Class Blog

“Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment; you make a new acquaintance—how or where no matter: you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint […] you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom—a mere conventional impediment, which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your judgement approves?” (219)

One thing that has really struck me in Jane Eyre is Brontë’s ability to depict sexual tension. Brontë captures a realistic attraction between Jane and Mr. Rochester, instead of presenting an idealized and distant portrayal of love (as in A Tale of Two Cities). In this passage, Mr. Rochester clearly is indirectly soliciting Jane to live as his mistress. Of course, Jane appears largely unconscious of his direct intentions in asking this question, but it demonstrates the deep level of attraction they both have for one another.

Although Jane does not initially see Mr. Rochester as handsome, her feelings for him develop as she begins to spend more time with him: “Every good, true, vigorous feeling I have, gathers impulsively around him” (179). The attraction she feels is not ethereal or romanticized; it is “impulsive” and breaks society’s class constructs. Moreover, her feelings develop in intensely intimate moments, such as when he takes her hand in his whilst they are both standing alone during the middle of the night, after Jane has doused him in water to save his life from a fire (156). Mr. Rochester tells her: “I knew, […] you would do me good in some way, at some time” (156). For Jane, this expressed sentiment causes her a great deal of inner turmoil and longing, since the next day she “wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye” (157). She knows that the interaction they had crossed lines of normal social respectability, but she also desires to have another one-on-one interaction.

Both Mr. Rochester and Jane recognize that there are barriers dividing them, and thus they must keep their desires separate. However, Mr. Rochester still finds ways to present to her both his attraction and his unspoken sexual dominance in their relationship. For example, in his indirect proposal above, he clearly has no reservations in expressing his feelings for Jane. He is a man with many flaws who is open with his sexuality and his desires in a frankness that Jane ultimately finds extremely appealing. Thus, he is not the image of the ideal man, but a realistic man with a great range of emotions and attractions. Perhaps, this realistic character is what has cemented him as a cultural romantic figure in literature throughout so many years.

Photo citation: Oh, Mr. Rochester…. 8tracksradio, http://8tracks.com/potatunes/oh-mr-rochester.

“”That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper, of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings.  I feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in the dark – all the work of my own hand.” (Bronte, 84).

In this passage, Jane is coming to terms with the fact that Lowood has it flaws. Even though she is mistreated physically and malnourished, Lowood as just another “low” time in her life. This passage is significant because Jane is accepting the reality of her school. She is normalizing the fact that she is underfed and because she did this, she could give up hoping for a well-balanced meal. When Jane loses hope for better treatment, she also loses her imagination. She loses her imagination for being treated well for once. This loss of imagination is not just from the lack of food at Lowood but also the mistreatment she received from her aunt. I think that this is a permanent loss of Jane’s hope and positive imagination because this thought process is like a coming of age story. Jane is shedding her imagination for a life in where is she treated well by others and focusing on she can make herself happy. It says “I feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings.” This means that Jane is replacing thoughts of unhappiness and hunger with happiness and drawings. This switch is impressive because Jane is still young but has the mental capacity to normalize the wrongdoings of Lowood and find happiness within her drawings. Her drawings are symbolic because they show how despite all the hardships Jane faced with the passing of her parents, the passing of her uncle, the mistreatment from her aunt, the bullying from her cousin and the malnourishment from Lowood, she is still able to survive. This passage represents the qualities of Jane. Jane can survive any circumstance and with each mistreatment, it only makes her stronger. Her drawings allow her to escape reality for the time being and engage in something that she is passionate about. Although Jane hasn’t received much love in her life, she is learning to love through her drawings. Jane says “I was wont to amuse my inward cravings” when paraphrased, this means that Jane will not let her desire for food affect her life. She is showing strength and maturity by resisting the temptations of her stomach. I think that Jane is afraid of becoming miserable like her aunt or like Mr. Brocklehurst so she refuses to indulge in thoughts that would make her like them in anyway. By resisting the urge to hope for better treatment Jane is showing that she has true power over those who have and are mistreating her.

In the video above, “Carol Atherton explores the character of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre through ideas of the ‘Other’, Charlotte Brontë’s narrative doubling and 19th-century attitudes towards madness and ethnicity.”

“The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr. Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled. She was a big woman, in stature almost equalling her husband, and corpulent besides: she showed virile force in the contest — more than once she almost throttled him, athletic as he was. He could have settled her with a well-planted blow; but he would not strike: he would only wrestle. At last he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he pinioned them behind her: with more rope, which was at hand, he bound her to a chair. The operation was performed amidst the fiercest yells and the most convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the spectators: he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate” (Brönte, 289).

