sexual feeling but recognises it for the temptation it is. The reference to sexuality as insanity is a clear link to Bertha Mason but Jane rejects it where Bertha did (or could) not and, shorn of her excessive passions, is awarded a happy, contented and conventional future as Rochester's wife/nurse and the mother of his children.’ She also takes R.B. Martin’s opinion that Jane might want self-determination, but that she is ‘not New Woman enough to reject conventional morality’. Waller goes on to state that ‘though characters like Jane are fictional, the situations they face and the motivations with which they act are given to them by real authors who must be influenced by their own societies.’ She cites Hardy as an example of rejecting that morality, which was a very powerful middle-class phenomenon. As it is known he faced widespread criticism as a result of that. Jane was a character that adhered both to the laws of God and man, but that knows passion as well, although she sees it as a temptation. Thus she does reflect Victorian morality, as Waller says, but is self-confident and passionate (controversial) at the same time. As the Quakers Jane sees a marriage as a bond that is made out of love, and should not be put asunder by man, and consequently leaves Rochester when the role of wife is considered as filled. If love implies marriage, then she cannot tell Rochester that she loves him anymore, because behind marriage and love there is only left sexual passion, which is no more than temptation.

The temptation Jane flees when she leaves Rochester is then the sexual temptation she faces and that will cause her downfall if she gives in to it. I gave possible outcomes before… Sexual passion in the Stoic sense is neither good nor bad in itself (like beauty), but it should be a means to a good end and thus sexual passion only has its place in a marriage where it serves as a uniting force that has good results (children) and which doesn’t have its place out of marriage because it has illegitimate children, who are considered as inferior, as a consequence.

The dilemma you quote does not turn out to be one. His voice ‘spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.’ and ‘ seemed [the] night [before] to summon [her].’ Jane concludes that Rochester is in need and returns to him with that conviction, none else. At that moment temptation is not relevant as she feels his need and not sexual passion as such. We should also acknowledge that the voice she hears is indeed his, and that his cry was uttered after a prayer where he asked God to join his Jane believing that she was dead, which makes both his call and her return legitimate to moral standards and not inspired by sexual passion. In contradiction to what you think, she initially returns not to be with him, but ‘to grope an outlet from [the] cloud of doubt, and find the open day of certainty.’ as to a marriage with St John. She only makes preparations for a short trip. These three reasons should be sufficient to dismiss any temptation theories, although St John still adheres to that, of course unaware of how the voice sounded and prejudiced towards Rochester because of what he heard happened.
Furthermore, the lines you quote from chapter 34 are taken out of context, because they are a part of a conversation. Jane at that point has come to Thornfield in the conviction that Rochester is in need, and to seek the truth God will show her in relation to a marriage with St John. When she hears of the death of Bertha and blinded Rochester, she follows her path to Fearndean and believes Rochester will instantly claim her as his own, dismissing any marriage with St John. She gives him a hint:

‘And you will stay with me?’
‘Certainly—unless you object. I will be your neighbour, your nurse, your housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your companion—to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live.’
‘[Mr Rochester] replied not: he seemed serious—abstracted; he sighed; he half-opened his lips as if to speak: he closed them again. I felt a little embarrassed. Perhaps I had too rashly over-leaped conventionalities; and he, like St. John, saw impropriety in my inconsiderateness. I had indeed made my proposal from the idea that he wished and would ask me to be his wife: an expectation, not the less certain because unexpressed, had buoyed me up, that he would claim me at once as his own. But no hint to that effect escaping him and his countenance becoming more overcast, I suddenly remembered that I might have been all wrong, and was perhaps playing the fool unwittingly; and I began gently to withdraw myself from his arms—but he eagerly snatched me closer.
…
‘I will think what you like, sir: I am content to be only your nurse, if you think it better.’
‘But you cannot always be my nurse, Janet: you are young—you must marry one day.’
‘I don’t care about being married.’
‘You should care, Janet: if I were what I once was, I would try to make you care—but—a sightless block!’
‘He relapsed again into gloom. I, on the contrary, became more cheerful, and took fresh courage: these last words gave me an insight as to where the difficulty lay; and as it was no difficulty with me, I felt quite relieved from my previous embarrassment. I resumed a livelier vein of conversation.’

After giving her hint he doesn’t reply and she starts to doubt his feelings towards her and she decides to try something: to ‘gently withdraw [herself] from his arms’, but that is not what he wants and he holds on to her, which supplies her with an idea that she further needs to explore: namely that he doesn’t believe that she wants to marry him. A woman of now would be able to take matters in her own hands, but Jane needs to convince him because she can’t ask (which is still preferred nowadays!). He asks her whether he should only entertain fatherly feelings for her and tries to get her opinion about it, but she doesn’t know what he wants (wants to spare herself the disappointment) and so provides him with the reply above. ‘I don’t care about being married’ does not at all refer to another (unconventional) morality of Jane herself, but refers only to the subject Rochester starts. Both want to know what the other thinks about a marriage, but both are not prepared to suffer great disappointment or embarrassment. Rochester doesn’t dare to propose a second time, fearing that she will leave again and Jane can’t ask, but is convinced that he wants her to be his wife, although he doesn’t dare to ask, and maybe (but that is only speculation) she rather wants to stay and do God’s work in attending to him than marry another and be unhappy. As she is independent she can do what she likes and does not even have to accept wages from him. And then, of course, he replies something that provides her with the answer to her query: ‘You should care, Janet: if I were what I once was, I would try to make you care—but—a sightless block!’ She becomes more cheerful as she now knows where the difficulty lies: his eyesight and his withered strength, in short his physical state which he considers as a problem, but which it is not to her. The same conversation of pussyfooting around continues on his side: ‘Am I hideous, Jane?’; ‘Who the deuce have you been with?’ and the same again. Sadly for him she has now employed another tactic: to tease him and finally to make him jealous by telling him of St John so that he cracks in the end: ‘Very, sir: you always were, you know.’; ‘Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred times better people; possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in your life: quite more refined and exalted.’ and ‘You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till to-morrow.’ And it works because there is one thing he absolutely wants to know that night before she goes to bed: ‘were there only ladies in the house where you have been?’! Unfortunately for him, she leaves him to wonder about it and starts to tell about St John during their walk the next day. She employs the same tactics as he did when he wanted to make her madly in love with him. He used the weakness of women for beauty by courting the beautiful Ingram, and she now uses the ‘ablility’ of St John as a handsome, clever, un-maimed and not blind man to vex Rochester: ‘(Aside.) “Damn him!”—(To me.) “Did you like him, Jane?’. The surprise to him is all the greater when he realises that Jane doesn’t see anything in St John and that she is not engaged to him, nor will ever consent to that: ‘What, Jane! Is this true? Is such really the state of matters between you and Rivers?’ Although the competition has now left the building and his mind, he still doesn’t dare to propose, because he is still not sure of how she perceives the prospect of becoming the wife of a maimed and sightless wreck… He goes on pussyfooting but rather about himself than about others and concludes with employing a metaphor for himself as the ‘lightning struck chestnut tree in Thornfield orchard’. The reply Jane gives, which features the positive points of the lightning truck tree as a safe base for younger plants (undoubtedly her and possible children), gives him a little more comfort, but still doesn’t make him sure enough to expect a yes if he should propose. So he starts with the friends-question, he hears her hesitation in replying and ceases the moment. And for the first time brings up the concept of a wife, as if he has choice, as if he would consider another to take up that role but her. She doesn’t want to reply to a question that hasn’t been asked and drives him to the corner where he can’t do anything else but ask plainly whether she would marry him. The moment she says ‘choose then, sir – [I]she who loves you best’, is not only a declaration of love from her side, but it is also as much as saying ‘choose me’, and it is that that supplies him with the courage to ask her finally. He replies that ‘at least [he] will choose – her who [he] love[s] best’ and pops the question. With the first sentence he doesn’t only declare his love for her, but also intimates that he got her hint and employs the analogy like she did when elaborating the metaphor of the chestnut tree. However, he still asks her several times whether she is sure about it, but then finally ends up eager to get it over with as soon as possible. Rather than waiting three weeks for the bans to be called, he wants to buy a license… Both Jane and Rochester seem to be afraid of the consequences if they are too eager or too fast. Mainly Rochester has a lot to loose if he is too rash. He doesn’t want her to leave him because of his own eagerness, like the first time. Having asked three days before that to die to be reunited with his Jane, he doesn’t want to offend her and rather has her stay as his friend and maybe nurse than to frighten her away and see nothing of her again. Jane hasn’t got anything to loose, but is in the impossibility to ask him to marry her because of conventions. This of course, supplied Brontë with a nice possibility to make a parallel with Rochester’s first proposal. Although Jane’s inability to ask herself plainly maybe results from 19th century convention, it is also to be noticed that even nowadays people do not want to be rejected when proposing marriage, certainly not if they love the person and are attached to him/her. While Charlotte herself rejected 3 proposals on logical grounds, not all men can have been distraught about it. Henry Nussey only proposed to another 6 months later, Mr Price proposed after a day (which implies not serious love), only Mr Taylor seems to have been at a loss and returned to England from India after Charlotte had died in 1856 and married, but not happily. Nevertheless, while others might have taken the chance at the time to be rejected, because they had nothing more than the desire to marry in itself and affection/esteem for their prospective partner (lik Nussey), Rochester and Jane definitely do not want to part anymore and do not want to take the chance of being rejected and ruining the relationship. Therefore it is inevitable that Rochester, as the one who has to pop the question, needs to be totally sure of the reply, much as a man in this day and age would like to be.

