91 pages • 3 hours read

Jane Eyre

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1847

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Chapter 9

Chapters 10-16

Chapters 17-22

Chapters 23-27

Chapters 28-35

Chapters 36-38

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Madwoman in the Attic

The character of Mr. Rochester’s first wife, Bertha Rochester (née Mason), a violent and mentally ill woman whom he imprisons in the attic for 15 years, has interested feminist and postcolonial theorists. One of the best known works of feminist literary theory is named after Bertha—Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s 1979 book The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. In it, Gilbert and Gubar discuss the anxieties felt by early women novelists who had few female literary role models and so felt like “madwomen” and “monsters” themselves. Gubar and Gilbert theorize that this anxiety appears in the novels of women authors through hidden feminist subtext. In the case of Jane Eyre, Bertha might be the embodiment of Jane’s darkest fears of moral degeneration (i.e. what she fears she will “become” if she gives into temptation and runs away with Mr. Rochester).

Postcolonial theorists, meanwhile, find evidence of Victorian British colonial racism in the way Bertha, a white Creole woman from Jamaica, is described:

What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face (729-730)

This description uses dehumanizing language to invoke horror in the reader. The daughter of a white Jamaican colonist, Bertha’s own racial identity is ambiguous, and her character affirms and perpetuates racist ideas of the savage native “other.” If Bertha is indeed an ungendered “beast” rather than a human being, Mr. Rochester is justified to hold her prisoner; he is the long-suffering victim of Bertha’s inhuman existence rather than her subjugator. By representing Bertha this way, the novel implies that locking her up in the attic is for her own good. This kind of patronizing, dehumanizing logic was a hallmark of Victorian British treatment of colonized natives (as well as the mentally ill). British colonists believed that they were racially, intellectually, and morally superior, and therefore had the right to decide what was best for the natives whose land they controlled.

Strong Female Role Models

The novel is rich in strong female role models, as Jane Eyre establishes an atmosphere of female support, strength, and solidarity. As a young student at Lowood, we see the grace, courage, and intelligence of Miss Temple, who effectively runs the school, providing for her students’ needs where Mr. Brocklehurst neglects them. At Thornfield, we meet the impressive Miss Fairfax, who runs the huge manor house when Mr. Rochester is away. Later in the novel, we encounter the intelligent, resourceful, and intellectually gifted Diana and Mary Rivers, who care for Jane by nursing her to health when she first arrives, providing her with books and tutoring her in German, and affirming her decision not to marry their brother.

Enslavement, Entrapment, and Binding

Jane Eyre includes many images of entrapment, binding, and enslavement in addition to its hallmark image of the “mad woman in the attic.” Before their first wedding, Jane worries that Mr. Rochester has become an “idol” in her mind, exercising too much power over her. Mr. Rochester attempts to figuratively bind Jane by dressing her in rich fabrics and jewels, fashioning her into a decorative object he can possess: “When once I have fairly seized you, to have and to hold, I’ll just—figuratively speaking—attach you to a chain like this […] I’ll wear you in my bosom, lest my jewel I should tyne” (674).

Likewise, Jane uses images of entrapment and enslavement when she describes the temptation of returning to Mr. Rochester after fleeing Thornfield. She fears that if she returns to Mr. Rochester, she will become a slave to her desires, no longer capable of acting upon her own will. In Chapter 31, she wonders, “Whether is it better […] to be a slave in a fool’s paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss one hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next—or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest” (898).

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However, images of binding and entrapment can also describe the positive, loving connection between Jane and Mr. Rochester. When Mr. Rochester first proposes to Jane in the orchard, he imagines them tied viscerally together: “it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame” (627). This “string” activates when Mr. Rochester calls out to Jane through supernatural means across a great distance.

The image of love as a positively binding force carries into the final scenes of the novel, when Jane describes the blind Mr. Rochester as a “caged eagle” (1,081). Though Mr. Rochester feels emasculated, his injury effectively equalizes them, diminishing his dangerous power over Jane.

Home and Family

Because she is an orphan—and the product of an ill-fated love marriage—Jane spends much of the novel in search of a home and a family. Jane loses any sense of family when her kind Uncle Reed dies at Gateshead and only regains it when she discovers that Diana, Mary, and St. John are her long-lost cousins (relatives of her Uncle John Eyre). Jane’s inheritance from her Uncle John makes her financially independent and gives her family ties and connections.

Significantly, at the end of the novel, Jane feels “like the messenger-pigeon flying home” (1,058) as she returns to Mr. Rochester. The novel closes with Jane’s reflections about the birth of her son—and the restoration of Mr. Rochester’s sight—as they begin their own family.