Charlotte Brönte's road to reality

Aspects of the preternatural in Jane Eyre and Villette

Luisa Conti Camaiora

• Publisher: EDUCatt Università Cattolica
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9788883119132
• eBook ISBN: 9788867804900
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Charlotte Brönte's road to reality: aspects of the preternatural in Jane Eyre and Villette

CHAPTER ONE -
NECROPOLIS AND ITS SPECTRES: THE MANIPULATION OF REALITY

Jane Eyre

The Gothic preternatural, in its manifestation of suffering, opens the novel Jane Eyre, with the presentation of the violent episode of the attack of John Reed on his cousin Jane. The attack is not new, nor unexpected. As Jane narrates: “He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh on my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions” (p. 4). The state of constant fear of physical harm in which Jane lives is here rendered explicit, and Jane’s expectation of attack is punctually verified as John throws the volume of Bewick’s History of British Birds[14] at her, after having ordered her to stand by the door: “the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded” (pp. 5-6).

It is these “other feelings” that mark the passage to the another aspect of the Gothic, that regarding the motif of slavery and tyranny. Jane, having experienced the stage of suffering, enters the stage of awareness of abuse, assimilating John to tyrannical figures: “You are like a murderer – you are like a slave-driver – you are like the Roman emperors!” (p. 6). As Jane immediately makes clear, the analogy with the Roman emperors is drawn from her readings, her sole source of comfort in Mrs. Reed’s home: “I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome[15], and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula[16], etc. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to have declared aloud” (p. 6). It is consequently due to her imaginative experience that Jane asserts that “I really saw in him a tyrant, a murderer” (p. 6).

It is precisely the quick succession of two aspects of the Gothic, blood-shed and suffering, that leads to Jane’s rebellion: “I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic sort” (p. 6). In this way violence is shown to generate violence: the victim rebels and becomes as aggressive as the aggressor, and previous passivity is completely subverted in a reaction that no reason or judgement can restrain. Emblematic will be the future destinies of the two protagonists of this first Gothic episode: Jane will learn to gain control of her passions and emotions and will enjoy the interior peace and satisfaction that this entails; John will continue unrestrained with his manifestations of excess and will die through the very violence that he himself has generated.

The second episode of the Gothic occurs in Chapter 2, and it is the incident of the Red Room. Jane, after her rebellion, is shut in the Red Room as punishment, on Mrs. Reed’s orders. The episode begins with Jane’s continuing rebellion against Bessie and Mrs. Reed’s maid Abbott, who are taking her upstairs. As she points out: “I was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths” (p. 7). The previous aggressiveness, far from being tempered by reflection, is further stimulated. Abbot sees Jane’s rebellion as a revolt against legitimate authority, incarnated in Mrs. Reed, and so she warns Jane to repent, otherwise “something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away” (p. 8). This warning serves as premise to the imaginings of Jane once she has been locked alone in the room itself.

The narrator Jane begins her account of this episode with the presentation of the room, describing the furniture in terms that create an impression of imposing and awesome solemnity: “massive pillars of mahogany” (p. 9), “curtains of deep red damask” (p. 9), “two large windows [...] half shrouded in festoons” (p. 9), “crimson cloth” (p. 9), “chairs [...] of darkly polished old mahogany” (p. 9), “Out of these deep surrounding shades [...] glared white, the piled-up mattresses” (p. 9), “an [...] easy-chair [...] looking [...] like a pale throne”[17] (p. 9). The room is also described as “chill” (p. 9) and “silent” (p. 9), and Jane mentions how Mrs. Reed, at intervals, used to visit the room to examine the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, containing parchments, her jewel-case, “and a miniature of her deceased husband” (p. 9). Only at this point does Jane come to impart “the secret of the red-room – the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur” (p. 9): the fact that Mr. Reed had died there. This piece of information introduces Gothic suggestions of death and burial: “it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker’s men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion” (p. 9).

The Gothic aspect of the preternatural, having thus been introduced, becomes the basic motif of this entire episode. In fact, Jane begins to think of her state of oppression, her endurance of tyranny, and of the unfairness of her situation: “Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned?” (p. 10). Furthermore, in her desperation, she tries to excogitate ways of escaping from this injustice, even reaching the stage of entertaining the thought of letting herself die.

At this point Jane introduces what has been termed the Gothic use of nature[18], namely, the use of nature for suggestions and connotations of suspense, terror and the supernatural. Jane mentions the daylight forsaking the room, “the beclouded afternoon [...] tending to drear twilight” (p. 12), as also “the rain [...] beating” (p. 12), and “the wind howling” (p. 12). All this further depresses her spirits, especially now that her anger has expired, leaving a sense of her own wickedness, especially as manifested in her previous wish to die. The idea of death leads to the question of whether “the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church [was] an inviting bourne”[19] (p. 12), and this in turn conducts to the recollection that Mr. Reed lay buried in that same vault, a thought on which Jane indulges “with gathering dread” (p. 12). However, a new idea now strikes Jane: that of a possible return from the dead: “I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed” (p. 13). Jane wipes her tears and hushes her sobs, in fear that her grief may, in fact, “waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity” (p. 13).