Initially Jane returns to Rochester because he is in need and when Bertha has died all morality-issues have reached their conclusion. So the ‘I don’t care about being married’-reply of Jane cannot be a reply inspired by a certain moral conviction, because there is no ground for it. It is an inherent part of a conversation where both Jane and Rochester want to get out of the other what they want to hear without addressing the issue directly which could cause embarrassment or worse. I am sure that this happens a lot nowadays and is timeless in its approach.

I keep insisting on the bigger picture because there is a relation between the bigger picture we get first and the detail that follows. A consistent detail means a consistent bigger result while a big picture implies consistent details. In my opinion there is no reason for Jane to leave Rochester after their attempted wedding, but Victorian morality which disappeared with Queen Victoria herself in 1901. (Waller) I know you do not believe that so enlighten me.

Jane’s rejection of St John’s proposal doesn’t imply she rejected Evangelical Christianity, because she did want to go and preach, only not as his wife because he can’t love her properly as she should like him to do. Even if it were rejecting the Evangelical austere approach, which was in my opinion rejected before when Mr Brocklehurst got dismissed from Lowood, it does not equal the rejection of all things religious. There were numerous other ways - like Church of England, Quakerism, Lutheranism, Catholicism and others – to turn to religion, that didn’t equal austerity. St John refused all passion and if Jane married she would have to give that up. It is pretty much the same problem as Charlotte related to Ellen about Henry, her brother. Jane wants passion and will have it and therefore does not consider marrying St John because he is too austere for her, however the preaching-idea does not totally repel her. Although unlike Charlotte Jane eventually does doubt her decision, which Charlotte doesn’t. If it would be God’s will, Jane would consent to an austere life, but as she gets Rochester’s call she starts to be convinced of the opposite. Her doubts get taken away when she learns of the death of Bertha, because surely God would not have sent her the voice if Rochester, being in the situation he is, didn’t need her. Thus God required her to do His work in England and not in India. Taking the Stoic view, it is clear that Jane happy equals the following of Universal Reason and so it can be argued that ‘following Universal Reason’ for Jane was following the path to Rochester and restoring him to happiness and his finding of Universal Reason, within himself. St John, at the end is also happy, as he followed Universal Reason to India and still follows it there. The rejection of St John by Jane is then the divergence of St John and Jane’s two roads to Universal Truth.
In my opinion it is possible to see characters and plots in different ways, but they need to be consistent with the bigger picture as they are only details. It is for example totally impossible to have on the one side a benevolent Rochester and on the other side a malevolent version of him. We can try to understand his logic, his reasons and we can pity him, but he stays a King Lear who is narcissistic and pathetic (in his first appearance). Jane can be controversial for her time, can be self-confident and passionate, but it does not imply that she rejects all conventions. As Charlotte says in her preface, ‘conventionality is not morality’ and thus the opposite is true: ‘morality is not conventionality’. Therefore if Jane rejects convention (Bertha as the mad other in the marriage) it does not mean that she rejects morality (marriage as opposed to being a mistress). The atypicality shouldn’t exaggerated. It certainly doesn’t apply to all issues in the plot, but only to a few. As she said in her preface there are things that are good in (her) society, but also things that are no good, Jane Eyre then revolves around this issue to a certain extent. It is not black-and-white, but rather grey. Very philosophical indeed…

The moon-issue I am busy with and I need more research on it. I’ll do that in connection with the drawings.

Je vous donne également mes melleurs voeux pour la nouvelle année et j'espère d'avoir plus de discussion comme celle-ci pendant 2009.
Je vous remercie pour le compliment que vous m'accordez. Le français n'est pas ma première langue car je suis flamande et je parle le néerlandais, mais en Belgique on reçoit des cours Français depuis 11 ans. C'est certainement une très belle langue et je suis ravie de la connaître et de pouvoir lire les oeuvres de Dumas et Hugo dans leur langue originelle. Je vous souhaite beaucoup de plaisir et à la prochaine fois!

[Peripatetics]

How very dull!
I'm depressed that I find so little to disagree in your last note; that is 95% of it, leaving very little room for debate. Perhaps I should switch topics to Hardy or Lawrence, perhaps to Woolf. Could you recommend some French writers that are controversial?

