Jane's cousins

I'm trying to understand the character of Eliza Reed, and there's something I can't quite grasp: is there a connection between her miserliness (and thirst for profit - she's quite the little capitalist), her monastic vision of time, and her becoming a Catholic nun? I understand her vision of time as being in accordance with her fate, but where do profit and usury come in? Were Catholics supposed to be good at managing money more efficiently? I would have thought her economy more typically Protestant. Or is this idea linked to the anglican vision of the Catholic Church as corrupt and money-grasping (as in Gothic fiction)?

And does someone have an explanation for the sisters' names? Eliza(beth) and Georgiana are both regal names, so I thought maybe this indicated the shift from earthly/temporal authority to spiritual authority (the names of the other two cousins, Diana and Mary, are those of divinities). Plain John (another king) becomes St. John as well.

Thank you very much if you answer.

Hmm...up, up, up! :)

Umm...I too was a bit surprised at Eliza Reed's vocation. The adult Georgiana was entirely predictable.

Eliza becomes a catholic nun only because of her obsession with order and routine, and her dread of interruption or interference to that routine. There seems to be no spiritual reason for her choice. I guess one form of obsessive behaviour in childhood (the making and hoarding of money) becomes this other obsessiveness about routine when she becomes older.

I agree that Eliza doesn’t become a nun because of her (catholic) faith, however, we should ask why she was so desperate to go into a convent. She is obsessive in her routine, but the question is why? Why is she so desperate to keep herself busy? I have the feeling that she is deeply insecure and doesn’t want to deal with worldly (woeful) feelings… Her brother John was fooled around by others and caused the family a lot of grief. Eliza is determined not to be hurt and so is desperate to keep outside the world. But, there are a few things she cannot control: firstly, her sister who will disappear because she will marry; secondly she herself will need to marry and possibly be hurt by her (future) husband; thirdly, her mother won’t be there all the time anymore. As she sees her brother John get worse, she tries to keep her sister with her, by preventing her from marrying Lord Edwin Vere. When her brother dies (possibly commits suicide) and her mother is taken ill, she is even more desperate to keep track of her life, to preserve her childhood, as it were… Keeping her sister with her and sitting with her in the drawing room, although it is clear she can’t stand the fact that Georgiana is so superficial; only going to see her sick mother five minutes every day, maybe because she can’t be faced with the fact she is going to loose her. It is very striking that Eliza only attends to Mrs Reed when she has died already and that both Eliza and Geogiana were asleep downstairs when she died, as if to say: ‘we can’t face this’, literally both shutting their eyes for the situation. When Georgiana then finally leaves for her uncle Gibson, Eliza will be left alone and although she says little to Jane, she wants her to stay. Then locks herself in her room to pack. Very strange if you ask someone to stay… Only of course, now Jane can manage everything, she doesn’t need to be faced with worldly thing she doesn’t want to deal with… I suppose that when Jane and Eliza say goodbye to each other, Eliza is kind of stricken with awe how Jane is capable of facing the world on her own; that her life is not run by someone or something (Eliza’s routine) and that she is still sane. The only solution for her, to stay sane, is going into a shielded world where she won’t have to open up and possibly be hurt by possible suitors, by painful circumstances, by painful thoughts. With her routine she prevented herself from thinking too much and with her entry into a convent she will be shielded from society… When she is a child she already shows signs of insecurity because she collects money for no apparent purpose, other than the time she spends buying and selling and writing in her little book how much interest she gained… The fact that she goes to a catholic convent is down to the fact that Catholics were seen as money-hoarders no doubt, but also probably (I would say) because there were not a whole load of protestant convents around and certainly not ‘lady-convents’, convents especially for people like Eliza Reed, who would then bring their dowry with them…
Georgiana is indeed predictable in the sense that from a spoilt brat she becomes a Miss Ingram/Misses Eshton-type woman. She played with dolls and a doll’s house when she was small, now she plays with her own looks and household, does her hair… She blames her sister for informing her mother about the elopement with her suitor Lord Edwin Vere. Although Eliza’s action was maybe inspired through slight self-conservation, the fact that Eliza told her mother about the impending elopement can also be seen in the light of saving her sister’s lot. Like her aunt, Jane’s mother, who married below herself, Lord Vere could have been disinherited. As no marriage contract would have been signed, Georgiana’s brother wasn’t forced to give her an allowance or a fortune and so, both parties could have been penniless and ruined as a result. On top of that, it was very shameful to elope. But there is something else that puzzled me: the title of this Lord Edwin Vere. I discovered that the man with the name ‘Lord Vere’ is the eldest son of the eldest son of the Duke of St Albans, one of the families in the English peerage. The title ‘Lord Vere’ only occurs if the grandfather, the Duke of St Albans, is still alive. Eventually ‘Lord Vere’ would become the Duke of St Albans. The fact that this person, Edwin, is already ‘a lord’ implies that he already had a fortune, or was part of a family like the one of the Dukes of St Albans, in order to have a title of his own. If his relations were against the match with Georgiana, if they thought she were a mere gold digger or just the fact that she wasn’t part of the peerage of neither England, Scotland nor Great-Britain - her father was a mere barrister, which could well have made him rich, but certainly not worthy of marrying a daughter to the future Duke of St Albans, one of the eldest families of the peerage going back to the Norman times of the early Middle Ages - he would certainly have been pressurised not to marry. Eloping could have been disastrous for them as there were probably enough people in the extended family who would have liked to be called ‘Lord Vere’, as the next, or one-after-next, Duke of St Albans. If this is the connotation of his name then it is natural that Georgiana regrets not having been able to marry him…
I can’t help noticing that those three girls have three names connected with Pride and Prejudice: Eliza(beth), Georgiana and Jane. Charlotte mentioned the book in a letter to G. H. Lewes in January 1848. It is sure she referred to the work in Shirley. Although that is in 1849, we cannot be totally sure she hadn’t had contact with Mr Lewes before the publication of Jane Eyre in October 1847. As Mr Lewes was a literary critic and philosopher it is well possible that Currer Bell and Mr Lewes had contact after the poems of the Bells were published in 1846. Like Georgiana in Pride and Prejudice, in Jane Eyre it is Georgiana who wants to elope, but is hindered by family members. However, here it is not her family who objects, but rather his family. Because Georgiana Reed is rather ‘common’, no doubt; meaning she doesn’t have a title. It is a very big coincidence that the three names should occur in a very appropriate combination… Elizabeth and Georgiana are sisters, as Elizabeth and Georgiana end up in P&P, and Jane finds herself a little outside that relationship, like Jane in P&P because of her marriage to Mr Bingley. But maybe the comedy of manners-motif doesn’t have to be found in the names and relationships or fun made of Eliza and Georgiana or their situation, which is indeed not so funny, although there is a very strong Cinderella allusion going on in the sense that the two nasty ‘sisters’ are now the unlucky ones (haha!). Maybe the comedy of manners-motif should be sought in the principle of a comedy of manners: outside appearances are not what they seem and people are proven wrong about someone in the end. Indeed, Jane’s situation in the beginning is ‘lucky’ to 19th century standards: Jane, though an orphan of impoverished parents, is put into a rich household. However, things are not so ‘lucky’ as they seem, because Jane is not liked and she is only kept there because her aunt promised her uncle when he died. Jane’s ‘lucky’ siblings John, Eliza and Georgiana are not so ‘lucky’ as they seem to be in the beginning of the book when Bessie turns up to see Jane at Lowood. In the years gone by, John has turned out a dissipated and naïve man who spends too much money and is destined to ruin himself, his mother and the rest of his family, in short a ne’er-do-well; Georgiana has ventured to elope and has now totally destroyed her reputation in society; Eliza is already accused of being envious towards Georgiana. Jane is now more accomplished than her two cousins, painting and playing the piano better than they can. The same image is developed when Jane returns to Gateshead when she is governess at Thornfield: John has died and both cousins are deeply unhappy. What if we ask the question whether ‘appearances are not what they seem’? Is Eliza then so envious of Georgiana that she deliberately hindered her marriage to Lord Edwin Vere? What if Eliza’s action was inspired, not by jealousy, but rather by pathetic self-conservation; trying to keep her sister with her and preserving her childhood when she sees everything collapsing around her. What if Georgiana’s continuous chattering to her canary bird is not because she is superficial, but just because she is lonely and wants someone to talk to? Like an old lady who talks to her dog because her husband died long ago. What if all the children; John, Eliza and Georgiana have turned out like that because they never felt real love from their parents, their father having died early and their mother not being interested? It seems that the three siblings were spoiled to death when they were children, but that for the rest they were much left to themselves… Even as a baby Jane apparently felt the difference in the household when she continuously cried in her cradle. She herself had been the result of a marriage made out of love, a marriage that ruined her parents because her mother was disinherited. Jane suddenly coming into a loveless household (often associated with cold and coolness!) can’t stop crying. When then, Mr Reed (her uncle) dies and makes her aunt swear to ‘raise the child as her own’, Jane writes in chapter II: ‘Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had, I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her.’ All children then are treated the same, yet Jane is not happy with the situation. Is that because she had unconsciously known better? The earliest part of Jane Eyre, Jane’s childhood, certainly takes place in the Regency Period, a period that was highly restrained in the sense of emotion and was made fun of in ‘comedies of manners’, like Pride and Prejudice. If the first part of Jane Eyre is a wink at the ways of the rich: raising their children without love and teaching them to abstain from emotion whatsoever, then it is natural that her aunt finds any attachment of her husband to Jane totally inappropriate and then it is also logical that she finds Jane to be too passionate. If the children are raised without love, it is clear that they miss something when they’re older. John gets into debt in town (no doubt gambling was part of it!), Georgiana chats to her bird and talks of herself to Jane (anything to tell someone how (un)happy she is!) and Eliza already hoards money when she is small (is compulsive collecting not a sign of lack of something?). Jane later says of Bessie that she sometimes gave her children remarks about how they sat, etc. ‘like she used to do with me’. It stands no doubt that a governess is not a mother and certainly can’t substitute her, but Bessie is even worse in that she is not really loving to Jane, and her own children neither, giving them just the same treatment as Jane when she was small. Jane, as a governess, is then better, in the sense that she acts more like a mother figure and example to Adèle and doesn’t merely make remarks about how she should behave… In a way, when taking this into account, the children John, Eliza and Georgiana, are only corrected in their behaviour, no-one is corrected on the mental front. In that sense we see Mr Darcy again who tries to explain the seemingly contradictory impressions he gives, being a charitable person (who even gets Wickham out of debt and provides him with a small fortune) and being on the other hand quite a disagreeable person in public to unknown people. He behaves well and is charitable, as a really rich person, but is rather not so communicative and is stamped as ‘proud’. He admits to that in the end by saying that he was raised with great principles but that his proud thinking was never corrected because he was the son of the house and was the heir. The Reed children are, no doubt, well-behaved but also rather proud to Jane. They were indeed corrected when it came to conduct, manners and public appearance, but not when it came to thoughts, feelings and things of that nature. No-one attended to their minds, like they all attended to their bodies. Jane on the other hand, after having been shipped off to Lowood, also attends to her mind and that is where the difference lies; that is where Georgiana and Eliza were left behind, why they are unhappy and Jane is reasonably happy. The three siblings have never had to deal with woe, not only that, but they never were taught to deal with woe. Jane, on the other hand, was brought in contact with woe, and was helped to deal with it by Helen. Georgiana is eager to run away from woe when she wants to run from Gateshead for two months ‘until all [that] is over’, she never talks (like Eliza) about her mother and her illness and can’t even face the inevitable result. Although Eliza goes to her mother’s bedroom when she has eventually died, she doesn’t weep, unlike Georgiana, she suppresses her emotion. In a way we could say she doesn’t really feel a loss. Jane doesn’t weep because she doesn’t feel a loss. Does Georgiana then feel a loss, because she weeps? She also weeps extensively over the failed marriage with Lord Edwin Vere. What can be said is that the loss of that match was a certain severe loss in financial gain. Later, she marries a wealthy, worn-out man of fashion. We can see where her (like Miss Ingram’s) priority lies. When she calls Rochester ‘an ugly man’, can we be sure that she will still find him ugly when she knows how big a fortune he has? If she had found love that important (so that she weeps extensively over Lord Vere) then surely she would have looked for more of a match. So, in relation to that, what can we say about her crying when her mother dies? Does Georgiana not cry more like a child: out of frustration, attention-seeking and those kind of feelings rather than out of grief? If it was out of grief that she cried then he was certainly quickly recovered from that when she goes to London with her uncle. The fact that she already wants to leave before her mother has died doesn’t really speak a lot of attachment and love to and for her mother…
Diana and Mary are totally the opposite of Eliza and Georgiana. They are governesses, and so are depicted as kind of ‘mother-deities’, but more importantly: they read Schiller’s Die Räuber (The Robbers) a play highly emotional about two brothers. The verses they read are verses from the climatic scene in which one brother is about to be killed by men sent by his brother he wronged earlier in the play. The character is telling of a dream, vision of the Last Judgment. He fears his lot… When Mary reads it to Diana and says she likes it, she really puts herself open to emotion, unlike Eliza does when she reads her book of common prayer… Of course they need to deal with those words, like one deals with emotion, but they are more stable-minded to do so, as is Jane, than Eliza and Georgiana, who falls asleep in front of a book. Diana and Mary are not only caring for Jane, but also care for each other and their brother, unlike Eliza and Georgiana who happen to sit in the same room, but are nowhere ‘near’ each other… The comparison between all cousins is enhanced by the fact that both sets are confronted with the death of a parent: Eliza and Georgiana’s mother and Mary and Diana’s father are going to die or have just died. Yet, Eliza and Georgiana seem totally lost in this world, whereas Mary and Diana (and even St John) come across as gay, comfortable, etc. although they have just lost their father. There is a vital difference with the Reed family in that they do useful things all day. They study, practice music, go for walks, etc. While the Reeds sit on the couch and are busy, but not really productively. They don’t even really mind when they don’t get an inheritance from their uncle in Madeira. They undergo their lot, like Jane does, without suffering because it is outside their control. When Jane wants to go, unlike Georgiana and Eliza who are afraid to be alone, they don’t ask Jane to stay, but in turn they ask whether she is sure about her trip, because she still looks pale… Diana and Mary like Jane as a person, while Eliza and Georgiana use her as a servant. Between both maids and nurses, Bessie and Hannah, there is also a capital difference: Bessie is loveless, so contributed to the loveless education that weakened John, Eliza and Georgiana mentally, and Hannah loved her master (and feels loss when he dies, evoked in the tears she sheds when Jane looks in) and also raised the three siblings with love and so made them mentally stronger than Bessie made her charges…
I think, if anything, the two sets of siblings Jane has as cousins illustrate the difference between rich and less rich families (low middle class). The rich married out of financial gain, had loveless households and raised their children in turn in a loveless and taught them to be loveless in turn. Because of this indulging in their childhood they don’t learn to deal with loss, they don’t learn to deal with things they are not allowed to do, with things they have to do; in short, negativity. I believe that Rochester is the evocation of the result of that in later life: he cannot deal with a wife he can’t divorce because she is mad and so locks her up, he takes mistresses who nearly ruin him, he ignores the law concerning bigamy. When Jane then turns to Diana, Mary and St John, it is clear that that set is better able to deal with negative feelings of loss, work and obedience. Diana even understands why Jane doesn’t want to marry her brother… If that is not generous and pragmatic! Mary and Diana will eventually marry for love, like Jane, and no doubt will raise their children in a loving household, and so make them better able to deal with negativity in their lives, unlike Rochester. Jane is the coming together of both worlds: born in a loving household, she was transferred to a loveless one of rich relatives, and had to learn to deal with negativity: obedience, inferiority, work, death, loss…

