[This
is an adapted version of an assignment written for a course on the
nineteenth-century novel]
Genre
can be broadly characterised as a means of categorising stylistic similarities which
manage readers’ expectations within and between texts (see M. H. Abrams, 1999,
p.108). Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre combines and modulates a
number of genres, but generic elements are subtly interwoven so that rarely
does one predominate over others for long, nor do they at any time descend to
pastiche. Even in the case of the
novel’s Gothic aspect, the most obvious of its generic borrowings, these are more
realistic than they might be in such obvious examples as The Mysteries of Udolpho (Ann Radcliffe, 1966 [1794]). Instead genres play against each other,
reinforcing and undermining reader expectations and enriching the characterisation
of Jane.
Delia
da Sousa Correa (2000, p.97ff) outlines the variety of ‘high’ and ‘low’ genres
present in the novel and explores their interplay. She notes that Jane Eyre is variously Bildungsroman,
a ‘novel of education’ and development; fictional autobiography; realist social
commentary; romance; governess novel; plea for equality (though in a more
restrained mode than the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft); even at points a
novel of religious and ethical debate, in addition to those elements that are
Gothic and melodramatic. As Correa
points out, the admixture of genres suggests ‘multiple potential developments
for Jane’s story’ (Correa, 2000, p.98). When
we set off with Jane on her journey we cannot be sure what direction it will
take, leaving her character development less constrained than it would be if
the novel were confined to a single narrative style, with its attendant set of
expectations. These generic devices are
one means whereby Brontë generates, as Michael Mason discusses in another
context, an ‘unconscious response, on our part, to powerful cues’ (Mason, 1996,
p.xxii)
The
Gothic tropes are easily noted, but there are other aspects which work to show
the complexities of Jane and her situation, reinforcing its strangeness. A more subtle contribution than the Gothic
elements is made by the consistent use of fairy story features to underpin
Jane’s trajectory. The central example
is the association of Jane with elves, fairies and spirits of the earth
(variations on the word ‘green’ recur frequently throughout the novel). This strand links Jane and Rochester from
their first meeting, when Rochester falls from his horse upon coming across
Jane sitting on a stile moments after Jane, hearing his horse in the distance,
was put in mind of stories of the ‘Gytrash’, ‘a North-of-England spirit’ (Brontë,
1996, p.128). Gilbert and Gubar characterise
this encounter as “a fairytale meeting” (Gilbert and Gubar, 1979, p.351). Recalling it, Rochester casts the memory into
fantasy terms, jocularly claiming, after suggesting that he had considered
asking if Jane had ‘bewitched’ his horse, that he had thought that Jane was
‘waiting for your people when you sat on that stile’ (p.139). In response to the question ‘For whom, sir?’
he continues: ‘For the men in green’, (ibid.) thus explicitly linking her with fairy
folk, and implicitly accusing her of the ability to bewitch him. In true folkloric fashion she finds herself in
a place of enchantment, Thornfield, though in a reversal of Rochester’s teasing
claims she discovers that he has bewitched her.
Rochester usually uses such language patronisingly,
and its repetition invests Jane subliminally with a feyness that counterpoints
the more typical emphasis in the book on her down-to-earth practicality and
common sense, enriching her character.
The
stile, that staple of country furniture hitherto associated with Jane, later
becomes associated with Rochester himself.
Upon her return from Gateshead after the death of Mrs Reed, Jane
encounters him sitting on a stile, writing.
Yet unlike with Jane, this does not confer an ethereal quality on him,
the association with the fairy folk thus being cast in gendered terms. Upon seeing her, and learning that her aunt
is dead, he notes that she has not come by carriage ‘like a common mortal’, but
arrived ‘just as if you were a dream or a shade’ ( p.275). He then connects her explicitly with death
and the Afterlife: ‘She comes from the other world – from the abode of people
who are dead … If I dared, I’d touch you, to see if you are substance or
shadow, you elf!’ (ibid.) A couple of
weeks later he describes the encounter to Adèle, referring initially obliquely
to Jane as the other participant: ‘It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land,’ and
then he says that ‘Mademoiselle is a fairy’ ( p.300). Adèle dismisses his
‘Contes de fée’ [fairy stories] as the product of ‘un vrai menteur’ [a true
liar], herself speaking truer than she realises. It is ironic that as a child Jane had
dismissed the existence of elves as less plausible even than Gulliver’s Travels: ‘as to the elves,
having sought them in vain … I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth
that they were all gone out of England to some savage country…’ (p.28). It is she who is herself now identified with
them by Rochester.
A
witchcraft/sorcery motif also links Rochester and Jane. When Jane saves Rochester from a fiery death
in bed by throwing water, Rochester in his confusion asks, ‘In the name of all
the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre? … What have you done with me,
witch, sorceress?’ (p.169) This is not
said in his usual jocular fashion, making it an honest indicator of Rochester’s
sense of her power over him. But similar
vocabulary is used of Rochester. When he
masquerades as a gypsy woman he is described as a ‘real sorceress’ by Frederick
Lynn (p.217), while Miss Ingram refuses to believe that he is a ‘genuine witch’
(p.219) and Jane snorts that his ‘witch’s skill is rather at fault sometimes’ (p.225). Bertha is also woven into this set of witch
references: when Jane returns to Thornfield after the fire and enquires what
had happened, she is told that the fire was set by Bertha, ‘who was as cunning
as a witch’ (p.475), cunning in a way that Jane is not; Bertha’s is a different
type of witchcraft entirely, one with disastrous consequences. Jane, Rochester and Bertha are linked in a
chain which can be broken only by Bertha’s death.