It should be noted that this episode is structured in such a way as to build up a crescendo of fear and terror, by making Jane narrate the mounting rush of emotion that is overwhelming her, but which, it may be observed, is solely self-induced. Once the whole situation is keyed up to this pitch, the one external factor that, entering into this state of affairs may make everything precipitate, is introduced: “a light gleamed on the wall [...] this stirred [...] it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head” (p. 13). The narrator Jane, as distinct from the protagonist Jane, hastens to give the rational explanation, namely, that the light was probably produced by a lantern being carried across the lawn; but now, as far as the child Jane is concerned, there has been created a situation that is typical of the effects of terror of the best Gothic tradition and, as narrator, Jane recognizes as much: “prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting dream was a herald of some coming vision from another world” (p. 13). Indeed, without either asserting or negating a supernatural presence, there now follows a series of suggestions that maintains the preternatural impression while clearly attributing, through the choice of such terms as the extremely subjective verbs “thought” (p. 13), “deemed” (p. 13), “seemed” (p. 13), all responsibility for such an impression to the superstition of Jane: “I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world [...] a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated; endurance broke down” (p. 13). Jane rushes screaming to the door, and when Bessie and Abbot enter, she explains: “I saw a light, I thought a ghost would come” (p. 14). Mrs. Reed, however, in spite of Jane’s pleas, and indeed, pointing out that “This violence is all most repulsive” (p. 14) , locks her up again in the Red Room, and Jane, overcome by her fear, faints away.

In this episode the Gothic preternatural has the precise purpose of documenting and rendering explicit for the reader the complex, highly-strung, and extremely imaginative character of the protagonist. What emerges in particular is the uncontrolled passion[20] of the child Jane, potentially of the same nature as that of her cousin John Reed, and in need of the control that the heroine will learn at Lowood. The episode also documents Jane’s reaction to abuse: after a period of submission, she rebels against the violence of her cousin, in this way anticipating her future independence, autonomy, and intolerance of impositions and maltreatment. Ultimately, the Red room incident may be considered the moment in which a sense of self, even if undefined and indefinite, awakens into the consciousness of Jane, anticipating her future autonomous individuality and identity.

The experience of the Red Room is repeated and re-proposed in the chatter consequent to it. When filtered through the gossip and rumours of the house, it is presented as even more Gothic than it actually was: “‘Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished’ – ‘A great black dog behind him’ – ‘Three loud raps on the chamber door’ – ‘A light in the churchyard just over his grave’” (p. 16). With regard to Jane, it leaves an indelible effect on her. Besides her immediate weakness and illness, it persists in the nervousness that it engenders in her from that moment on, and in the ineffaceable memory that it provokes. Jane in fact recalls: “I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark” (p. 20), and when Mr. Lloyd, the doctor, to whom Jane is speaking, asks: “You are afraid of ghosts?” (p. 20), Jane replies: “Of Mr. Reed’s ghost I am: he died in that room, and was laid out there” (p. 20), and she also underlines the cruelty of locking her up in such a place. Even in the nursery, when left alone, Jane now glances round occasionally “to make sure that nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room” (p. 21), and later, at Lowood, when Jane narrates the episode to Miss Temple, she remembers both the suffering of the moment, “the spasm of agony” (p. 81), and her superstitious fear: “locked me [...] in the dark and haunted chamber” (p. 81).

The Gothic preternatural associated with the part of the novel that takes place in Thornfield Hall[21] is particularly interesting. At Thornfield may be found some of the most recurrent and traditional elements of the Gothic tradition: the dark, aggressive, morally ambiguous male protagonist, the innocent young heroine exposed to mysterious dangers, the house that holds a dark and terrible secret, scenes of violence and bloodshed, the climax of an interrupted marriage, the presence of vice and madness in Bertha Mason. This Gothic preternatural is carefully prepared, arranged and distributed in the Thornfield chapters, showing an accurate and clever plotting of these episodes. Here it is suggested that the Gothic preternatural is structured as a kind of miniature five-act drama within the wider drama that is the whole novel itself. In this play there are three actors: Jane, Rochester and Bertha, and the Gothic dimension serves to represent something of each of them, furnishing an indication of how the mind may be distorted and manipulated through the operation of the passions. In Jane the drama will evidence a mind controlled by the will but potentially mutinous to this control and haunted by the fear of potential passions, whether licit or illicit; in Rochester, it will document a mind tormented by a secret past and the guilty passions associated with that past; in Bertha, a mind unbalanced by the bestiality of uncontrolled passions.