That's very interesting. I hadn't thought of the problem in social terms, actually, because Jane Eyre does seem like a novel with a rather limited social outlook, except for what touches the condition of governesses (and women, of course). And I hadn't really thought about the issue of family love.

I wonder if there isn't something else to be understood in the Cinderella motif - at the beginning, Mrs Reed is clearly a wicked stepmother figure, with the two cousins as the nasty sisters. But at the end, this archetype or scenario is rejected, since the new set of cousins is not fairytale like. Could one say that it grows from fairytale into myth? Or that scenarii have to be ultimately rejected for Jane to grow into an identity of her own?
I'm wondering about this because of all the different fairytale structures that can be found in the book: Cinderella, Little Red Riding-Hood, Bluebeard. Since they are multlifold, it looks almost like a lack of coherence, especially when you also consider all the side references to fairies, imps, brownies... They're tried on and then seem to be rejected. I of course don't think that it comes from a lack of coherence, but I would like to be able to find a meaning for it, and haven't found any except that they could represent scenarii that are imposed on Jane (like the Gothic, even, that would tend to transform her into a victim, which she is not!) and which she must fight to reject.

I don’t think the fairy-tale motif gets rejected… I think the allusion towards the fairy-tales serve not merely a purpose towards the story (poor girl marries prince = Cinderella), but rather serve as an allusion to the moral of the fairy)tale which was always at the bottom of Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose. The one of Cinderella is that beauty is of great value, but that graciousness of priceless. That is what Cinderella’s godmother gives her when she gives her nice clothes to go to the ball with. It is something of the fairies. Here literally, Charlotte alluded to Cinderella as the image of graciousness, which is certainly true. How many of us would still be kind to an aunt like Mrs Reed? The two sets of cousins, then, refer to the one side of the step-sisters without grace; expecting gratefulness and obedience for their charity, and the other side of Cinderella with heavenly names (St John, Mary and Diana) as the priceless gift of graciousness. The first set of cousins is inferior to Jane because they have nothing but outside appearance, money (?); they are an empty box. Their names might have royal connotations but they are far from truly royal. Whereas the second set of cousins have not only heavenly names (superior names to ‘Jane’), but are superior to Jane because they are kind and do not expect anything in return for their charity. They are pleasantly surprised when he gives them £5000 and does their house up… Like I said, Diana even understood Jane when she refuses St John’s proposal. Eventually, indeed, beauty is of no value to Rochester and it doesn’t matter for him whether he marries a woman of beauty (like he hinted with Miss Ingram), because he cannot see that beauty anyway… The fact that Rochester is blinded is then very significant to the moral of Cinderella… In a way we could say that, like the prince, Rochester roams around with the little glass slipper, looking for the one that fits it, but doesn’t seem to find it in the most obvious place, but finds it concealed in this 'plain-looking' girl.
The moral of Little Red Riding Hood was that girls should never speak with strange ‘wolves’, because they might have ill intentions. The nicest wolves are the worst because they seem nice but are just the same as the rest of them and get you off-guard. If that is not relevant to Rochester!
I believe it is a very big misconception, started by Gaskell with Charlotte’s first biography, that Charlotte Brontë had a very limited outlook on things… A year ago we had a very big discussion about Bertha and madness. It was argued that Charlotte was not very well read. In the meantime, I discovered a website dedicated to the reading of the Brontës and the references they put in their books and writings… It is impressive. From classical to ‘modern’ literature and back, philosophy, psychology, history… Name it, they had read it… Admittedly, Charlotte was stuck in this parsonage in Haworth, but she certainly compensated for that in her reading… Besides, governesses were greatly part of the social life of the family they served in, like Jane is part of the ‘party’ when Ingram appears. I can imagine that there were a lot of families that were like the Reed-family. Charlotte had had nothing but bad experiences as governess, but then she was very homesick. Anne (I think) was the one who got into a vey good (probably loving) family with lovely children who loved her in turn…
The website: http://www.thebrontes.net/reading/

Hmm, good point of course about the fairytale ending. But at the same time, you could argue that the prince she gets is very far from the Cinderella one, since he is mutilated ans half-blind. He is closer to Cyclops, outwitted by the clever and mendacious Odysseus, than to a fairytale prince. Even if you wanted to compare Jane's story to Beauty andthe Beast, you would reach a limit, because Rochester never turns back into a handsome prince: he remains a beast up to the end of his life. So I think that in a way there is a sort of "warning" against belief in fairytales, especially as Jane resists being called a fairy. She wants to be real, not ephereal, a mere construct of Rochester's fantasy. And, ha ha, does Little Red-Riding Hood end up marrying the wolf? I get your (very interesting point, by the way) about the morals of fairytales being more relevant than the narratives themselves, but here Jane is not wary of the wolf, who also represents sexuality, in Perrault at least. She is not, unlike other Gothic heroines, particularly afraid of her own desires.

I'm not dismissing your interpretation at all, that said - there are quite a few contradictions in the novel, which is what makes it both fascinating and exasperating!!! And therefore multiple ways of resolving them.
But don't you get the impression, though, that there's a shift to a more biblical and mythological subtext? Rochester as Cyclops or Vulcan; StJohn seen at the end as a sort of Atlas. I still haven't studied most of the book in great detail, so this is nothing certain. Still, I see this, and I also see the way that even the mythological/biblical subtext is half-rejected: Vulcan-Rochester does not have a Venus in front of him, even if he could be blind enough to believe that, for instance. And even though there's a reference to the garden of eden at the very end ("ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh"'), there also is one to the infamous apple - Jane being the "apple" of Rochester's eye has an ironical ring to it, coming as it does straight after the evocation of Genesis.

And look at what the end of the novel shows us: that even rejected ways of life can be respected for what they are.

I'm fairly convinced, for the moment, that if there is a multiplicity of subtexts (and there you're quite right, Charlotte was obviously very cutivated), they sometimes act as red herrings for the reader. Our expectations are played with all the time. Look even at the genre, how difficult it is to determine! I even had problems deciding whether it was a novel or a romance. I think that's part of the same strategy. What it tells me is that a woman mustn't submit to exterior narratives but to what is inside herself, which she must build up from nothing.