As to “the alleged anti-Christianness of Jane Eyre”, I find it puzzling and generally put it down to lack of attentive reading, prejudices of the reader and not what Charlotte wrote. I try to make the distinction between the beliefs of the authoress and the moral tone of the composition. In Austen it is not difficult, in Charlotte Bronte one has to be careful and In Emily Bronte it becomes very hard. Perhaps Woolf's classification that the Brontes novels are prose-poetics holds a clue. That they are not to be seen in historic-societal context but in the mood that they evoke. And reading mood is very subjective, we bring a lot of garbage to the interpretation.
Expanding on the E.Rigby quote, you put it into a broader perspective. I tried to indicate only her prejudicial view on aesthetic judgment. You have well researched that as Lady Eastlake she was fighting a rearguard action against social change and using religious arguments to justify her views. Not surprising of the Victorians but it seems that present day arguments of “the alleged anti-Christianness of Jane Eyre”, have a similar basis.
You certainly are thorough in your research, though lamentable in conclusions (une petite blague svp) and I shall try to concentrate on the 5% that you have left me.

It would seem that we approach the analysis from non complementary perspectives: yours is a search for Christian, and an analogy literary based in Biblical and mine is much narrower based on the poetics of the text and where I have to invoke 'the big picture' on classical, pre-Christian myth. When I give examples of criticism, I try to give a historically balanced example but I'll plead guilty that aesthetic interest me more than ideology. To mention a specific example: 'atypical' to describe Jane. My connotation was not societal but rather allegorical, that Jane evolves so to speak in moonlight, that she foreshadows event to come. That she is the avatar of Selene or the other way around if you please.

When you invoke the surroundings of preacher's daughter, marked Bibles and church going to contain, note, not explain, Charlotte's religiosity within Christian bounds, I feel uneasy at the narrowness of vision. Consider that Emily was brought up in the same surroundings, exposed to the same Christian influences, yet Emily is defined as:
“ She sees Christians as 'wretches', 'howling' empty praise in a 'Brotherhood of misery' and their 'madness daily maddening' her. Brontë claims she stood in the glow of heaven and the 'glare' of hell and forged her own path between 'scraph's song and demon's groan'. Only 'thy soul alone' can know the truth, and her appeal to 'My thoughtful Comforter' is not an appeal to God, but to her enigmatic male muse which governs her spiritual belief. He is epitomised by the life-giving 'soft air' and 'thawwind melting quietly' and lovingly around her. She is grateful that her 'visitants' allow her 'savage heart' to grow 'meek' and allow her to conform to the role she is forced to play within an ordered Christian and patriarchal system. Her poetry focuses on the betrayals of mind and body, as she seeks to find answers to questions that her society does not permit her to ask. Brontë's religious symbolism and unique spirituality show a form of pantheistic atheism, although she continued to attend a church 'whilst sitting as motionless as a statue' and it seems that this careful passivity is juxtaposed with uncontained anger and frustrated passions (Chitham2, p. 156).”1

Harold Bloom writes:”The furious energy that is loosed in Wuthering Heights is precisely Gnostic; its aim is to get back to the original Abyss, before the creation-fall. Like Blake, Emily Bronte identifies her imagination with the Abyss, and her pneuma or breath-soul with the Alien God, who is antithetical to the God of the creeds,”3

Now I'm not suggesting that Charlotte's religiosity is the same as Emily's but I'll argue that a character in an aesthetic work is not limited by the authoress beliefs (“An author never writes a book totally alien to him/herself”) or that she/he has to reflect such beliefs. Therefore that Jane is not the sum of Christian theology, and that when Rigby sensed a 'heathen' element in Jane Eyre, that it was a valid aesthetic observation quite apart from Lady Eastlake's political views.

Your synopsis,”Jane suffering as a child results from both her aunt’s ignorance of her Universal Reason within her (unkindness), and Jane’s rebellion against her lot (failure to follow Universal Reason); a lot that will allow her to meet life-changing Helen, to meet her future husband, to gain family and a fortune.”, is unsatisfactory, hardly worth while to write a book about or the book to be read for one hundred fifthly years. Nor does it address your characterization of Rochester as Satanic. But on that latter.
When you write that Mrs. Reed “Sadly she dies before she finds ‘peace of mind’ or apatheia, without passion/suffering, a state of mind attained by the applying of Logic, reflection and concentration.”, keep in mind that St. John Rivers, who had all the above, Jane's observation - “I was sure St. John Rivers--pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was--had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all understanding:”, died in India not having found this peace.
Apatheia is not a substitute for love.



Notes

1. Sharon Wiseman, Emily Brontë's Muse and Symbolism
Victorian Web

2. Chitham, Edward. A Life of Emily Brontë. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.

3.Harold Bloom, Introduction , Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations.



Je pense que nous avons dépassé les 5% mes. Toutefois, votre jogging citant de Bruxelles ma mémoire: «Mon père a terminé ses études en Loevain et a été littéralement affamé, épuisé son allocation, ses amis étaient dans les rues pour les chats errants, dont les Belges considérée comme un mets délicat, mais il ne serait pas participer. Un mauvais économiste.
Mes excuses vous appelle une Wallon. j'aime un vieux Gouda, mais préfèrent un Brie.

[kiki1982]

I will only give you a short reply, because I am doing something on Sleeping Beauty for Bittterfly...

The point I wanted to make about the anti-Christianism in Jane Eyre is just this:
It is not because Jane herself and the book on the whole go a little off the track regarding mainstream Christianity, that it is totally the opposite. People often see it like that, but it is not true. Hardy is a perfect example: he didn't criticise God, but he criticised the church, which is a totally different thing. He stopped writing because people refused to understand...

About Emily: apparently the book Miss Wooler gave her about Epictetus made a big impression on her because she started to live like a Stoic. It doesn't imply that she didn't believe, rather the opposite I would say, maybe even more than mainstream Christians (hence the wretches). Christians, and certainly Catholics, are often criticised for the fact that they pray but don't know to what and put too much emphasis on the outside rather than on the inside (faith itself). If you ask them a few questions they fail to answer them in a satisfactory manner. I think that opinion about Christians being wretches was rather aimed at the others rather than at her and the others together; it was aimed at mainstream Christians who go to church, but don't have a clue why, rather than at her herself as a Christian...

I never said that Christian theology is the most important principle in Jane Eyre. There is a pagan element in it like there is a Christian element and both (should) co-exist peacefully. The one should not be picked over the other.

The Stoic view does address Rochester's satanic characterisation:
Satan himself used to be an angel living in heaven. Yet he was unsatisfied with his (inferior) role and decided to stand up against his creator and master (God) trying to become king of heaven himself. God was so angry he banned him and his accomplices from heaven. They chose hell by themselves and then caused the Fall of Man. Satan and his accomplices will have to suffer/deceive/etc. for ever to establish a kingdom, because they wear the stamp of demons. People prefer God and heaven because they are good and so they will always try to chase Satan out of sight. The story was related by Milton in Paradise Lost, a book very popular with the Brontës.
The satanic characterisation of Rochester actually suits this very well because, like Satan, he refuses his lot and rebells. As he is a person, fortunately, he is allowed to make mistakes and can be forgiven.

