{"id":234,"date":"2017-03-21T03:01:25","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T03:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/?p=234"},"modified":"2020-08-31T20:38:41","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T20:38:41","slug":"ahead-of-the-times-critical-race-theory-in-jane-eyre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/2017\/03\/21\/ahead-of-the-times-critical-race-theory-in-jane-eyre\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahead of the Times: Disability Studies in Jane Eyre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although Disability Studies (the study and framework based around disabilities, both physical and mental, and what roles they play in society, or cultural perception) didn’t come to fruition until the late 20th century, I think that it can be used to analyze the character of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre<\/em>, a nineteenth century novel.<\/p>\n

We get introduced to the character of Bertha in Chapter 26, when Mr. Rochester is explaining to Jane why their wedding got interrupted \u2013 and more importantly, why a woman who was his ex-wife had been living in the attic that was deemed \u201cinsane.\u201d Rochester describes Bertha\u2019s insanity to Jane, that he had \u201cbeen awakened by her yells \u2013 since the medical men had pronounced her mad [\u2026] I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with such language! No professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she! (302)<\/p>\n

What intrigues me about this quote, and the way Mr. Rochester handled the situation with his ex-wife is that there seemed to be a lot of ignorance when it came to mental health in those days. Obviously, Bertha was crazed and a lunatic, as she was yelling in the night and exhibiting other sickly behavior while married to Rochester, but locking her in an attic doesn\u2019t seem like the best solution to me. Even though \u201cmedical men\u201d were mentioned in this passage, who I assume are the professionals that diagnosed Bertha as \u201ccrazy,\u201d the care and treatment of people with mental disabilities wasn\u2019t something that was prioritized. After all, would a doctor today really advise locking a mentally insane woman in an attic? Sure, there are things like solitary confinement for really mentally ill patients today, but would Bertha really be qualified as such if she was being treated? To me, Bertha\u2019s side of the story and her illness is ironically being silenced by her screams and needs to be heard. I can\u2019t help but wonder if Bertha would be considered this insane if given the proper treatment, and why exactly did mental illness have such a stigma at the time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although Disability Studies (the study and framework based around disabilities, both physical and mental, and what roles they play in society, or cultural perception) didn’t come to fruition until the late 20th century, I think that it can be used to analyze the character of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre, a nineteenth century novel. We … Continue reading Ahead of the Times: Disability Studies in Jane Eyre<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3464,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138876,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2017","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3464"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}