I think Charlotte gave a psychological/mental meaning to her fairy-tales... The Beast becomes a handsome prince after having truly loved (?). Of course, it is difficult to make a real person either become a beast or have an ugly person change into a handsome one... Either one is ugly, or one is handsome. It's one of the two. Causing a real world-shocking change is a little rash if you want to write a 'true, probable' story, like Jane Eyre... If you want to claim that you write an autobiography, then it is totally not possible to claim that ‘you met an enchanted beast’. I think Charlotte made Rochester into a beast during his first appearance: a man who is dissipated, wants to commit bigamy, locks his wife up, has mistresses, and lures Jane to him with lies. His conduct is hardly fair towards her. He knows she has no family, and knows when she will acknowledge that he is married that she will never consent to be his mistress. So what is left for her? I have a very bad opinion of him and I believe Charlotte made allusions in Thornfield Hall towards Milton's hell in Paradise Lost. Rochester is distraught when he discovers that Jane has left and can now begin his transformation into prince again. Of course not in the physical meaning, because he will still be the same man. Admittedly, he is mutilated, but it is partly an inevitable result of his adultery... (Matthew 5) Nevertheless, he turns into this iconic man: amiable, gentle, tender, grateful, in short a man women would fight for... Before, he wasn't like that. He was highly passionate, generous with his money, he bought lots of presents, wanted to send for the family jewels, but I'm not sure if he ever opened his heart truly. Yet, when Jane returns he enjoys her company, he is humble enough to let her help him. Where he was before superior and even felt like that, later he is humbled... So in a sense, he really turns into a handsome prince, dream-man. Not his outer appearance, but his heart. Jane was always Beauty, because her heart was beautiful. For the rest she was just plain...
The thing of the wolf... I think the end of the first appearance of Rochester is supposed to be the attempt of the wolf to eat Little Red Riding Hood. He asked her where she was going, then dressed himself in this 'wonderful man' like the wolf dresses himself in the clothes of the grandmother and then tried to eat her or for Rochester, tries to get Jane to stay while showing his true colours. In this case of course Little Red Riding Hood doesn't get eaten (fortunately), but runs away. In that, Charlotte indeed applies the moral that girls need to be careful for wolves.
Rochester-Vulcan indeed doesn't have Venus in from of him... But according to Homer, Vulcan/Hephaestus has a different wife: Charis, one of the ‘Charites’ (graces). Hephaestus was born maimed and therefore was thrown off Mount Olympus by his mother Hera. He fell and fell until he landed on the island Lemnos. We can certainly say that Rochester landed on an island (Jamaica) and also, in a way, that he was ‘banned’ from Thornfield, not by his mother but by his father… There are two possible causes for Hephaestus to have married Aphrodite. One is that Hephaestus took revenge on his mother Hera (for throwing him off Mount Olympus) by making her a gold throne where she had to remain seated on. Hephaestus then asked for Aphrodite’s hand in marriage in return for the freedom of his mother. Another myth tells that Zeus was afraid that Aphrodite, because of her beauty, would become a cause for fighting among the gods and so decided to marry her off. It is quite certain that Rochester didn’t take revenge on his father and brother, but what if Bertha’s father feared that ‘all the men in her circle’ would start to fight over her and maybe ultimately would discover what she was inside? The image of Bertha as Aphrodite is certainly not so controversial because she was ‘the boast of Spanish Town’ and incredibly beautiful. Rochester was also envied by lots of other men because he gained Bertha, like Hephaestus was envied by the other gods who tried to woo Aphrodite. Like Hephaestus, Rochester is a happy man when he has married ‘Aphrodite’ and thinks he has won a ‘prize’, but as time passes he finds her unfaithful and ill-tempered. He decides to recite everything to his father, and tries to get rid of her, like Hephaestus tries with Aphrodite, but in vain. Charis would be the other wife of Hephaestus, according to Homer. What if Charlotte combined the two myths in one, thus give Jane Eyre an allegorical approach? Firstly Hephaestus gets ‘banned’ from Thornfield and marries (out of semi-free will) Aphrodite but finds another contents in the box than what he thought. What if the maiming doesn’t have to be seen at the start as physical maiming, but rather as social ‘maiming’: a man who is part of a rich family, but in fact has no possessions and his family ‘cast him off’ by marrying him far away to Aphrodite to conveniently get rid of him. When she is unfaithful they don’t do anything, fearful of the consequences for their own reputation. Yet, they both die and he tries to get rid of her but doesn’t succeed. I believe ‘Hephaestus’ at this point is so much disillusioned with ‘Aphrodite’ that he casts her off and decides to become someone else because he’s frustrated with his own naivety and gentleness. He decides to become Hades/Pluto who has power over all riches in the earth, all souls after death and can actually get out of his ‘gloomy’ kingdom, but rarely releases souls out of the underworld. Hades was incredibly rich because of all things under the earth (minerals, gold, etc) and so the richness of Rochester wouldn’t go a miss. On top of that, Mrs Fairfax once answers to the question of Jane why Rochester doesn’t spend a lot of time in Thornfield: ‘Maybe he thinks it’s gloomy.’ Bertha is locked up ‘in a shrine of memory’, which adds to the idea of a grave and the underworld. In connection with Milton’s Hell of Paradise Lost it is certainly arguable that Rochester, at that point, is no longer Hephaestus/Vulcan, but has become Hades/Pluto. As if that connection is not enough, Charlotte makes Jane be tricked into marriage by him. Much like Hades does to Persephone, he offers Jane food, but she refuses ‘until [she] can’t help it’. Eventually she will eat some breakfast just before the wedding and will eventually come back to him after a year. Jane, like Persephone, is tricked into eating something and is destined to comeback to Hades/Pluto. However, apparently Hades has left the underworld and he now literally looks like Hephaestus, maimed and gentle. Thus, Jane is no longer Persephone, but has now turned into Charis, grace itself.
After some research, I don’t really believe that the ‘apple of [Rochester’s] eye’ refers to the apple in Genesis. Two reasons: firstly because the apple in Genesis was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad. Adam and Eve, after eating the fruit, became ashamed of their nakedness and covered themselves up, but I don’t see where ‘knowledge of good and bad’ comes into question at the end of Jane Eyre. Admittedly, Rochester now knows what is right, but not through Jane. If it were through Jane, then Rochester would have become sinful because of her. I don’t think that is the case. Secondly, the expression itself doesn’t go back at Genesis, but at Shakespeare’s Midsummer night’s Dream and other works of the time and before, where it was used in the original meaning of ‘pupil of the eye’. In those times they didn’t know how the eye worked and thought that the pupil (the black ‘hole’ in the middle of the iris/corona) was a solid ball. As an apple was the most common round object, they decided to call the pupil ‘apple’. In this meaning, ‘the apple of [Rochester’s] eye’ could certainly be taken very literal, as Rochester cannot see and so Jane provides him eyesight. The expression had been used since the time of King Alfred (end of the 9th century) and moved its meaning from mere thing in the eye, because of the precious nature of eyesight in general, towards being precious in general. Thus, I think, that Charlotte combined those two meanings in the phrase she put on paper, combining ‘eyesight’ and ‘most precious in the world’.