Bertha Mason is a Creole, the daughter of a European settler in the West Indies. “Tall and large, with thick and dark hair, as well as a discoloured [black] – savage face,” Bertha’s “alienness” is made apparent upon her introduction in Chapter 25, when she tears Jane’s wedding veil (Brönte, 280). In addition to her “alien” appearance, Bertha even exemplifies a disposition entirely different from those of cultivated England. For instance, described as a “hyena,” Bertha stands on her “hind feet,” crawling on the floor, “[gazing] wildly at her visitors” (Brönte, 289). The imagery is vivid and unsettling, leaving the impression that Bertha is anything but human. Perhaps that is what Englanders thought of those from the East?

Trapped and forced to live in an attic, Bertha is left marginalized. Her rights, both as a woman and, actually, as a human, have been removed because she is forced to live in a room where she is “incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger” (Brönte, 300-301). Even worse, the only way that Bertha articulates herself is through demonic laughter and strange, cannibalistic gestures, as seen in the instance where she “[grapples Mr. Rochester’s] throat viciously, and [lays] her teeth to his cheek” (Brönte, 289). Mr. Rochester and Grace Poole literally have to tie Bertha down to prevent her from becoming too dangerous.

Despite the understanding that Bertha is actually mad, as Rochester states, Brönte shows that, in some ways, Bertha is still perceptive. After all, she figures out that Mr. Rochester and Jane are planning to get married, as seen in her tearing apart the wedding veil. Perhaps Bertha is trying to warn Jane, and tell her not to marry Mr. Rochester? Taking this into account, we are led to sympathize with Bertha because we really don’t know her side of the story.

Nevertheless, Bertha’s character is important because she seems to be a representation of the “other,” as she is not fully English. Here, she is represented as coarse, lustful, and unrestrained. After all, her vampiric appearance suggests that she is sucking the blood – aka life – away from the “innocent” Mr. Rochester. In other words, she is a complete opposite of the polite, educated, and restrained Victorian woman. Perhaps she has been brought to England because she is in need of British enlightenment?

Bertha’s character poses another interesting question, however. In terms of Jane’s story, Bertha is a mad, unrestrained “monster,” living in the confines of a secure, domestic home. Now apply this to an even greater scale: what if these monsters are actually running around England? Even worse, what if these “others” are hiding in the streets of London? In this sense, Bertha represents both the British fears of foreigners and the unrestrained, lustful woman.

The proposal scene deals with a lot of movement both from the characters themselves, and within the plot. Up until this point the plot of the novel has moved relatively slowly, but then suddenly takes off when Rochester proposes. Whereas with the characters, they are walking, and Rochester’s proposal spurs Jane to pace back and forth in front of him. However, ever since I first read this novel, this scene has stayed with me for both the obvious reasons of it being a great literary scene, but also the way it reverses the two characters’ gender roles.
Beginning with Jane’s declaration of independence to her acceptance of his proposal, Jane asserts herself as the more dominant of the two characters—usually considered the more masculine—whereas Rochester is more manipulative and talkative of the two—or arguably more feminine. Moreover, even past their words, their situations reverse the two also, as Jane is independent of wealth and family, and Rochester is weighed down by both. Whereas in more typical 19th Century marriage plots, there is no semblance of independence for the woman.
Particularly when Jane voices her independence to Rochester, “I am not bird, and no net ensnares me…” (252), her dominance, or masculinity, radiates out of her. Indeed, this scene involves an overemotional, arguably hysteric Jane, which distorts the masculinity aspect of her character, however Rochester’s character reasserts this gender reversal. Moreover, despite Jane’s emotional state, she remains much more physically active than Rochester. Throughout this scene Rochester remains still, while Jane is in constant movement before him. However, though this may appear to be these characters acting within the confines of their gender, really the words of each character reverse their roles. Rochester may have been the one to propose, but Jane still has the power to deny that proposal. Moreover, post asking for her hand in marriage, Jane questions Rochester so that he must explain his motives in his past disguises and games, while also attempting to convince Jane to agree to marry him. Jane therefore maintains power over Rochester making her the more masculine of the two.