About St John:
He does find apatheia. The sentence you quote is from earlier in the book. At the end he has certainly found peace of mind and is not suffering. 'No fear of death will darken St. John’s last hour: his mind will be unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith steadfast.' That seems to me as total peace of mind: having faith, having no fear, being carefree. Like Jane and Rochester have bliss, St John also has bliss. He is full of the joy of our Lord. (I don't want to sound too Christian, but I believe it is like that for St John). In St John's life there is no room for a wife, because the love he can feel for a woman, even his big love Rosamond, is smaller and lesser than the love he feels and gets back from God. He is not happier with Rosamond than without her, so he can substitute her with Jane because Jane is a better companion to go to India with. In my view he has over him this veil of total peace. (If you ever met a priest you'll realise what I mean...)

[Peripatetics]

In (Forum thread: Mr. Rochester #1) kiki1982 writes “....the treatment of Bertha in Jane Eyre was not at all a noble one, and that, as a consequence, the character of Edward Rochester didn’t have to be seen in a noble light, but more on the contrary, in a very bad one, as a character that has lost the way totally to be made, by the end of the book, to find the good way back. The treatment of Bertha and the goodness or badness of Rochester are inextricably linked with each other: if the one is positive, the other one is and vice versa.”

The principal charge that kiki1982 makes against the treatment of Bertha is that 'more humane' confinement was available in the Quaker Mental Hospitals such as The Retreat, but conveniently ignoring that Bertha is characterized violently insane, requiring restrain.

In 1792 a Friend (Quaker) in York, England had a mental crisis and was put in the York Asylum. Friends were not allowed to visit her. She died within a few weeks. Friends then investigated the conditions there, and found that the patients were treated worse than animals. In fact, because the patients couldn't think clearly, they were thought to be like animals.
The Retreat was set in the countryside outside of York, surrounded by gardens and some cows. There were no bars or gratings on the windows, and no patients were manacled. Friends ran The Retreat with little medical involvement, using Moral Treatment. The principles of treatment included:1
Self-control - patients were rewarded if successful in controlling themselves.
Resocialization
Harmonious environment - a building that would lift the spirits, surrounded by natural beauty
Physical nourishment - high food standards
Useful occupation
Staff as role models

The approach of The Retreat was widely derided at the time. In contrast Bedlam which was a state institution for the insane is described as - The patients were often manacled to the floor. It was clearly a prison, rather than a hospital concentrating on curing the insane that it housed. Medical treatment at this time was largely ineffectual, and at this time patients were discharged after 12 months whether they were cured or not.

Charlotte clearly describes Bertha as violently insane, and her treatment at Thornfield is humane by the standards of the times, hardly justifying the judgment of Rochester as demonic. Why such a subjective judgment?
Perhaps the answer lies in the references that kiki1982 makes: predominantly theological when Rochester self characterizes - “you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: (JE chapter 37)” but more importantly when she writes: “About Rochester and women: Rochester is, up till now, the only character I really love. I don't know, I also swoon over him.” (Forum thread: Mr. Rochester #6) Physiologically, love and hate are kindred emotions.

And aside from the theological allusion of Satanism, she makes the argument that, “ the goodness or badness of Rochester are inextricably linked with each other” with the concept of 'noble' behavior. I shall make the argument, purely in the context of the novel, that kiki1982's interpretation is faulty and Rochester's actions can be viewed as 'noble'.

I find the use of the word 'noble' in connection with Bertha's treatment and the character of Rochester, puzzling, of unnatural usage in the English language. Even more so in the American idiom.
The word has its origin in the French literary tradition of about 1830–40, as 'nobility obliges' and the denotation is - the moral obligation of those of high birth, powerful social position, etc., to act with honor, kindliness, generosity, etc. But the connotation is very dependent on the cultural context, and different in French than in English. In other words, the French 'nobles' does not translate well.

Using the example of Battle of Agincourt, where the flower of France's mounted aristocrats, semonce des nobles to vanquish the English, were vanquished by peasants wielding long-bows, one senses in the word, the futility and sadness of a lost cause. The French suffered a catastrophic defeat, not just in terms of the sheer numbers killed, but also because French nobility was decimated, and in this context, even the connotation of the word changed.

When Jane sees the burned Thornfield Hall, the innkeeper at the Rochester Arms describes the night of the fire:
“ and he went up to the attics when all was burning above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And then they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we could see it streaming against the flames as she stood. I witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through the sky-light on to the roof; we heard him call 'Bertha!' We saw him approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement."2

Thus using Charlotte's own words, Rochester's behavior is consistent with the dictionary definition - the moral obligation of those of high birth, .... to act with honor, kindliness, generosity. Rochester's morality is reinforced by his concern for those who had served him previous to the fire, - “He sent Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: “2

“ I'll give Mrs. Poole two hundred a year to
live here with MY WIFE, as you term that fearful hag: “3

"It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a way, ma'am: he wouldn't leave the house till every one else was out before him.”2

If we are to analyze the text, we have to keep to the text as narrowly as possible. When we deviate, follow up allusions, they have to be literary references, so that the reader can check on the interpretation. For the most part kiki1982 does this, what I find objectionable is the inclusion of personal beliefs as explanations for Jane's motivations and more so of Charlotte's. An example is when kiki1982 asks - “what reason does he mean? His reason or God’s reason?” - as in the following segment.

“Rochester also keeps believing his opinion about the fact that he doesn’t have a wife, even after the wedding has been cancelled (59). Admittedly, he yells at Jane to see reason, but what reason does he mean? His reason or God’s reason? His personal reason or Jane’s reason? He refuses to see what Jane considers as reason, and so what decision she has already taken. When he insists she will be Mrs Rochester (60), he refuses to listen both to Jane and to God himself. Jane mentions once that she thought she heard him swear. When he falls off his horse in chapter XII (61)”. (Forum thread: Mr. Rochester #2)

“These are all very plausible reasons to believe that Charlotte made him demonic, so then it would not be so unrealistic to claim that Rochester didn’t lock his wife up in a humane manner.” (Forum thread: Mr. Rochester #2)

To claim that Charlotte made Rochester demonic, then use Bertha's confinement as proof that Rochester was not noble, is a circular argument.

Notes

1.http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/quakerism/23138.
2.(JE, chapter 36)

Ma chere ami, interprètent ce que nous lisons différemment, mais je suis heureux que vos notes me donne quelque chose penser environ. Cependant je pense que nous avons épuisé le sujet. J'essayerai de récapituler dans la note de M. Rochester. Veuillez agréer que c'est seulement un désaccord sincère.

[kiki1982]

reply in Mr Rochester...

[Peripatetics]

My dear kiki,
You do not fail to astonish and amuse, a rare gift. Yet how can someone intelligent and well read display such naiveté? “...a knight was supposed to pursue the good and the truth, be generous, be courteous and serve.” and “In short chivalric Love: Good, Truth and Servitude. A Love with a capital L.” Permit me a small smile.
May I kindly remind you, if we use the Teutonic Knights as an example par excellance, of an established order of knighthood, in the sense of real, not of fancy as in Lancelot and Guenevere (interesting www.genevier.de/html/guinevere.html) , that the Russians at Lake Peipus would not see them as 'pursuing the good and the truth', nor would the Arabs of Jerusalem! They were aristocratic butchers, killing and rapping in good conscience all who were not of their own kind. And they self-referenced who were of their own kind (Charlotte does a good job of describing Blanche of that kind). For the matter things have not changed much since the 11th. century.