If we bring that in connection with Charis, then it is clear that Hephaestus has moved from Aphrodite to Charis, meaning, that indeed, like in Cinderella, graciousness is far more important than beauty. Making Hephaestus symbolically blind is then a very strong point as he can no longer depend for judgment on the outer appearances of his conversation partners. If he then ‘[sees] nature – [sees] books through [Jane]’, we can indeed read it literally that Jane is his eyesight, but we can even go further in that Charis has now taken over his sight, namely that he now sees through graciousness in stead of through beauty/outer appearance like when he was married to Aphrodite.
Now, of course, Aphrodite in this case goes mad and doesn’t only cheat on her husband and is not merely ill-tempered like the original Goddess of Beauty. That could be a judgement from Charlotte’s side about the power of outer appearance. The goddess of beauty in this case is not beautiful anymore and even worse, has mentally reached the very low point of animal-nature. The evocations of Georgiana, Blanche Ingram, Céline Varens, Clara and Giacinta as beautiful women also speak of beauty as an empty box which seems desirable but is nothing but the outside and can have different insides that are all negative to a certain extent. If Thornfield is the realm of Hades now, then Aphrodite is no longer a physical being, a beautiful woman, but has only got her soul, the contents of the beautiful box she was, left. Thus she has become ugly, has become something to fear, has become an animal-like creature who ‘eats’ humans. Literally, something that consumes humans and causes them lots of harm, a danger they are not even aware of, that roams around in the background and strikes from time to time with disastrous consequences. It is only when Rochester wants to accept her for what she is, the ugly being that was once his beautiful wife; it is only when Hephaestus sacrifices the power of Hades to ‘kill’ Aphrodite and to trick Persephone, that Hephaestus can now truly become Hephaestus and be maimed at the same time as blinded to the outside world. He will be able to take Charis/Grace as his wife and value her on the inside rather than on the outside. Like in Cinderella, the prince no longer thinks that beauty is truly everything, but that graciousness is far more important. Thus, beauty disappears from Rochester’s life and graciousness enters it.
It might seem strange to think that Hephaestus changes himself into Hades, certainly with references to the grounds of Thornfield as Paradise, but it is not so far from probability as we think. At the moment that Persephone is kidnapped by Hades, Demeter is distraught and the earth becomes barren. The period in which Jane reaches Thornfield and notably meets Rochester, is in the winter, associated in Greek mythology to be the time that Persephone spends with her husband Hades in the underworld and certainly a barren period caused by the sorrow of Demeter. At the time Persephone is merely kidnapped, Demeter can’t find her, but Helios, the all-seeing god of the Sun (later associated with Apollo, god of truth/prophecy, medicine and the arts), tells her where her daughter is. Apollo’s symbol is the laurel tree, something which occurs repeatedly in Thornfield, when Rochester and Jane take their walks. Thus, not only the sun that appears after Richard gets bitten, but even every time Hades talks with Persephone, Helios/Apollo is witnessing. It is the moon eventually that tells Jane to ‘flee temptation’. That is very interesting as, later, Apollo’s twin-sister Artemis/Diana got associated with the moon-goddess Selene. Jane will ‘flee temptation’, but sadly Jane ‘ate something [Rochester] offered [her]’. Could this ‘something’ be pomegranate-seeds? Whatever the substance is, it is clear that Jane will eventually come back to Thornfield, to find it totally burnt down. Indeed, the false underworld and false Hades have gone and ‘Hades’ has become Hephaestus again. But at the same time, the outer appearance/beauty of Rochester’s dwelling and display of his fortune have also gone. Outer appearance, that was so important to his class, has gone. I believe that, even when he courts Jane, outer appearance is still important to him, as evoked in Bertha as Aphrodite which he cannot seem to get rid of. Rochester, as second brother needs to keep the name of his family up by displaying his wealth, although he will not inherit anything because of customs that still exist now (preventing the division of fortune)! Yet, even if he doesn’t inherit, Rochester is condemned not to work and to display his wealth which he doesn’t have, so he is condemned to marry for money. Rochester wants Jane to think that he left all the hypocrisy connected with money and class behind, but even when he courts her (a woman who actually doesn’t have a penny), he still cares about his ‘appearance’ (the impression he makes): he locks up his wife because she is mad, he locks her up in England in stead of in Jamaica notably because then her connection with him cannot be known (in other words his reputation is better there than it would be in Jamaica where he would be known as ‘the man with the mad wife’), he buys Jane presents and wants to send for the family jewels because ‘[he] want[s] the world to acknowledge [her] a beauty’, he buys her a wedding dress and a veil that she could never pay for (something that was her responsibility as the bride!) and a trousseau (something for her to pay as well). In other words, he doesn’t want to have a bride who will damage his reputation socially by her poor wedding gown and plain veil. Ironically, Aphrodite destroys the lace veil and so Rochester is condemned to marry a bride with a plain one, but she will still wear a wedding gown paid by him. I think he desperately wants to convince himself that he doesn’t care about outer appearance (the principle of his class) anymore, and so Charlotte turns Hephaestus (which Rochester in fact is) into Hades who has the power to rain over the dead souls, so who has the power to ‘proclaim’ a person dead and under his control. Thus he can say that Aphrodite is dead and under his control. When Jane leaves Rochester, he finally gets rid of hypocrisy and cuts himself off from the gentry. With his reputation ruined, he can now truly end his links with the local gentry and can get ready to ban outer appearance out of his life. Rochester realises that Aphrodite wasn’t dead yet (in his life and views) and saw her for what she was: his wife, the centre of the system, literally ‘the apple of his eye’. On top of that he will become blind to physical beauty and true outer appearance and will turn into Hepheastus again. Of course, he had inherited money and was now the owner of Thornfield, so Charlotte needed to maim him differently than how she started his story. Socially maiming him wasn’t possible any more, because he was the proprietor of a fortune. The only thing that was left was to give him, like the smith Hephaestus, a maimed arm.
You are right that there is a difference in ‘mythic’ proportion between the one set of cousins and the other, the difference between John and St John so to say. But I don’t think that the difference lies in the fact that fairy-tales get rejected, I think it rather lies in Jane herself and the Cinderella-motif connected with her. As she turns into Charis to become Vulcan’s/Hephaestus’ wife, Charlotte makes it clear that she possessed an infinite amount of graciousness. When the first set of cousins fails to see that, and the Ingram-party sees ‘all the faults of her class’, they really emphasise the faults of their own class as the one that prefers Aphrodite to Charis, outer appearance and money to true beauty! That principle is particularly emphasised by Bertha who used to be beautiful but is now hideous and dangerous. Even if one argues that the experiences of Bertha are the same ones as the ones undergone by Jane In the Red Room in Gateshead, then still it is apparent that Grace is not treated according to her real value and that Bertha as Aphrodite is treated rather badly according to her supposed value. Rochester’s class made a lot of beauty and nothing of Grace (at least if Grace wasn’t beautiful or didn’t come with money), thus the treatment of Aphrodite locked up by Rochester is an indication that he really wants to look for a wife who is gracious, like Jane, rather than for a wife who is only beautiful like Ingram. In that sense, Aphrodite is really undervalued from the general point of view of the higher