“I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live […] You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity […] People think you a good woman, but you are bad; hard-hearted. You are deceitful!” (49)

“Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty.” (49)

In this passage, we see Jane defy her aunt, or as we would say in the 21^st century, “drag” her. This stood out to me as especially significant because up until this point in literature (for the most part, I don’t want to discount any other works that may be less well-known or that I’m forgetting), we haven’t seen a female character speak her mind as bluntly, or to the extent that Jane doing in this passage. After so many years of being controlled by her aunt, Jane defies the role of women, and also children in this narrative—normally, women were supposed to stay silent and obedient, much like children.

What is interesting here is that even though Aunt Reed is a woman, most of the qualities Jane attributes to her are ones that wouldn’t have been used to describe a female: “without one bit of love or kindness,” or “you are bad, hard-hearted.” As shown in another text from this time period, Daisy Miller, women were supposed to maintain an image of being kind, gentle, and nurturing. However, Jane and her Aunt go against these traditional female roles here—but for different reasons. As mentioned previously, many of the adjectives used to describe Aunt Reed are not the typical “feminine” descriptors. Rather, Aunt Reed is taking on a more masculine, authoritarian role through her oppression and control of Jane.

In the second passage, where we hear an older Jane muse on her outburst, she seems liberated by her own actions. As a young female, Jane shows the reader her strong-willed, determined, and simply put: badass self. Whether it was meant to be a feminist statement or not, I, for one, felt that this passage would have opened up the 19^th century reader to the notion that yes, school girls are capable of defending themselves too.

One of the elements of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eye that makes it so enjoyable to readers is the changing life circumstances of the main character, Jane, herself. In the beginning of the novel she is so unhappy, and so alone, tortured by her cousin and hated by her aunt. What makes it worse is she has no idea why. She is a child, only 9 years old, and this hatred and sorrow has been her entire life experience. While locked up in the Red Room she contemplates running away or even killing herself through not eating. Such unhappiness completely defines the character of Jane at the beginning of the novel.

That is why it is so satisfying to the reader to see the later contrast between Jane’s life at Thornfield Hall to that of her early experience. Such reader satisfaction is especially heightened after the passage in chapter 15. Jane contemplates Mr. Rochester and how, “The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint; the friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to him. I felt at times as if he were my relation rather than my master:” (152).  This newfound joy and content is pleasing to the reader, but what is interesting in this phrase in particular is the use of the word “relation”. As we know, Jane’s only living relations were horrible to her, and thus her only experience with “relations” is a negative one. It is interesting that she would be using the word here in such a positive connotation, trying to express the comfort she feels around Mr. Rochester. However, instead of being an association with blood relations, the use of this word could also be a subtle foreshadowing of her potential future with Mr. Rochester. We know they have a romantic connection and perhaps she is alluding to becoming his actual relation through marriage, aka becoming his wife. This prospect, though pleasing to the reader, is one that could face many challenges from the outside world, but a challenge it will not face is his treatment of her because he already treats her almost like a relation.

Class dynamic (and their relative morality) is a central theme in both Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre, yet these two texts display this theme differently. Dickens focuses his novel on the oppression of one group (working class) by another (the aristocracy) leads to revolution and the creation of an indiscriminate legal system. The working class characters such as Mr. Cruncher and the Mr. and Madam Defarge are less adherent to moralistic customs. Mr. Cruncher doesn’t approve of his wife praying and he is a body snatcher. The Defarge’s are planning a social coup, in which Madam Defarge is arguably the main organizer and after they succeed they are chief coordinators in the death of many individuals (the guard who gets his head cut off and the attempted execution of Charles Darnay, for example). The middle class individuals: Lucy, Charles Darnay, Miss Pross, Sydney Carton, and Mr. Lorry, are portrayed as socially upright. Miss Pross is a doting mother figure to Lucy. Lucy is the daughter-wife-mother trifecta of womanhood. Charles Darnay, Mr. Lorry, and Dr. Manette are all hard working business men who attempt to provide for the women (particularly Lucy). (I don’t mention the Marquis because he is an aristocrat and is likely shaped by growing negative sentiments towards the aristocracy.)

On the other hand, Brönte uses a first person “boundary” character (someone who straddles the class line due to particular socio-economic circumstances) in order to express the outright and subtle disregard for governesses (Poovey, 126). The moral interaction of class that is fairly well delineated in Dickens is undone in Jane Eyre. Jane is a moral character, one who does not tell lies, learns to be religiously minded thanks to her friend Helen, and is diligent in her work (if she is to be believed as a first person narrator, which is always questionable). While Jane is supposed to be of the middle class, many (upper) middle class characters such as Mrs. Reed, Mr. Brocklhurst, and Lady Ingram show disdain towards her. Her moral character seems to align with a middle class ideology. However, Jane is not fully within the middle or working class causing her to fall into a limbo from which (no matter her actual moral character) cannot fulfill middle or working class moral ideologies.