You did a good job of filling in the details of the battle of Agincourt. We agree. The English were despicable but smart, the French noble and stupid. You are good at making moral judgments, which is worse? However my intent was not accuracy of history nor of reading Shakespearian poetics but of emphasis that with the destruction of the French nobility, the connotation of the word noble changed. Is it not true that the English prefer the word aristocratic to noble? Therefore the use the word noble with Rochester was somewhat jarring.

But let's return to Jane Eyre, svp. much more interesting! When you write: “And it is also like that with Rochester: to Mrs Fairfax he may be a ‘liberal landlord’, but it does not at all imply that he has to be kind to everyone. You cannot possibly find what he did to Jane very kind… If this is the case, then Rochester caring for his servants, rescuing them from the fire, settling an annuity on their life does not at all imply that he was kind to Bertha. “

Yes it does! Most certainly more than kind – when he risk his own life and limb to rescue someone whom he despised; that goes way beyond common decency or nobles oblige. We glimpse the pneuma, of personal as opposed to civil morality, of the impossibility of labeling him as 'demonic' in the sense of doing harm to others in clear conscience. But let Charlotte's own words:”Mr. Rochester has a thoughtful nature and a very feeling heart; he is neither selfish nor self-indulgent; he is ill-educated, misguided; errs, when he does err, through rashness and inexperience: he lives for a time as too many other men live, but being radically better than most men, he does not like that degraded life, and is never happy in it. He is taught the severe lessons of experience and has sense to learn wisdom from them. Years improve him; the effervescence of youth foamed away, what is really good in him still remains. His nature is like wine of a good vintage: time cannot sour, but only mellows him. Such at least was the character I meant to pourtray.” A definitive characterization of Rochester ?
And stop trying to make Jane into Eliza. Jane's spirit is too broad, too unruly to be confined in a nunnery or jammed into a straight jacket of Victorian morality. She is a woman.
You could do worse than read Jane Eyre for the poetry. For that is what Charlotte wrote.

[kiki1982]

I do not display naivete. I think rather someone else fails to see the true extent of knighthood and its role in the Crusades… When that code was established in the 11th century it didn’t come out of thin air. It was namely greatly inspired by the church. They had seen Europe slide into the mud after the Romans. At the time of the Romans there had been state structure, roads, unity of measurements, trade over the whole continent, taxes, water-pipes and drains, well-structured cities with baths/fountains… In short, that empire thrived because of its structure and the possibilities that structure offered. A few hundred years later Europe consisted out of ‘empires’ where knights fought each other continuously, where the economy did not work because each knight was allowed his own currency and own measurements, crops were regularly destroyed by wars, men continuously died… A continuous drainage, for what purpose? In the meantime there was, at the other side of Europe a religion and a people that was much more organised, that seemed to sweep the Christians back to the West. That was both superior in organisation and science. The church wanted to do something about that before they came to their doorstep. But, for that they needed everyone to stop fighting each other in order to face the enemy together. What better than a moral code?

It was the Byzantine emperor who asked the pope in the 11th century to intervene with the Turks, and the First Crusade was called for. Indeed, here again, the knights were defending the weak (in their thoughts). While we might now regard it as racist, then they regarded it as something that could bring you to heaven and granted you absolution for your sins.
The chivalric code stands at the centre of the crusades as the base for a whole new society, it even made the nations we know now. Without the chivalric code, there would have been a lot more countries. The chivalric code is not only fiction. Far from. It was a design, started in fiction, that came into reality and shaped it.

I wouldn’t be able to say if the English prefer the word ‘aristocratic’ to ‘noble’… What I do know is that your conception of ‘noble’ is too narrow, not philosophical enough, and too much interpreted in a modern context. It is too narrow to call the Crusades not fighting for the weak.
I say it again: Rochester goes through a transformation before Jane returns. It is essential to acknowledge that, because without it the note of hope and the good feeling of the reader at the end are lost. The passage of Charlotte’s letter you quote expresses that transformation: it gives Rochester indeed a good nature and a feeling heart, but, like Darcy, he was not corrected in his faulty views, which makes him go the bad road for some time.

Before the fire there is no real generosity of mind in Rochester. There is no true kindness. There is only control, no devotion. It is only after Jane has left that he senses that he was wrong, rash, controlling and that he realises that nothing really deep came from his side, no real devotion to Jane. When she returns, it is quite different. From that point of view you do not provide a consistent argument for his constancy.

Do I sense a feminist argument in unruly Jane?

By the way, from even a feminist point of view, it is totally implausible and inconsistent to call Bertha’s treatment as humane, if she is the locked up other of Jane in a marriage… Given the circumstantial evidence it is clear and obvious that we cannot consider Bertha as treated humanely.
Jane Eyre is indeed very poetical in its language, but a truly good novel does not stop there… Charlotte was much too educated to write a shallow book that should only be considered for its poetry.

[Peripatetics]

Dear kiki,
When you write that: “I do not display naivete. I think rather someone else fails to see the true extent of knighthood and its role in the Crusades”, we are at the crux of understanding, whether of historical facts or literature. We can dance around the issue but we shall not come to a consensus. Not that it's bad only that we have to face the futility; at best it is a cocktail conversation, not a seminar. Searching for truth is analogous to the film by Akira Kurosawa, a heinous crime and its aftermath are recalled from differing points of view.
For me the Crusades were a heinous crime, for you the flowering of knighthood defined by a moral code as defined by the Church. That the slaughter was sanctified as “as something that could bring you to heaven and granted you absolution for your sins.”, is not a relative view of now and then, rather an indictment of the moral core of a social order. Similarly as the Concentration camp is of Nazism and the Gulag is of Communism. Let's not forget the 20th. century past where the SS Panzer regiments also had a “chivalric code stands at the centre of the crusades (lebensraum) as the base for a whole new society'” or the medieval past where Pope Innocent also ordered a crusade against the Albigenses, which successfully subdued the Cathar heresy in France but at a great cost in life and blood.
Like in Roshomon we recall the truth differently. Mine is a skeptical search, yours is based on ideological, Christian, certainty. It is not as you wrote: “ I think rather someone else fails to see the true extent of knighthood and its role in the Crusades”.

We have strayed too far from Jane Eyre and I apologize for the harshness. Perhaps I'm too impetuous. Sorry.
On a lighter note - “Do I sense a feminist argument in unruly Jane?”
No, but admiration in Sapho's sense, not that of the feminist. You figure out the difference!
“I say it again: Rochester goes through a transformation before Jane returns. It is essential to acknowledge that, because without it the note of hope and the good feeling of the reader at the end are lost. “
And I say again: No to 'demonic' and no Rochester I / Rochester II. One Rochester only, who evolves, there is no transformation through redemption. As to “It is essential to acknowledge that, because without it the note of hope and the good feeling of the reader at the end are lost.”, not at all ma chere amie, not if you read Rochester as a tragic hero. However it seems that I'll have to lay out my argument in detail.