classes. Nonetheless, Aphrodite, in a last attempt to efface graciousness, burns Cinderella’s bedroom, but with that burns the whole contents of the house down, as a metaphor for the fact that the inside of Thornfield is nothing more than a show, like the empty box Aphrodite/outer appearance turns out to be. As Aphrodite dances above the flames, Rochester goes to look for her, and reaches out saying her name, so naming the essence of beauty and outer appearance, recognising that she was his wife, the centre of his world, the greatest principle he lived up to. She then jumps from the roof as a sign of the fact that beauty/outer appearance in his eyes is forever dead, that he will never be fooled again by material things. If the experiences in the Red Room are the same as Bertha’s in her cell, then it is arguable that both Jane and Bertha/Aphrodite are treated unfairly according to their own qualities. Jane as ‘graciousness’ is treated unfairly by the rich who only see physical appearance and money, but Bertha as Aphrodite is also undervalued by Rochester who now sees more in graciousness (Jane) than in beauty (Ingram). Yet, the rest of his class doesn’t see it that way. Indeed, mad people could be treated better than Bertha was… However there was a real issue with rich mad people! Because of the family reputation they were sometimes kept at home in stead of in an asylum. Nevertheless, Bertha’s circumstances were very bad compared to Isabella Thackeray’s who was also kept at home after asylums proved ineffective. So in both ways Bertha is treated unfairly, whether as a lunatic or as a beautiful woman.
In chapter XXVI Jane implies that she is afraid that, if she were mad, Rochester would also treat her like Bertha/Aphrodite. What does that say about his approach? He says that he hates outer appearance, but cares about his own, and on the other hand says that he will never hate graciousness. Maybe he says that now, but he once believed that of Bertha… For Jane and the reader it is clear that for Rochester there is only one choice: the one of Bertha/Aphrodite/outer appearance as his wife, another one is totally impossible. You cannot be bigamous. Thus it is either outer appearance or graciousness that one can live up to. Rochester in the beginning lives clearly up to outer appearance: when he leaves Jamaica, he does it because of his association with mad Bertha, for nothing more, nothing less than that. He roams Europe in search of a woman (of his class!) who values him and doesn’t care about his state of marriage. He can’t find one and decides to take mistresses for the company, although that he probably searched for ‘bed-action’ (the appearance of marriage) on the one side and a beautiful creature on his arm on the other side. When Céline cheats on him, he sees it as a personal offense and challenges his ‘opponent’ to a duel. Another attempt to save his honour and social status. When he talks about Adèle to his party, he claims her to be his ward (an act of charity) rather than his daughter, in order to safeguard his status as a bachelor without attachments in stead of ‘dissipated-man-with-illegitimate-daughter’. Admittedly men were allowed to cheat on their wives, and were allowed to have mistresses, but a man who did it too much was not seen In a good light, as illustrated in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. There, Arthur Huntington comes across far from positive. Although it wasn’t really looked down upon, one could also overdo it. So in an attempt not to come across as ‘dissipated man’, Rochester refuses to recognise publicly (and even to Jane personally) that Adèle is his daughter. What is Ingram’s family and the rest of the party going to think if he has an illegitimate daughter? How many more, probably… Aphrodite is far from dead, as it seems clearly. That’s why, regularly, Bertha comes down and shakes things up. Rochester is not yet totally free from ‘status-awareness’, not as free as he wants to think, and because of that he suffers an awful lot (evocated in the tormenting fires Bertha lights). His social status condemned him to marry Bertha, but the mental state of Bertha also condemns him socially. He cannot divorce her, and thus, for any desired comfort, he is saddled with the likes of Céline. There will never be a worthy and valuable woman who will consent to be his mistress, as illustrated by Jane herself. In that, he feels he reaches ‘beneath himself’, like when he says that ‘having a mistress is the next worst thing to buying a slave’. In that way he puts himself in the row of ‘nasty slave traders’ that were campaigned against at the time the book was published. He doesn’t understand that he has himself to blame. By the end he will have accepted his lot and will finally have realised that outer appearance doesn’t count for much and is prepared to live up to it by marrying without fine clothes.
It is curious that both Bertha and Jane go through a phase of ‘death’. However both characters go through it in the opposite way. Bertha is brought back to it forcefully repeatedly and Jane is wilfully drawn from it repeatedly. Bertha, locked up in the attic, is locked up again after her two visits (not the one to Jane!). Jane is thought to be dead and Rochester repeatedly dreams her to be with him. If Bertha is the evocation of Aphrodite, then the principles connected with her are every time forced back into oblivion, although they are more fixed in Rochester than he is inclined to think (as illustrated before). Jane on the other hand, is wished for. If she is the evocation of Charis, then Rochester attempts to hold her repeatedly, but sadly does not succeed. Indeed, after Aphrodite’s materialisation and death, Rochester needs to come to terms with himself and needs to consider what he has lost and why. He thinks he has lost Jane/graciousness forever because he (indirectly) killed her; he asks himself, having lost his old principles of outer appearance, what is left after that. What is the real value of a person if it is not his status? What does he take as a measure? The materialisation of Jane takes place when he ‘of late’ began to pray, thus embracing the true value of things, a value not connected money/role in society/marital state/etc., and allowing to Jane to materialise into Charis/Grace which he can now finally see as the centre of his life. When we acknowledge that the name ‘Jane’ actually means ‘The Lord is gracious’, then it is clear that Rochester acknowledges that when he calls ‘Jane’ three times after his prayer. When he finally prostrated himself in front of God, he was finally prepared to embrace the ideals provided by Charis with his soul, by dying (which he asks God for at the time of his prayer).
The fact that the second set of cousins cares for Jane then means that they do see what graciousness is worth and value a person for his personality rather than his appearance/financial worth.
I think both the fairy-tales and the myths used in Jane Eyre address the same point, namely that the inside of a person is more of value than the outside and that the higher classes make it themselves difficult because of their self-imposed rules. Jane Eyre addresses the point that the world that is so much envied by the less well-off, is sometimes an empty box and that the people who belong to that rich world have sometimes more commitments than the less well-off, and so that they should be less envied than they are. The fact that a person rises on the social ladder moves him towards the implementation of those self-imposed rules. One is not forced to live according to them, but one just does in an urge to confirm himself to others. The ironical thing is that even people who might financially have belonged to the lower middle classes (like the Ingrams and the Reeds in the end) still needed, because of social stigma, to keep up the name (like Rochester in the beginning of his story in Jamaica). In that case, what is a rich outside worth? No doubt, Charlotte would have met extensively with that kind of people at the time of her function of governess. Governesses were people who were in the middle of both worlds. They were not working class, because they had a better education and moved in different circles and earned more than the average worker/servant. As a consequence, they were envied by those working classes and the servants of the house where they worked. On the other side they didn’t belong strictly to the higher classes, because they weren’t rich enough and they served them. As a consequence, they were despised by the bosses and their friends. Being a governess was a difficult job because, mostly, you were left to yourself, being despised on both sides (servants and bosses) and on top of that (understandably) also by the children. Charlotte would have seen a lot of unhappy marriages, unhappy children; the inside of a world on the outside so much envied by so many, but in fact with an ugly inside, like Bertha for Rochester in the beginning of their marriage and like Thornfield that is a dungeon to Rochester but is a wonderful mansion to Jane.
