On Interpreting Jane

[Newcomer]

While this is addressed to rintrah who was kind enough to point me to the source of the idea, the question is general enough to solicit the reader.
Jane Eyre may be, and probably has been, interpreted from the view of Marxism as set in the period of Industrial Revolution or Freudian analysis of sexual repression or the cultural milieu of Paris where Rochester sought relief from Thornsfield and certainly it is the cornerstone of Victorian women studies, specifically of contemporary Feminist academic literature. The problem in my view is that to restrict the novel to a narrow spectrum, especially of an idealogical bias, is to throttle Charlotte's imagination.
Marxism, Freudian analysis, as many 'isms', have whithered as branches of explanations of human conduct. While Feminism is yet current, it seems that it may also be viewed as an 'isim' of the 20th. century. I would suggest that as difficult as it may be Jane Eyre has to be viewed from a limiting perspective of the Victorian age. Charlotte Bronte certainly was a woman of that age and her intellect and emotions were formed by the limits of that age.
A definitive understanding of Jane Eyre may be fond delusion, or only approachable through poetry or music, forms of emotional rather than cognitive comprehension.

[Newcomer]

When an original work of art is translated, whether from a foreign tongue, or from another era, at best a subtle shift takes place. For instance when prose is translated to visual images, as in a dramatization, camera angle, lighting, color, close up or panoramic shot, can and will give new meaning to a phrase or descriptive paragraph. Meaning of words and especially normative beliefs change with time and the further back we go the more difficult it becomes to ascertain the definitive meaning of the author.
When we read Jane Eyre our experiences and emotional connections to words and settings, are different from what they might have been to Charlotte. We are translating the original into something that we are familiar, that has emotional resonance for us. That is why some view the novel as Gothic, as Romantic, as Feminist.
Let me use an example: the meeting of Jane and Rochester when the rider is pined under the fallen horse and needs assistance.
” If even this stranger had smiled and been good -humoured to me when I addressed him; if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with thanks, I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew inquiries: but the frown, the roughness of the traveller set me at ease: I retained my station when he waved to me to go, and announced:-
“I cannot think of leaving you sir, at so late an hour, in this solitary lane, till I see you are fit to mount your horse.”
He looked at me when I said this: he had hardly turned his eyes in my direction before.”
I think that a contemporary reader can't appreciate either the roughness of Rochester or Jane's conduct without some understanding of the Yorkshire of the19th. century.
The following is from The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell, showing the “the peculiar force of character which the Yorkshiremen display. This makes them interesting as a race; while, at the same time, as individuals, the remarkable degree of self-sufficiency they possess gives them an air of independence rather apt to repel a stranger.”
....“We were driving along the street, when one of those ne'er-do-well lads who seem to have a kind of magnetic power for misfortunes, having jumped into the stream that runs through the place, just where all the broken glass and bottles are thrown, staggered naked and nearly covered with blood into a cottage before us. Besides receiving another bad cut in the arm, he had completely laid open the artery, and was in a fair way of bleeding to death - which, one of his relations comforted him by saying, would be likely to "save a deal o' trouble."
When my husband had checked the effusion of blood with a strap that one of the bystanders unbuckled from his leg, he asked if a surgeon had been sent for.
...."Well, he didna' say he wouldna' come."
"But tell him the lad may bleed to death."
...."And what did he say?"
"Why, only, 'D - n him; what do I care?'"
....Among the most unmoved of the lookers-on was the brother of the boy so badly hurt; and while he was lying in a pool of blood on the flag floor, and crying out how much his arm was"warching," his stoical relation stood coolly smoking his bit of black pipe, and uttered not a single word of either sympathy or sorrow.”
Rochester on meeting Jane expects the curtness and laconic speech of a Yorkshire woman. Both the accent and the kindness displayed must have been unsettling.
Knowing a bit of the cultural background of the place, immeasurably enriches the scene as described by Charlotte. Yet such is not readily available to the contemporary reader. However if one wishes to go beyond the drama and the poetry of Jane Eyre, to understand that Jane is the avatar for Charlotte, to note the autobiographical themes that Charlotte used in diverse characters and those that she spurned as socially acceptable, where the longing for love originated, you have to read The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell. It allows us a glimpse into the Victorian sensibility that was Charlotte's as she created Jane Eyre.

[Newcomer]

The two outstanding woman authors of the Victorian era, Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, used morality in very distinct ways to build characters in their fiction. It is analogous to the artist using silverpoint as opposed to water color, to paint a scene. The character's attributes are depicted as reflections, colored shadows, of the social values of the locale . Both writers are much to subtle to describe the principal characters directly, rather they are sketched as contrasts and verbal observations by other characters in the novels. Both are distant from the tendency of reformist pamphleteering that can be found in the works of Charles Dickens or Thackeray who satirized contemporary society, and whom Charlotte admired.
It is quite evident that Charlotte used autobiographical detail to sketch the young Jane and latter the aspirations of the adult, to contrast in the Calvinist morality of St. James, the conflict between fulfillment of personal love and love of ascetic renunciation. These were the basis of Victorian morality. What is not quite evident is that Charlotte introduces a third choice: Rousseau like Nature. This Nature, best described by her own words:“Then I awoke. Then I recalled where I was, and how situated. Then I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering; and then the still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and heard the burst of passion.” - chapter 32. The depth of emotions are explicit if the words are reordered:

Then I awoke.
Then I recalled where I was,
and how situated.
Then I rose up on my curtainless bed
trembling and quivering
and then the still, dark night witnessed
the convulsion of despair
and heard the burst of passion.