[kiki1982]

It is clear that you fail to see everything in its context. As with Jane Eyre you take the Crusades out of its context of time, origin and society. They are not comparable to either the concentration camps or the gulags because they didn’t serve the same purpose. The concentration camps were designed to murder people mainly of a certain background in an industrial way (least cost, most result, win-win). (don’t think me a Nazi. I just present it to you as the Nazis thought it.) The gulags, to a lesser extent had the same goal, although I believe they were more concentrated on re-education with the ‘occasional’ death welcomed. (here again, I do not support this, I just present it as the Soviets probably considered it). The Crusades weren’t an industrial way to kill the Muslims, although it has been considered like that by some. The Crusades were a war against the Saracens/Turks/Muslims, a political war (to recover Asia Minor for Byzantium), which was made into a religious war by the church (in order to channel the violence bred into the medieval man, that paralysed society) because it was easier to play on the piety of the knights than it was to get them to help with a war halfway across Europe which didn’t even concern them. Given that Henry V of England couldn’t get nobility to come across the Channel for a war of succession, I don’t suppose that any man was ready to risk his life at the other end of the known world for someone else’s gain. Of course, if one presents it as a War of Faith and grants the ones that fight absolution for eternity, then it becomes all the more appealing. The church did a lot propaganda-wise for it as well, portraying Mohammed as a liar and magician, and drawing on the previous construction of ‘courtly love’, it made the ‘quest’ all the more appealing. This war certainly wasn’t intended to kill all Muslims, but rather to keep them out of Jerusalem. Admittedly, troops used to loot and kill in the cities, but that was done by the Muslims as well and was a common war-practice, fortunately long gone in the Western countries but still present in Africa (burning of villages in Sudan). You can consider crusades as a crime, but it still stands at the centre of knighthood, which is recognised by professors of medieval literature (a subject I studied in university). In a historical context those knights were fighting for the ‘weak Christians’ and for the ‘True Faith’. As I said in connection with Agincourt, nobility and chivalry can co-exist with conceit and material gain in practice, but that doesn’t imply that the situation in which it occurs is worse or better than a situation in which it doesn’t. Material gain was also at the centre of it all, but it doesn’t change chivalry and its code of honour. Richard the Lionhearted also went to the crusades and he was a ‘flower of knighthood’, as you put it. Frederick I Barbarossa as well. In a modern context the crusades are a manifestation of racism, but not in a medieval one. Medieval society was a strange one, as is its literature, and it needs a lot of background and (philosophical) study. Calling the crusades a crime against humanity is displaying an exceeding unawareness of the bases of medieval society as a whole.

Let me tell you something about the medieval (distorted) view of the world and powers of that world:

Peter was the first pope (or considered as). He was the favourite apostle of Jesus and therefore had jurisdiction (they believed). For them he was the representation of God on Earth, so to say. In the beginning the pope mainly served as someone who could solve conflicting messages amongst the different branches of Christianity. In other words he had no political power as the Empire was ruled by the Romans. Over time, however, the Roman Empire deteriorated and feudal wars broke out. The pope was threatened (personally) in Rome by the Lombards and decided to ask the Frankish king for help. For some or other reason, the pope then decided he wanted land (maybe to defend himself) and he got it through the falsification of a document. However, more than spiritual power he would not have in the rest of Europe. But by 800, when he (mistakenly) proclaimed Charlemagne emperor, he did make his image as the one to make or break an emperor. In the Middle Ages, the pope had become the institution of jurisdiction. To have the approval of the pope was to have the approval of God. The Scots asked their king to be anointed because the English then wouldn’t question the right of the Scots to have a king. As the pope had the ultimate jurisdiction, and naturally claimed he had the only True Faith (not anymore!), everything that went against the pope or his jurisdiction was considered as untrue, and even against God himself. As the Muslims challenged the True Faith by their own True Faith, (like the Cathars, although they went even further), they committed blasphemy, so to say. When the Byzantine empire and its capital was threatened politically by Muslims (we are talking armies), the pope plaid on his ultimate jurisdiction and the wish for warriors to fight. He made that political conflict a Holy War and shouted that ‘God Wills it!’ In medieval times there was no conception of the individual, the individual was irrelevant to the result, as was the detail to the larger picture, because everything came down on the afterlife, because life in itself was short. It does not mean that they wouldn’t start a war because of something stupid and unimportant, but because there was continuously that threat and the threat of disease and death, their place in heaven (so to say) was all-important. Everything was God, depended on God and was for God. Thus, the material gain and slaughter/war crimes beside the Crusades, was unimportant as it was the result (the conquering of Jerusalem) that was the only thing to be considered. Also in literature: the author was unimportant and copies of originals featured more things that happened, as did ‘translations’. A particularly funny thing is when in the genre of lives of saints, several saints seem to have done the same miracle, the one St Peter has done only 5 miracles in his life where a copy of the same work features 7. Miracles were swapped amongst saints and they all have the same kind of things happening to them in their childhoods. But copyright (the uniqueness of the individual and his work) was not considered as important because after all it was the result or the nature of the holy life of that person that was to be considered. And so, the additional miracles only contributed to the notion of that saint being definitely holy, disregarding whether actual miracles even happened. The same with the Arthurian novels or Troy novels: they were put into the library of nobles to prove a genealogical connection between the noble and king Arthur or the great heroes of the Trojan wars, only to strengthen the justified position of the noble in question. The conception of truth in medieval terms is not the same as the one we now have. The medieval way of thinking never existed before that and ceased to exist when the Renaissance kicked in with individualism and the Black Death. When the pope decided that he had had enough of nobles fighting and terrorising the peasant population, naturally, anything was good enough to have them stop and so used his moral power to ‘direct’ the violence towards the Turks and to attain peace in Western Europe. It was the end that had to be considered and not the means to it. Given that the pope was the representation of God on Earth, no hesitation was required.

The crusade against the Cathars was based (by the pope) on political grounds. He saw his power questioned by a set of beliefs that started to doubt prime Catholic dogmas. Yet, the church has always been very clever at turning the minds of people and thus proclaimed that nobles could claim the grounds in the Languedoc. They went in herds… Of course, this place was closer by than Jerusalem, so they only needed a little persuasion… Although it might seem like material gain that doesn’t belong to a great result, it was still ground that would go down the generations, and thus they were contributing to their own kingdom.

The Crusades are not a mere slaughter. They were inspired by politics, power and riches. They were fought by people, and no man or woman is above material gain and power (not even the pope as it happens). Thus, the chivalric code, is to be considered, but with moderation as it can never be as perfect as in literature. To dismiss it as something mere fictional, however, is not sceptical enough. In literature, it should rather be seen as a good model according to which a good knight should act, part o the propaganda of the church.

In opposition to what you think, I do not see it from a Christian point of view. You rather seem to view it from a preconceived negativity that fails to embrace the historical context and fails to be prepared to banish any vaguely modern beliefs relative to racism/Muslims/religion/war. Contrary to in America, religion on the continent is not a determining factor. Religious people do not colour their interpretations of anything with religious beliefs. Although there are Catholic universities, they do not forbid nor discourage the study of texts of other religions, nor do they distance themselves from Darwinism or genetic research. You will never hear a European president or king say ‘God bless you’. It is something that does not fit in a political, social or scientific context. Thus, accusing me of seeing history and this work with a Christian preconception is against my European nature and I do not accept it as an argument.