I am inclined to believe that the principle of fairy-tale gets re-identified. The prince at the end of Jane Eyre is no longer a prince in the material shape of a rich man who owns a castle, but is a man truly worthy of being called a prince. Cinderella is no longer the Cinderella of the fairy-tale: the girl of good family but poor, but is worthy to be called Cinderella because she is gracious. In that, the disappearance of Thornfield as the material output of prince Rochester is important because Rochester as the prince does not imply the existence of a castle anymore. At the same time the £5000 Jane now owns is unlike Cinderella, but does not imply that she is less worthy. Besides Thornfield was not the only asset of Rochester, apart from that he certainly had still the large amounts of lands he owned and the income connected with it, large amounts of money in the bank(s) that generated a fair amount of interest and still the family jewels locked in the safe in London. He is still a rich man, but just a little ‘plucked’ on the outside. Jane, on the other hand, is still plain, but is a (fairly) rich woman with her £5000. In this way the allegory concludes with the death of Aphrodite and the birth of Charis; the revaluation of the prince and Cinderella to their true value as opposed to the beginning where Jane as Cinderella is picked on because she is poor and the prince who has a castle but is a liar; the evaluation of the system marriage. Is marriage for practical purposes (like the ones of Georgiana and Eliza (because she does get married to God, but for the wrong reasons!)) better than a marriage out of love (like the ones of Mary and Diana)? Certainly in a time where the woman in the marriage doesn’t have a say over finances, home, conduct of her husband, children, etc. it is vital for a husband to respect and love his wife, otherwise there is a real danger to be ill-treated (like Bertha). On the husband’s side there is a danger of total unhappiness, because what he wants is a calm and settled household and comfort when he comes home (as said by Rochester). All girls want a prince later in life, and probably Charlotte also dreamt of one, but is it maybe that what Jane Eyre revolves around? Jane Eyre as a Bildungsroman certainly addresses the point of love and marriage as what Rochester has to teach Jane, but what is ‘a prince’, what person should we look for when we are in search of a prince? Do we look for a person who has a castle and a white steed or do we look for one who has the qualities of a prince, but without the castle and the white steed? It is clear that Georgiana and Eliza went for the fairy-tale-figure prince with the castle and the white steed, but Diana, Mary and Jane are happier with their army captain, clergyman and ‘maimed wreck that [one] ha[s] to lead by the hand’. Hephaestus has seen his errors and is now happier with Charis than he was with Aphrodite, one who was sought after by lots of gods. John Reed was ever proud of his possessions, but after the possessions gone there was nothing but death. Although St John Rivers has no castle and no white steed, he does have the wonderful appearance of the prince, which was lacking in John Reed. However, St John is not more desirable with his cold marble ways. St John does follow his ambition and denies himself his big love, that is what makes him slightly more positive than John Reed, who squanders his family’s money and thus makes his own death inevitable according to honour-standards. Both candidate-princes then have serious shortcomings in relation to the classic image they both, to a certain extent, comply with. John Reed has his castle and his financial means, but lacks in appearance, conduct and knowledge. St John Rivers has the appearance, but not the inside. He is empty of emotion, thoughts and such things like a marble statue has empty eyes. He can take Jane by the waist, but not like Rochester can; he can perform the mechanical action, but no more than that. When Rochester tells Jane that she talks of Apollo and that her eyes dwell on a Vulcan, she says ‘[she] never thought of it before, but [he]certainly [is] rather like Vulcan.’ For her indeed, Rochester is not merely his outer shape, but is his being, his character, and in that he is no longer dark and maimed, but is gentle and peace-loving. Then St John is also like Apollo: maybe an ideal outside but an inside that can be very tricky. Apollo maybe seems like an amiable god but he was often blamed for sudden deaths. Being the god of medicine and healing, he was also ultimately responsible for death. This doesn’t mean that St John himself would have indulged in taking revenge on Rochester for marrying ‘his’ Jane, but there is certainly a very hard side to him that is quite scary. Being associated with the god of prophecy and truth, he asks God to open the truth to Jane. So ultimately it is St John himself who is responsible for the visions of both Jane and Rochester, for the connection that takes place between their two souls at that moment. Ironically for him, of course, the universal truth is not the truth he expects, but he must accept it, however he doesn’t mention the marriage to the last of his days. But after all, as the ‘Lord is gracious’, he has found graciousness where he needs to find it: in his profession which ‘he is married to’, according to Jane. In that the definition of the prince with the castle and the white steed gets re-indentified as the man with the princely character and the man who is able to find graciousness where it is and ‘marry’ it. Both Rochester and St John then have their qualities of princes and both get rewarded for ‘marrying’ it, however they do need to live entirely for it and with it and so there is no place for independence on the one side and Rosamond on the other side. In a sense, Rosamond can also be seen as the Aphrodite of St John, who also needs to choose between beauty and graciousness, i.e. a marriage with the love of his life (he thinks now) and his ambitions to go to India as a missionary. The graciousness St John then tries to embrace in Jane, is only a sign of him seeing it, but it is ultimately not necessary for him as ‘the Lord is gracious’. Jane feels ‘too much’ where a marriage with St John is concerned and that is what she is indeed. When she goes to Rochester she feels ‘useful’ and that is also what she is to him more than to St John
Should we then believe that Jane Eyre as a whole moves, as it were, from fairy-tale to myth; from earth to heaven. I don’t believe so. The two aspects (myth and fairy-tale) clearly come together in the end, so it is impossible that the one stops and the other starts. At the same time, the first nine chapters of Jane Eyre don’t seem to be as rich as the last 31. It has been argued by others that the first nine chapters have another function than the rest of the book, and I also believe that to be the case. There is development of Jane herself into the adult she becomes, there is the introduction of certain themes (the fairy-tale motif, social criticism and the acceptance of the ways of Helen Burns) so in a sense we could see the start of the book as the ‘introduction-to-what-will-come’ and in that way it is really in chapter X or XI that Jane’s life, the book, begins. In that I really don’t think we should believe that the book moves from earth to heaven, 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 that combine to create a work that is earthly at the same time as mythic. All combined they make a story embedded in Romanticism and Victorian ideals, but not less universal for it.
I am not really convinced. But it is nice to talk to someone who is interested in the deeper regions of this book. :)