Some of the reasons this stark contrast may exist between Brönte’s portrayal and Dickens’ work is their biography. Dickens’ is more directly concerned with the notion of revolution and legal changes because he was a legal clerk, and Brönte is more concerned with the status of governesses because she was one. Another difference could be temporal. These two novels were written ten years apart. I have not yet decided on how these two depictions of class (and their appended morality) should be read but there is a question raised by the similarities and differences between these representations.

‘I am afraid your habits are those of a flirt,’ said Winterbourne gravely.

‘Of course they are,’ she cried, giving him her little smiling stare again. ‘I’m a fearful, frightful flirt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that was not? But I suppose you will tell me now that I am not a nice girl.’

One of the quotations I found striking in Daisy Miller was Daisy’s announcement: “I’m a fearful, frightful flirt!” While the other characters in the novel try to define themselves by their position and actions in society, Daisy definitively identifies herself as a “flirt.” She places herself outside of the upper class society norms that she enters into whilst in Europe. In a novel that otherwise avoids concretely labeling its characters, Daisy declares her identity with a level of self-awareness far more developed than any other character.

In contrast to Daisy stands Mr. Winterbourne. Although Daisy is ready and able to identify herself as a “flirt,” Mr. Winterbourne can only state his emotional reaction: “I am afraid your habits are those of a flirt.” He cannot tell directly her she is a flirt, only that he fears that she is. Further, after he states that he is afraid of her flirtatious habits, he contradicts himself in stating that he does not mind her flirtatious nature, if she directs it towards him: “I wish you would flirt with me, and me only” (James 49). Throughout the novel Mr. Winterbourne is constantly contradicting himself and his identity. For example, the narrator makes a claim that “he [Mr. Winterbourne] should never be afraid of Daisy Miller,” and yet his aunt blatantly tells him that he is “very much pre-occupied” because of Daisy (52).

On the other hand, Daisy does not suffer from this identity crisis. She demonstrates that she understands not only herself extraordinarily well, but also the two different societies she and Mr. Winterbourne come from. After disarming Mr. Winterbourne by her frankness regarding her character, she addresses the difference in what both she and Mr. Winterbourne consider to be a “nice girl.” For Daisy, being a “nice girl” in New York can also include spending copious amounts of time with gentlemen, such as attending “seventeen dinners […] three of them were by gentlemen” (11). She is free to be a flirt in her usual habitat, and even if it is to to the extent of being “fearful” and “frightful,” it is still possible that society considers her a nice girl. However, she also realizes that Mr. Winterbourne does not consider her a nice girl. For Mr. Winterbourne, a nice girl includes someone who does spend so much alone time with a single man. David Lodge writes that the “unspoken reason for this rule was to guarantee the woman’s virginity when she married” (xviii). Mr. Winterbourne’s upper-class society expects women to live a sheltered and covered existence.

Therefore, Daisy goes against this expectation quite strongly, even in her own name. She is a flower like the flower she is named after. She is meant to be seen and appreciated; this is a fact which she accepts and acknowledges.

Why is Daisy Miller a flirt?  Her tendency toward romantic levity and playfulness could be considered a part of her personality, but it seems to hint toward a complex and troubled childhood past.  Daisy Miller is unable to “grow up” in her society and act her age.  Daisy Miller’s age and maturity is framed for us right away—just before she is introduced to the reader, Mr. Winterbourne thinks of his own infancy (James 6).  Henry James’ language draws a focus toward age, as Daisy Miller is frequently referred to as the “young girl” and Randalph is dubbed a “vivacious infant” (6).  The youth and maturity of Daisy is a strong underlying theme.

To understood how past childhood experiences affect adulthood, let us turn to Sigmund Freud.   In Freud’s Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through, he states that: “There is one special class of experiences of the utmost importance for which no memory can as a rule be recovered.  There are experiences which occurred in very early childhood and were not understood at the time but which were subsequently understood and interpreted” (James 149).  It seems that Daisy has come to recall past traumatic childhood experiences, and this is the source for her childish tendencies.  She feels victimized by past occurrences in her life, and we see this with Daisy’s strained relationship with her overprotective mother, Mrs. Miller.  When Mr. Winterbourne and Daisy are out walking, Daisy tells him that her mother disapproves of her out walking with gentlemen, but she decides to do so anyway.  She tells him that their walk: “’isn’t for me; it’s for you—that is, it’s for her. Well; I don’t know who it’s for!  My mother doesn’t like any of my gentleman friends. . . . But I do introduce them – almost always.  If I didn’t introduce my gentleman friends to mother,’ the young girl added, in her little soft, flat monotone ‘I shouldn’t think it was natural’” (James 22).  Here we see the inner conflict in Daisy Miller between her and her mother.  She wants to rebel against her mother’s constraints, but she also feels she must conform with the norms of her society.  In this sense, Daisy Miller feels trapped in her own childlike self that her mother has constructed for her, but unable to rise above her society to escape it.