If you want a further discussion on anything in connection with this, I refer you to the religion-forum.

Now something to the point.

I still do not think that you provide me with a consistent argument to refute Rochester’s demonic nature. If, however, you find the word too much religiously inspired (which is a misconception), then we can still agree that Rochester is a fundamentally bad character in his first appearance. If that is not the case, how do you interpret the Pilgrim’s Progress- and Paradise Lost-allusions? Not to mention King Lear… You still haven’t supplied me with a consistent argument against it. The context of Bertha’s treatment should be a good indicator for Rochester’s character and the perception we should have of him, initially.

If there is no transformation in Rochester, how do you see his speech:
‘I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.
“Some days since: nay, I can number them—four; it was last Monday night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy—sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night—perhaps it might be between eleven and twelve o’clock—ere I retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might soon be taken from this life, and admitted to that world to come, where there was still hope of rejoining Jane.
“I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged—that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart’s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words—‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’”

It is inconceivable that you keep insisting in it not being true. Unless inspired by a profound and misplaced dislike of all things and faint notions pious, I cannot comprehend why you keep denying something that is so obvious.
I am waiting eagerly for your consistent argument.

[Peripatetics]

Dear kiki,

Thank you very much for the discourse on Medieval history. A bit too brief and a little controversial but I enjoyed it, hope that the other Forum readers did as much. But some parts, such as “As I said in connection with Agincourt, nobility and chivalry can co-exist with conceit and material gain in practice, but that doesn’t imply that the situation in which it occurs is worse or better than a situation in which it doesn’t.”, simply goes over my head. Perhaps you could parse and diagram it?
Now your gloss on the medieval Christianity: “ Everything was God, depended on God and was for God. Thus, the material gain and slaughter/war crimes beside the Crusades, was unimportant as it was the result (the conquering of Jerusalem) that was the only thing to be considered.” is very good. However when you said: ”It is clear that you fail to see everything in its context. As with Jane Eyre you take the Crusades out of its context of time, origin and society. “, does it imply that you read Jane Eyre in this context?
Narcissistically I'll protest that I try to read Jane Eyre in the context of Victorian society but I'll leave it to others whether I succeed.
Now your statement:”The crusade against the Cathars was based (by the pope) on political grounds.” sounds very much like something president Bush would have made. I mistakingly viewed it in a moral context, and I'm truly grateful that :”You will never hear a European president or king say ‘God bless you’. “But a small aside, do you consider the English as European?
In the context of the Bosnian war, your statement: ”Contrary to in America, religion on the continent is not a determining factor. Religious people do not colour their interpretations of anything with religious beliefs.”, leaves me a bit puzzled. And thank you for your advise to take my arguments to the religious forum. I'll have to admit that it crossed my mind when you wrote in analysis of Jane Eyre: “Rochester needs to find ‘Christ’ (to make him a better person), in the shape of his plain and poor servant, like the shepherds find the Messiah in the form of ‘a baby lying wrapped in his swaddling clothes, in a manger’ (Luke 2: 12-13). “, yet I resisted the impulse out of 'chivalric' concern not to offend a lady.

- Now something to the point. - as you said.

“ then we can still agree that Rochester is a fundamentally bad character in his first appearance. If that is not the case, how do you interpret the Pilgrim’s Progress- and Paradise Lost-allusions? Not to mention King Lear...”
Simply put that these short phrases are an illustration that Rochester is an educated man. Nothing more. As a cormorant is just a cormorant, in Jane's watercolors and not an alias for Satan, as you interpreted the subtext. Perhaps I'm just not well read and sophisticated and as Bitterfly put it “He he, but that's the beauty of literary analysis, isn't it? One word or phrase sets you off on a whole new exciting train of ideas, until you find something that contradicts it and you have to start anew... I must admit I love it!”, don't have enough of an imagination.

[kiki1982]

oops, posted three times, apparently... sorry again...

[kiki1982]

posted twice, sorry...

[kiki1982]

The piece about Medieval history controversial? That was at least what I learnt in my university course. I don’t know what they teach you over there, but my professor was well-known in his field.

If you talk about chivalry, you need to know what you talk about. You clearly didn’t. If you want to make your own version of it, you are welcome to it, but it doesn’t make it more realistic than one taught at university. Only the point from which you started (1830) was seriously disregarding the entire literary history of Arthurian legend, Troy novels, courtly love and ‘the quest’ which started in the 11th century and which still carries on today.

When you narcissistically protest that you read Jane Eyre in the Victorian context, I’ll just refer you to one of your first posts where you totally contradicted Victorian morality. That is context to me, I do not know what you make of that. Moreover you reject the context in which Bertha finds herself. Also context… I do not try to see anything in whatever forced context you might suppose, only the context in which it is clearly set. It is that which you refuse to understand.

About the continent: I meant the sphere in which Napoleon spread the idea of a secular state, secular science and secular society. This does not imply Bosnia (the war by the way was a political one again, put into religious context, first source Bosnian). In the meantime there are a lot of Eastern-European countries, or the New Europe that also embrace those ideals.
We will not go into political discussion about the (un)Europeanness of the English.

The Christ-allusion was an answer to your first post. You supported the idea of Christ-figure Jane. I just elaborated on the point you made. I am at a loss how you can adhere to the Christ-idea and not want to see a religious context…

I am waiting for your consistent argument.

[Peripatetics]

Ma chere amie,
vous devrez attendre mon à argument conformé (espoir d'I que je peux faire un). J'espère que vous l'accepterez dans un esprit d'une discussion et ne le regarderez pas comme attaque personnelle.
Pour le moment «*let's cool it*» (un idiome américain), pour la crainte d'I que maintenant il y a trop d'émotion dans l'argument.
Si je peux donner quelques conseils – abstient de la lecture. Je suis sûr que vous ne prévoyez pas tels mais il donne une impression de condescendance.

[kiki1982]

Mon cher,

Pour moi, et pour plusieurs Européens, c'est une reproche ou même un insulte d'être accusé d'interpréter quelque chose dans un context religieux quant il n'y a pas de preuve. Si je peux vous donner un conseil aussi: éviter ce genre d'argument. Dis: je ne suis pas d'accord, parce que... mais pas: tu interprète dans un context idéologique ou religieux et il n'y pas d'indication.
Une accusation comme celle-ci est égale à une accusation d'être fondamentaliste, qui est un synonyme pour stupidité et naiveté (Bush).
Au reste il n'y a pas de problème de discuter autour d'une question comme celle-ci, même si on n'est pas d'accord, pourvue qu'on ne résulte pas en coller un ticket d'idéologie. Ca c'était la seule chose que je voulais éclairer avec l'argument Américain.
Si j'ai donné l'impression d'être enragé, je le regrette et je m'excuse, car ce n'était pas mon intention. Si j'ai offensé je m'excuse également.
Avec les croisades on a touché un point difficile et je suis conscient de l'opinion populaire, qui est au reste pas mauvais. Je voulais les mettres en cadre. Heureusement on a passé les temps comme celles-là :), certainement avec Obama. Je suis sûr que les membres du forum religieux seraient très contents de continuer la discussion :D.
J'espère que j'ai éclairé la chose.