In
the meantime, if Jane is identified with fairies and elves, and both she and
Rochester with witches and sorcerers, Rochester is associated metaphorically
with a much darker fairytale motif, that of Bluebeard (see Snodgrass, 2005,
pp.33-34, for the history and influence of Charles Perrault’s ‘La Barbe Bleu’). John Sutherland examines parallels between ‘Bluebeard’
and Jane Eyre, noting that by the
1840s the former ‘would have been among the best-known of fables (Sutherland,
2000, p.68). When Mrs Fairfax is showing
her over Thornfield, Jane finds herself in the corridor in which Bertha is imprisoned It is ‘narrow, low, and dim … like a corridor
in some Bluebeard’s castle’ (p.122), though at this point she does not realise
the implication of her musings. This
melodramatic aura evokes a sense of mystery within Rochester’s home which
increases in intensity, culminating in Bertha’s visit to Jane’s room (pp.316-8).
The
misogynistic Bluebeard association might be thought to convey a sense of
Rochester as a threat to Jane, yet because of the overriding romance genre
expectations we do not read him in this way.
Bluebeard’s actions contain a degree of sadism, whereas Rochester’s act in
confining his wife, it is implied, was humane, undermining the sense that Rochester
is being self-serving by keeping her secret and is subjecting her to an
injustice by her incarceration. It may
be, as Sutherland observes, that Brontë inverts the conclusion so that we feel
sympathy, Rochester as ‘a Bluebeard who has wholly mended his ways’ (Sutherland,
2000, p.69), with little remembrance by the reader that his treatment of Bertha
deserves censure. Added to the implied
sympathy for what he has endured through Bertha’s insanity and the sense that
he married her under false pretenses, Brontë glosses over Rochester’s
responsibility for injustice against Bertha and Jane by removing him from the
narrative after his failed attempt at bigamy and only showing him again at his
lowest ebb. This structure of silence allows
Jane to return to him, despite his past misdeeds and confessed sexual
incontinence, yet still retain the reader’s approbation for her act, while for
Rochester the slate is wiped clean with Bertha’s death and his penitential disabilities.
Related
to the Gothic and fairy elements that work alongside the realism to deepen it is
the uncanny, evoking an eerie, strange quality that does not necessarily
conform to what we normally understand as natural laws (Correa, 2000, p.109). It has a psychological aspect, involving such
elements as clairvoyant visions and precognition. Sometimes apparent paranormality is shown to
be explainable, as when Jane becomes panicky while locked in the red room, or when
Rochester makes his gypsy pronouncements.
Often, however, explanations are not so straightforward. Jane refers to ‘Sympathies’ expressed at a
distance ‘whose workings baffle mortal comprehension,’ suggesting a belief in
the operation of the ‘higher phenomena’ of mesmerism, such as clairvoyance (p.248).
The
most famous example of the uncanny is what Sutherland refers to as ‘Rochester’s
celestial telegram’ (Sutherland, 1996, p.59), which occurs when Jane is being
worn down by St. John’s persuasions to become his wife. Suddenly she experiences a sharp feeling and
hears a voice call her name three times, to which she replies: ‘”I am coming!”
I cried. “Wait for me! Oh, I will come!”’
She then twice asks: ‘“Where are
you?”’ (p.467). This could be a
subjective hallucination, but it later transpires that Rochester in his despair
had called her name thrice at the same time that Jane had heard it, and
received a reply: ‘“I am coming: wait
for me”; and a moment after … the words – “Where are you?”’ (p.496). This veridical
telepathic communication denotes a bond operating at a time of high emotion,
one that saves Jane from marrying St. John and reunites her with her true love
(Mason, 1996, p.xxix). Sutherland notes
that for Brontë this was not supernatural because she was convinced that such
events had happened (Sutherland, 1996, p.60), and he suggests that Jane and
Rochester had each self-induced a trance (with a candle and the moon
respectively) at the same time. As with the novel’s fairy elements, such
uncanny themes in the novel imply that there is a deeper meaning to reality
than we see every day, one that links us both to kindred spirits and to unseen
forces in the world.
References
Abrams,
M.H. (1999) A Glossary of Literary Terms,
7th edition, Boston, Mass., Heinle & Heinle.
Brontë,
C. (1996 [1847]) Jane Eyre,
Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Correa,
D. S. (2000) ‘Jane Eyre and Genre’,
in Correa, D. S. (ed.) The
Nineteenth-Century Novel: Realisms, London, Routledge and The Open
University.
Gilbert,
S. M and Gubar, S. (1979) The Madwoman in
the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination,
New Haven, Yale University Press.
Mason,
M. ‘Introduction’, in Brontë, C. (1996 [1847]) Jane Eyre, Harmondsworth,
Penguin.
Radcliffe,
A. (1966 [1794])) The Mysteries of
Udolpho, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Snodgrass,
M. E (2005) Encyclopedia of Gothic
Literature, New York, Facts on File.
Sutherland,
J. (1996) Is Heathcliff a Murderer?: Puzzles
in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Sutherland,
J. (2000) Can Jane Eyre be Happy?: More
Puzzles in Classic Fiction, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