Hi Kiki1982, thank you for your fascinating analysis and sharing your knowledge of the deeper themes of "Jane Eyre!" I've re-read the novel just lately on occasion of having watched the 1973 TV serial, and had a real eye-opener regarding the love theme, namely that love, any kind of love, redeems. But I have no rounded education to fall back on, so your expose on Charlotte Bronte's collected knowledge as she used it for her Bildungsroman expands my appreciation wonderfully. I had googled Latmos and know a little bit about that, but I'm sure you know more...? Do you mind if I copy and paste your expose to my harddrive for future reference?

Fleerderhus, I am delighted I could help you so much...

Go ahead putting it on your harddrive!

Hmm… I could wrong, actually, when I separate the fairytale from the mythical (the Cinderella story undergoes changes from narrative to narrative, so it could be mythical, I imagine). My aim, nevertheless, will be to study the novel closely in order to verify my first impression, that classical mythological allusions grow in importance at the end of the novel. I'll come back to you when I've finished!
I like your analysis, but I have a few queries: first, you said that Rochester transforms from Beast into Prince, and that Jane was Beauty all along (because of her gracefulness – and by the way, have you thought of the connections you can draw between gracefulness and religious grace? It could be interesting.). I think you deny the importance of the idea of beauty. Even if the novel tells us that a beautiful exterior is not the sign of a beautiful soul, beauty is nevertheless what Jane pines for, not grace(fullness). She's not beautiful all throughout the novel, because it's Rochester who gives her beauty (even the servants note this at the end of the text). In his eyes only is she beautiful, and you could interpret this as the old "beauty is in the eye of the beholder (which would be congruent with other elements of the novel – such as the episode when Jane remarks that Miss Scatcherd, at Lowood, is incapable of seeing Helen as "the clearest planet" she is, because she does not know how to see. I think Jane means you have to learn how to look at people in order not to see only the imperfection which anyhow is inscribed in all of us as fallen creatures – and I wonder whether this couldn't be linked to Gospel's "they have eyes and see not" something I'll also have to research!). But it is a little ironical at the end since Rochester can't see her. I wonder if, as she is the apple of his eye (by the way, I haven't given up the Genesis interpretation, but I'll have to put more research into that as well), and she sees for him, it isn't actually her vision of herself that has changed. She is now an "independent" woman, therefore her perception of herself and of her beauty no longer depends on outside beholders but on herself. I think there's a sense that this is the direction that Jane takes from the beginning – with the mirror stage in the red-room episode. My take on this is that her non-recognition of herself means, rather than alienation, an emancipation from outside outlooks on her (this is inspired by a very interesting article by Merleau-Ponty, where he explains that once you've recognized yourself in a mirror, you integrate the fact that your Self is in fact a matter of appearance, of how you appear to be for other people. This alienates you to some extent, because from then on you try to conform to that mirror-image, or rather to the perception others may have of you.). So beauty is important, but whereas at the beginning it's a matter of outside perception (and the imposition of the perception of others), at the end it becomes a matter of inner perception.
Something else I thought about when I read your post: you note the Paradise Lost intertext (and that's very interesting), but I wonder whether the Pilgrim's Progress intertext may not be more obvious. The last paragraphs of the book present St John as "the warrior Greatheart", who accompanied Christiana on her pilgrimage. I'm definitively going to have to read the allegory, but here are a few thoughts inspired by the quick research I did on PP. Christiana is an interesting figure, who seems slightly more complex than her husband Christian (who of course is the figure people usually refer to when speaking of PP), because she manages to harmonize spiritual aspirations with more worldly ones, like Jane at the end of the novel. Since she has four children, I wonder whether she couldn't help to understand Jane's dreams, as well (when she dreams she's on the road with a child in her arms). There's something else that struck me: the novel mentions St John's fight with Apollyon, and I find that strange because a few pages earlier Rochester identifies St John as an Apollo. Apollyon is thought to be connected to Apollo: could that mean he's fighting himself, in a way? I'm still not sure how to understand that. Apollyon represents, apparently, the material world because he's a mixture of the four elements, and of animal and human), so of course St John would fight him, and fight that which in himself connects him to the physical realm. But why does Rochester see him as this figure? Perhaps because he is deluded when he mentions Apollo: he still thinks St John is a rival and might win Jane's affections... But he's obviously anyway making a mistake, because Mars won over Venus, not Apollo... What do you think?
Apollo also reminds me of his "contrary", in Nietzschean terms – Dionysus (who's actually mentioned by Rochester when he suggests Jane should go to Scotland for a job). There again, I'm wondering what to make of that...
Another question about names: I just noticed that the servants are called John and Mary. It hadn't struck me at first... Why, why are those names so important in the novel?
And by the way, had you noticed the Sleeping Beauty motif? Jane is described as sleeping by Rochester (because she hasn't yet known love), and she is in a castle surrounded by thorn trees... Here again, I think it's fairytale debunked: Sleeping Beauty is the archetypal passive female, waiting for her prince to come and wake her up from a long sleep. But Jane isn't passive, is she?

Hello, hope I'm not interposing into a private conversation.
I think that in criticism as contrasted with opinion one has to be very careful in not being carried away with a brilliant analogy or metaphor, nor latch onto a phrase and soar past the authors reasonable interpretation of meaning. So to speak, be carried away with one's own brilliance.

Modern day studies assign Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1847) into the Bildungsroman category but it is very different from Demian, by Hermann Hesse (1919), also in the Bildungsroman category. Therefore in my opinion while it may be valuable to note elements in Jane Eyre corresponding to the Bildungsroman, it would be rash to assume that Bronte wrote Jane Eyre as a Bildungsroman.
I would apply the same type of reasoning when raising the categories of fairytale and myth as present in Bronte's novel. A specific example: if kiki wrote that “ that Rochester transforms from Beast into Prince”, then it's crucial whether she was using an analogy to illustrate an interpretation or that she is reinterpreting Bronte's characterization of Rochester in these words. It's the danger of denotation and connotation. The first is legitimate, the latter can not be justified by the text.

Hello Kiki1982, thank you. Thanks also for posting the link to the Brontes' "bibliography." My goodness, how educated they were! I spent many hours into the night reading about the many authors and CB's comments and quotes. So they have read Schindler's account of Beethoven's life... I can't help noticing your icon on the side - are you a fan of Beethoven, too? I read a slim book about his illnesses last year. In the past few days I was listening to Michael Jayston reading a naval novel by Alexander Kent; not usually my cup of tea. But it turned out to be very interesting. And then I see CB read Robert Southey's Life of Nelson. A few years ago I read Susanna Moodie's book Roughing it in the bush before I moved near the town where she lived the second half of her life in southern Ontario. Now I noticed CB using the words "Canadian temperature" to describe the winter in Yorkshire, and I wonder if she read some of Moodie's articles about life in the colonies. Indeed, Susanna Strickland's name does show up in the reading list. Sorry to be posting such trite asides into this thread, but I'm always awed by these seemingly coincidental connections; by how the acquisition of knowledge seems to progress on a slow (for me) but logical path.

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Originally Posted by Peripatetics

Hello, hope I'm not interposing into a private conversation.
I think that in criticism as contrasted with opinion one has to be very careful in not being carried away with a brilliant analogy or metaphor, nor latch onto a phrase and soar past the authors reasonable interpretation of meaning. So to speak, be carried away with one's own brilliance.

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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!
And no, of course the conversation is not private - it wouldn't be here were it was.

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Modern day studies assign Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1847) into the Bildungsroman category but it is very different from Demian, by Hermann Hesse (1919), also in the Bildungsroman category. Therefore in my opinion while it may be valuable to note elements in Jane Eyre corresponding to the Bildungsroman, it would be rash to assume that Bronte wrote Jane Eyre as a Bildungsroman.

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It's rash to assume anything about the author's intentions in general, isn't it? Even if they've said what they wanted to write, or why. About the Bildungsroman, I did that work of enumerating all the elements that go into characterizing Jane Eyre as one. Lots of critics also define it as a subgenre, if you will, of the Bildungs - such as a Victorian Bildungs, or a female Bildungs.

Furthermore, you cannot expect all Bildungs to be alike, especially when almost one century separates them. Does Demian resemble the first Bildungs, Wilhelm Meister (candid question, since I haven't read the latter)? I'd say each author has a different take on the genre.

I'm glad I did not offend.

“Furthermore, you cannot expect all Bildungs to be alike, especially when almost one century separates them.”

Very much to the point. The implied comparison was very tenuous: that for Demian the search was Woman as an ideal form, and for Jane the fulfillment as a person and as a Woman. However my memory Hesse is very weak.