Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre commentary

In her essay A Room of One's Own, published for the first time in 1929, Virginia Woolf raised the question of the conditions of women's access to art (writing in particular). According to Virginia Woolf, talent is a necessary condition for writing, but it is not sufficient: to this must be added financial independence and an intimate space, in a literal meaning (a room of one's own) and in a figurative meaning (a clean mental space, which is not monopolized by the needs of others). The main themes of this book are female emancipation, artistic creation and inequalities. One could therefore easily draw a parallel between her work and that of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

Her novel, published in 1847, is a Bildungsroman which follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and elements of social criticism which approach the topics of class, sexuality, religion, and feminism. Yet this Female Gothic novel, also explores women's entrapment within domestic space, subjection to patriarchal authority, and the transgressive and dangerous attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. Before having a room of her own, Jane Eyre must escape the one she is trapped in.

With Jane as first-person narrator, the reader is quick to understand her suffering, that from the start of the first chapter, especially when violence is evoked in the scene.

Indeed, the novel opens at Gateshead, home of the ten-year-old  Jane Eyre's wealthy relatives, the Reeds. Jane and the Reed children, Eliza, John, and Georgiana sit in the drawing room. Jane's aunt is angry with her, purposely excluding her from the rest of the family, so she sits alone in a window seat, reading Bewick's History of British Birds. What follows is what interests us: the start of violence and the protagonist’s reaction.

As Jane quietly pages through the book, her fourteen-year-old cousin berates her for reading “his” books and cruelly reminds her of her lowly status in the household, calling her a “penniless orphan”, a “beggar” and a “servant” in his house. He proceeds to hit her before throwing the book at her head, causing her to bleed. Unable to stand his abuse any longer, Jane yells at John and they begin to fight. Jane calls him a "murderer" and "slave-driver."  Mrs. Reed walks in on their scuffle and, blaming Jane, orders the maids to lock her up in the red-room, a rarely used bedroom where, nine years previous, Mrs. Reed's husband (Jane's uncle) had died.

As this is the first time Jane speaks up for herself, could her reaction act as the start of her emancipation, and therefore be the start of her formation and characterization (therefore considering the Bildungsroman aspect of the novel as well) ?

Jane Eyre suffers various social struggles, excluding her from the Reed family. Realizing those struggles, the protagonist shows first signs of this will to revolt against class but also gender oppression. She lets her passion take over reason in this revolt: standing up for herself leads to her imprisonment.

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In this extract, Brontë establishes young Jane’s character through her confrontations with John and then Mrs. Reed, in which Jane’s good-hearted but strong-willed determination and integrity become apparent. Like Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre draws a big part of its stylistic inspiration from Gothic novels that were in vogue during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These books depict desolate landscapes, abandoned ruins, and supernatural events, all of which were designed to create a sense of psychological suspense and horror. While Jane Eyre is certainly not a horror novel, its supernatural or biblical links, for example the red-room evoking hell or a womb, and its intellectual criticism of society and injustice make it far more than a typical Gothic romance. Indeed, young Jane Eyre is excluded from the Reed family. Since the focalization is on Jane, the reader can but side with her when learning what she is a victim of, and how alone she is in this family. Not only is she in a secluded place, but she was more importantly excluded from the other children (the Reed children). An orphan, Jane appears to be used to this feeling, conscious of her loneliness when she says: “[…] happy at least in my way”. Even her happiness is different from that of others. She has learnt to appreciate small gestures or moments that stand out compared to John’s violence for example. Even in terms of help, she is left alone  and has “[…] no appeal whatsoever” against John. The Reed family, the direct children rather than the “penniless orphan” takes up all the importance.

Mrs. Reed cares only for her children, and is very protective of them. “The mother’s heart” doesn’t hold Jane dear, she is not considered as one of her own, she is not even treated as a member of the family. All her love is thus concentrated on her own children, and what is particularly depicted in this passage is her love for her son.

Mrs. Reed’s affection for her fourteen-year-old son appears as unhealthy. The boy is not in school because of a sickness linked to his gluttony, yet his mother keeps on feeding him cakes according to Jane. She only cares to please him, even though she receives no love on the counterpart, and rather, her son is critical of her (and her skin too dark). Everything in his description is made to show him as a nemesis: he is Jane’s exact opposite, whether it is mentally, morally of physically. Jane is frail and fragile, he is fat, with round cheeks. On one hand, she cares to be discreet and read,  whilst on the other, he barges in the room in order to hurt her. This differences between them make Jane his subordinate and his “servant”. Her first reflex when she sees him is to ask: “What do you want?”. She is ready to fulfill his requests (in exchange for his mercy) as quickly as possible so as to not spend more time than needed with him. For that reason, she describes herself as “habitually obedient”.

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