Je me mets dans mon frigo pendant l'attente...:D
salutations,
k

[Peripatetics]

Pour moi, et pour plusieurs Européens, c'est une reproche ou même un insulte d'être accusé d'interpréter quelque chose dans un context religieux quant il n'y a pas de preuve.

Ma chere amie,
J'ai presque terminé mon essai, portant sur les motifs, où nous nous différencions de nos interprétations du roman. Pour ce faire, j'ai eu à lire vos messages avec beaucoup d'attention et sont arrivés à la conclusion que votre interprétation n'est pas seulement un argument intellectuel, mais une déclaration de valeurs personnelles.
Je crains que vous ayez mal compris l'expression "let's cool it". Je n'ai pas dire que vous devraient s'abstenir d'afficher vos opinions, mais seulement que je ne voudrais pas répondre pour le moment, je le cas où vous compris que je ignore vos messages.
Pour envoyer mes retort, mai vous causer des douleurs et je ne tiens pas à le faire. Nous pourrions peut-être expliquer les différences dans le secteur privé, en utilisant les Private Messages lorsque vous vous connectez à la poste? Je vous avait envoyé une note sur 12.18.2008 sur une extension de Firefox qui est utile pour la recherche académique, mais vous n'avez pas de réponse. En conséquence, je ne suis pas certain que vous savez de cette option pour des communications privées.
Cordialement.

[Peripatetics]

Kiki1982, as many other critics, notes that Jane Eyre is permeated with Biblical allusions. I agree but where I differ is her interpretation: “The book even ends with these words: 'Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!’. And according to critics not only because they come from a clergyman (St John), but also because they are the essence of the book”, that the essence of the novel is religious.
I am more sympathetic to Virginia Woolf's observation that Jane Eyre is prose-poetics. In the essay One Rochester One Jane I'll attempt to substantiate this argument. Unfortunately it is diametrically opposed to Kiki1982's Mr. Rochester. We differ, but the examination of these differences, should not be construed as an attack on kiki1982's views. I admire and am grateful for her analysis. To say the least it is very interesting.

[Bitterfly]

You can interpret the end of the novel in dozens of ways... For the moment, I'm seeing it as an apocalyptic ending which gives a sort of key for the understanding of the rest of the novel, ie you can read it like the apocalyptic text, which is cryptic, full of symbols, and therefore can be interpreted in a myriad ways (which actually has a link with the title of your thread, Peripatetics!!!). I relate this to the reading problems Jane has - she doesn't understand all the signs at Thornfield, she reads Rochester wrong and that is why she is so disappointed etc. And that's because she expects to be able to read people like books (with phrenology, physiognomy...), whereas people wear masks. I know this idea can be extended much further, but am too tired to really go into detail!! :)

I've also tried to reverse what feminist critics often have a problem with - the fact that Jane seems to lose her voice at the profit of a male one. I found you can also explain it by a desire of inclusion: Jane incorporates the biblican text and John's words into her own narrative, and they're not to be understood as parasites but elements she has managed to include in herself. It's a bit the same argument as the "flesh of my flesh" idea: that the body of the text is not grafted upon with other texts, but includes them. You can also relate this to the inclusion/exclusion dynamic that is present in the whole novel: how Jane shifts from exluded to included and finally to including. And you can even make this into a sort of feminist idea!!! By relating it to the image of the great all-encompassing mother, who's a figure of fear when represented by Bertha (the vampire, an avatar of the vagina dentata, the one who swallows men, who castrates them but also brings them back inside the womb) but has been tamed into the figure of Jane.

[Peripatetics]

You can interpret the end of the novel in dozens of ways... For the moment, I'm seeing it as an apocalyptic ending which gives a sort of key for the understanding of the rest of the novel, ie you can read it like the apocalyptic text, which is cryptic, full of symbols, and therefore can be interpreted in a myriad ways

Your ideas and imagery are astonishing but you will have to understand if I do not pursue the subject. We in the New World are a bit Puritanical, adroit at burning witches, than in discussing vagina dentata. Perhaps the Administrators would permit it in Latin but my proficiency stopped at Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.

To a safer subject - “You can interpret the end of the novel in dozens of ways”, we do! Consciously or not since we all differ in experience. Since the two overlap I'll try to answer your question “There's no reason why an aesthetic understanding a novel should preclude a religious one.”
Yes a religious understanding can be an aesthetic one. However if we differentiate analysis and understanding, in my view analysis requires a closer fidelity to the text than does understanding.
If we cite a religious understanding, the problem becomes in defining the doctrinaire limits in the system of beliefs. The religious understanding for a Evangelical, for a Anglican, for a Quaker, for a Catholic, for a Buddhist, will obviously differ by the latitude of questioning of dogma tolerated. So the problem of incompatibility between religious and aesthetic interpretations can be rephrased in degree of freedom in interpretation.
In the case of Jane Eyre, Charlotte wrote in a Victorian milieu and it is difficult to state with certainty how much of Charlotte's religiosity is reflected in the character Jane.
For kiki1982 the question is answered by the circumstances of the father, a preacher and the number of Bibles in the library. The answer is 'like father, like daughter.' but when we take Emily into account: ” “ She sees Christians as 'wretches', 'howling' empty praise in a 'Brotherhood of misery' and their 'madness daily maddening' her. Brontë claims she stood in the glow of heaven and the 'glare' of hell and forged her own path between 'scraph's song and demon's groan'. Only 'thy soul alone' can know the truth, and her appeal to 'My thoughtful Comforter' is not an appeal to God, but to her enigmatic male muse which governs her spiritual belief. He is epitomised by the life-giving 'soft air' and 'thawwind melting quietly' and lovingly around her. She is grateful that her 'visitants' allow her 'savage heart' to grow 'meek' and allow her to conform to the role she is forced to play within an ordered Christian and patriarchal system. Her poetry focuses on the betrayals of mind and body, as she seeks to find answers to questions that her society does not permit her to ask. Brontë's religious symbolism and unique spirituality show a form of pantheistic atheism, although she continued to attend a church 'whilst sitting as motionless as a statue' and it seems that this careful passivity is juxtaposed with uncontained anger and frustrated passions (Chitham2, p. 156).”1“, then the answer is not so certain. Siblings do not necessarily follow parental values, at least in intellectual matters but more importantly imagination is not necessarily constrained by personal morality. Bloom describes Wuthering Heights as:”The furious energy that is loosed in Wuthering Heights is precisely Gnostic; its aim is to get back to the original Abyss, before the creation-fall. Like Blake, Emily Bronte identifies her imagination with the Abyss, and her pneuma or breath-soul with the Alien God, who is antithetical to the God of the creeds”

Your notion, “ flesh of my flesh" idea: that the body of the text is not grafted upon with other texts, but includes them”, is fascinating. Why not just text but characteristics of personality -Rochester's in Jane's?
Would you expanding it into an essay? I'm sure that other readers would find it so.