“I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature:I will seek her breast and ask repose.” -chapter 28,. This passage is important for two reasons: first, it is Jane's own speech, coming at a moment of crisis from the core of her being, and second, it is the affirmation by the author of system of values, morals, juxtapositioned to the Christian values of Evangelicism and Calvinism influencing the character of Jane Eyre.
If morality is defined as acting on distinction of right from wrong, of behavior and character based on these principles, then what is Jane's character? Charlotte allows us to glimpse the chameleon Jane from the perspective of several characters in the novel.
Foremost is Jane's own speech:“It was my nature to feel pleasure in yielding to authority supported like hers; and to bend, where my conscience and self-respect permitted, to an active will.”- chapter 29. And the contrast: in: ““I scorn your idea of love” I could not help saying; as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock.”I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.””- chapter 34.
Rochester's telling of first meeting Jane, could be interpreted as playful, “For the men in green: it was proper moonlight evening for them. Did I break through one of your rings, that you spread that damned ice on the causeway?” - chapter 13. Such would be a mistake as Rochester sees the fey in Jane as compared to the rustics of the countryside or the ladies of the gentry. The reference to moonlight reinforces the theme of Nature, Jane's domain. The reference is reinforced multiple times in the novel.

To Rochester's fantasy, Jane answer is consciously prosaic:“The men in green all forsook England a hundred years ago” said I, speaking as seriously as he had done.”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.”- chapter13.
Rochester sees Jane in poetic terms, as in the first encounter:”No wonder you have rather the look of another world. I marvel where you had got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse.” - chapter 13. And in chapter 22, “ Yes - just one of your tricks not to send for a carriage, and come clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a dream or a shade.”. And continuing: “A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard! She comes from the other world – from the abode of people who are dead; and tell me so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared I'd touch you to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf!”
Jane's character as perceived by Rochester, matches his longing to surmount his past.
“Childish and slender creature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped on my foot and proposed to bear me on its tiny wing.”
St. John's assessment of Jane's character is very different from Rochester's: ”though you have a man's vigorous brain, you have a woman's heart” - chapter 34. A Calvinistic assessment, accurate but missing the life force that is Jane Eyre.
The question is not which of these views is accurate but to recognize that Charlotte gives us the choice to believe what we will. In Jane there is contest between the rational, the social and passion, the fulfillment of the need to love and be loved. The Victorian Christian virtues are the constrains juxtaposed to Nature and the chosen metaphor is the moon and moonlight. Charlotte uses the imagery of the moon and moonlight 21 times in the text of Jane Eyre. She uses the metaphor as poetic imagery and as a shortcut to define Jane's innermost inexpressible emotions.
The first mentioning of the moon, is innocuous, when the young Jane, is scanning pictures in a book while hiding from the abuse in Mrs. Reed's house. “on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck” - chapter 1. In the terror that the young Jane experiences in the Red Room “a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind?” - chapter 2. The theme becomes more personal, comforting, more internal to Jane's developing character as in the scene where she rest her head on Helen Burn's shoulder, “Some heavy clouds swept from the sky by a rising wind, had left the moon bare; and her light,streaming in through a window near, shone full both of us“ -chapter 8.
The moon is implicit in the cry from the heart:in: ”the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapors she is about to severe. I watched her come – watched with the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom were written on her disk. She broke forth as newer moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then not 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 it whispered in my heart -”
““My daughter, flee temptation!”
“Mother, I will.”” - chapter27. The passage is Nature internalized, acknowledged as the Mother, the woof and thread of Jane's character.
In the last chapters the blind Rochester calls forth the symbol of the moon, identifying it with Jane Eyre: ”though I could see no stars, and only the vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of the moon. I longed for thee, Janet!” - chapter 37
It is the Rousseau's un-Christian Nature, as much as the intimations of sexuality that both trilled and made uncomfortable the Victorian readers. Elizabeth Rigby, a critic of the London Review in 1848 wrote:” Altogether the autobiography of Jane Eyre is preeminently an anti-Christian composition. .... Jane Eyre, in spite of some grand things about her, is a being totally uncongenial to our feelings from beginning to end. .... [Whoever Currer Bell may be, it is a person who, with great mental powers, combines a total ignorance of habits of society, a great coarseness of taste, and a heathenish doctrine of religion.”
We have a perspective of time and a more inclusive judgment than the Victorian sensibility.

[dirac1984]

i want to draw one thing into attention. many people have a misunderstanding about bronte. due to her biographer gaskell's misleading dipction of her life, many even today believe that she lived in the bottom of the society, and her life is very miserable. in fact her family is not poor and can be considered to be middle class family.