In Peter Brooks’ article “Reading the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative,” he argues “our lives are ceaselessly intertwined with narrative, with the stories that we tell and hear told… We live immersed in narrative, recounting and reassessing the meaning of our past actions…” (Brooks, 3).

In Henry James’ novella, Daisy Miller, narration plays an important role. Whereas in A Tale of Two Cities, the story is told by an all-knowing third-person narrator, in Daisy Miller, the story is told in third-person (objective), with bits and pieces of first-person narration. However, what I am really interested in are those moments of first-person perspective. Let’s take a look.

In the second paragraph of the novella, readers hear from, presumably, the narrator: “I hardly know whether it was the analogies or the differences that were uppermost in the mind of a young American, who, two or three years ago, sat in the garden of the ‘Trois Couronnes,’ looking about him, rather idly, at some of the graceful objects I have mentioned” (James, 4).

In this paragraph, we hear from a first-person narrator (perhaps Winterbourne or maybe not, as this passage seems to indicate that it is someone else) who speaks very casually, relaying the story of an event that took place years prior. However, something in the tone of the narrator’s voice suggests that we are not hearing this story as fact, but, rather, as hear-say that was picked up on the street. For instance, he is swift to point out that he “hardly [knows],” and that this event could have occurred “two or three years ago,” although no exact time is given. Much like the rest of the novel, the second paragraph helps to set an ambiguous tone. Should we believe what we are about to hear?

As a result, the novella is marked by subjectivity. Even though the story seems to focus on Daisy, we hardly know anything about the narrator, who is just as much involved in the course of events as Daisy (or so it seems). Therefore, is it safe to say that we can trust his/her judgement? After all, we never really hear about Daisy from anyone else – we only hear about her through the details that the narrator relates.

This begs the question, why did Henry James choose to write his story in such an ambiguous manner? Why not tell the story the same way that Charles Dickens chose to in A Tale of Two Cities (third-person omniscient)? When you take into account a common theme from the book – that is, the concept of Americans abroad – it becomes more apparent why James chose a third-person method of storytelling that is not all-knowing. By writing from the perspective of an observer (which is what it seems), he is trying to show the incompatibility of American values and British tradition (an American living in Europe).

Winterbourne may be an American, but he has lived most of his life in Switzerland, so one could argue that his actions and mentality have been “Europeanized.” Therefore, I will treat him as though he is European. From the beginning, Daisy’s attitude is considered wrong in the eyes of others, as her mannerisms conflict with the morals of European culture. For instance, Mrs. Costello, Winterbourne’s aunt, exclaims that Daisy Miller is a “dreadful girl” because she agrees to go on a trip with Winterbourne after only knowing him for half an hour (James, 19). Meanwhile, in chapter 4 at St. Peters, “a dozen of the American colonists in Rome came to talk to Mrs. Costello…” telling her that “poor little Miss Miller’s going really too far” (James, 54) because of her relationship with Mr. Giovanelli. Even these Americans have begun to understood the nature of European culture.

In these two scenes – of which others exist – Daisy is put into an unfavorable light, and much of that is achieved through the narration: that is, characters engaging in gossip about Daisy. However, what makes this interesting is that we really know nothing about any of the characters in which we are dealing. Therefore, it is difficult to accept any of these characters’ accounts as truth. Even more interesting, we do not really know if any of these characters are saying anything negative about Daisy – this is just what the narrator is saying. Nevertheless, maybe James wrote his story in this way to prove the stereotype surrounding Europeans’ views on Americans abroad – to show how Europeans feel about American traveling from the progressive New World to the proper, old-fashioned Old World?

In all, I think James is pointing at something important through his narration – something that we can apply to our lives today. While it may appear normal to take someone else’s word about another person, it is important to question how information is shared, and also the ways in which we process that same information. Because if we do not, we merely become engaged in the gossip ourselves, much like the characters are in Daisy Miller (or at least that’s what the narrator says).