[sciencefan]

However if one wishes to go beyond the drama and the poetry of Jane Eyre, to understand that Jane is the avatar for Charlotte, to note the autobiographical themes that Charlotte used in diverse characters and those that she spurned as socially acceptable, where the longing for love originated, you have to read The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell. It allows us a glimpse into the Victorian sensibility that was Charlotte's as she created Jane Eyre.

I am almost speechless.
Thank you for that beautiful insight!

[sciencefan]

The Victorian Christian virtues are the constrains juxtaposed to Nature and the chosen metaphor is the moon and moonlight. Charlotte uses the imagery of the moon and moonlight 21 times in the text of Jane Eyre. She uses the metaphor as poetic imagery and as a shortcut to define Jane's innermost inexpressible emotions.

I found the whole of your post fascinating.
It's as though the moon becomes her friend.

[Newcomer]

i want to draw one thing into attention. many people have a misunderstanding about bronte. due to her biographer gaskell's misleading dipction of her life, many even today believe that she lived in the bottom of the society, and her life is very miserable. in fact her family is not poor and can be considered to be middle class family.

You are mistaken in both assertions.
1)Gaskell's biography not definitive.
One can get an idea of the quality of critical estimates at that time by noting that the Cambridge History of English Literature gathered George Eliot along with Disraeli, Charles Kingsley, and Mrs. Gaskell into a chapter on the political and social novel.)

The Life of Charlotte Brontë was an immediate success and has established itself as one of the great biographies. Within the conventions of the period (she did not, for example, feel free to deal with Brontë's feelings for Constantin Heger) it is remarkably frank and full in its search for truth. Later biographies have modified but not replaced it; The Life of Charlotte Brontë still stands as a portrait of a remarkable family and its background, as well as being a detailed study of the development and motivation of its exceptional heroine.

A recent review of Mrs. Gaskell's critical reputation ....dominant one regards her as "a maturing artist, and considers each of her works in relation to the others and her general views, preferring the late fiction but giving all her writing respectful, and perhaps even admiring attention." To this summary should be added a recent special focus on her role and influence as a woman writer, and studies of her as a provincial novelist, relating her work to that of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy in its presentation of life in a regional community. It is also probably true to say that the reputation of her late fiction -- the "nouvelle" Cousin Phillis (1864) and the novel Wives and Daughters (1866) -- is still growing.
2)Bronte's family as being middle class.
The social classification, middle class, did come into usage well into industrial revolution. Long past the formative years of Charlotte Bronte.
The 'living of Hartshead is rated in the Clergy List at £202 per annum' while Jane Austen describes Mr. Bennet's income as of £2000 or almost 10 times that of the Bronte's. Note that the salary of a servant or of a governess was about £20-30 .Mrs. Bennet's brother, a merchant in London has a similar income of about £2000. From this I would derive that the Bronte household, respectable as clergy while not destitute, was poor.

[RLStevenson]

I have read Jane Eyre in the past, and I am required to read it again over the summer for a school project. (Not that it feels like a requirement to me.)
Newcomer, or anyone else for that matter- you seem to know alot about Bronte, and her books. Tell me, do you happen to know the meaning of Jane's surname?

[Newcomer]

I have read Jane Eyre in the past, and I am required to read it again over the summer for a school project. (Not that it feels like a requirement to me.)
Newcomer, or anyone else for that matter- you seem to know alot about Bronte, and her books. Tell me, do you happen to know the meaning of Jane's surname?

(Reference: The Brontes A Collection of Critical Essays.)
David Lodge in the essay, Fire and Eyre: Charlotte Bronte's War of Earthly Elements, suggest the association of the thematic elements of fire, air and water with metaphors in the text of Jane Eyre. “This scheme corresponds roughly with the way elements are used in Jane Eyre. Earth (particularly as rock or stone) and water (particularly) as ice, snow and rain) are associated with discomfort, unhappiness, alienation. Air has a punning association with the heroine. Fire is certainly the dominant element in the novel, and the one most commonly associated with happy or ecstatic states of being.”
So Eyre can be viewed as a pun on Air but it could as well be associated with Aire, a river in West Yorkshire or reference to an eagles nest.
I'm not comfortable with such criticism, it is academic word play and does nothing to deepen the understanding of the novel. My view is that words and images in the novel are used for poetic and not metaphysical meanings.

[booksbuddy]

[, it is academic word play and does nothing to deepen the understanding of the novel. My view is that words and images in the novel are used for poetic and not metaphysical meanings.[/QUOTE]


I really agree with you.Might be bronte hadn't thought much deeper while writing than we people are thinking.

[kiki1982]

Maybe it is interesting to remark that the element air is associated with 'thoughts' and 'intellect', which can certainly be said about the character Jane Eyre. Whether Charlotte knew this is another matter of course...

Other than that: there was an Edward John Eyre, who had travelled across Australia from 1839 until 1841 and he got decorated for it by the Royal Geographic Society. And the same Eyre was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of New-Zealand in 1846... He was also made governor in various parts of the West Indies later. He died in 1901 at the age of 86. Maybe she got a glimpse of an idea there, with a pioneering character...

Anyway, Eyre seems also to be a wellknown name...