Act I of the Gothic play, in Chapter 11, may be retained to consist in the introduction of a series of suggestions of the preternatural. When Jane is taken to her room by Mrs. Fairfax, she registers “the eerie impression” (p. 114) made on her by the hall, the staircase and the gallery, which will become the areas of the enactment of the Gothic drama that follows. The initial queer impression of Jane is confirmed when Mrs. Fairfax takes her to visit the house. In particular, the third floor, with its accumulated and discarded furniture, strikes Jane’s imagination: “All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past – a shrine of memory” (p. 124). In this way the place is linked to memory, and the attic may indeed be said to contain the living memory of Rochester’s past. Jane also observes that although she likes the quiet and calm of the third floor in the day, “all [...] would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight” (p. 124). The association of strangeness with the night anticipates the fact that three of the acts of the Gothic drama take place at night and by moonlight.

Still in this same chapter-prologue, the next suggestion of the Gothic occurs when Jane’s visit becomes interlaced with talk of ghosts, and in particular with Mrs. Fairfax’s assertion that “if there were a ghost at Thornfield Hall, this would be its haunt” (p. 124). When Jane asks if there is a ghost or any legends or ghost stories associated with the place, Mrs. Fairfax denies any such suggestion and, though admitting that the Rochesters have been a violent race, she considers this “the reason they rest tranquilly in their graves now” (p. 125). She is right in this, since it will be no ghost come from the dead, but one come from the living, that will perturb Jane. The tour of Thornfield continues with the visit up to the leads, passing through the attics. On the way down Jane lingers in the long passage of the third floor, which appears to the heroine “like a corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle”[22] (p. 125). Though nothing extraordinary or frightening has been seen or has happened so far during this visit, diverse elements of the Gothic technique of suggestion have already been brought into play to create an expectation of mystery and of the supernatural.

At this point, however, Jane hears a laugh, “a curious laugh – distinct, formal, mirthless” (p. 126), which is repeated more than once. Mrs. Fairfax suggests that it is the laugh of the servant Grace Poole and calls her, while Jane registers her impression: “I really did not expect Grace to answer, for the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and but that it was high noon, and that no circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachinnation – but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid” (p. 126). Instead Grace appears and “any apparition less romantic or less ghostly could scarcely be conceived” (p. 126). Jane, in effect, is right in her intuition of actual reality: the preternatural laugh cannot be that of an individual such as Grace, but the heroine does not follow her instinct, and she later allows herself to believe the words and reassurances of Rochester rather than allowing her own intimations to lead her instinctively to the truth.

The function of Act I is to operate as preamble to the theme of the Gothic preternatural associated with Thornfield Hall, given that, with this presentation, a part of the house becomes inextricably associated with ideas of ghosts, spirits and supernatural laughter. As has been said, it constitutes the introduction to the Gothic play enacted at Thornfield, in which the next three acts involve episodes of action and reaction on the part of Rochester’s mad wife. Each act is different and yet all have the underlying unity of anticipating the interruption of Jane and Rochester’s relationship.

Act II takes up the laughter suggestions of the Prologue, and occurs in Chapter 15. The scene is set immediately in a particular context: it is night, a night that is “drearily dark” (p. 176), a darkness marched by a depression of spirits in Jane. The episode builds up a quick crescendo of Gothic preternatural: first, “a vague murmur, peculiar and lugubrious” (p. 176), is heard just above Jane; then, when her heart has begun to beat anxiously and her tranquillity has disappeared, she has the impression that her chamber-door is being touched, as if fingers were sweeping the panels of the dark gallery outside. Jane documents how she “was chilled with fear” (p. 176), and she tries to compose herself, but at this point the “marrow-freezing incident” (p. 177) occurs: “a demoniac laugh – low, suppressed, and deep” (p. 177), apparently at the keyhole of the chamber. Jane sits up and looks round, and “the unnatural sound was reiterated” (p. 177). Her first instinctive reaction is to fasten the bolt of her door; the second to cry out, and finally she decides to go to Mrs. Fairfax. On trying to do this, she discovers a lit candle outside her door, and realizes that the air is filled with smoke, and that there is a strong smell of burning. Seeing smoke coming from the room of Rochester, Jane rushes there, in time to save Rochester from burning alive in his bed.

Functionally, this episode leads to the drawing nearer of Jane and Rochester, especially as Jane now acquires the merit of having saved his life. From this moment on, too, Jane associates Grace Poole with the Gothic preternatural, imagining how she “probably laughed drearily to herself – as companionless as a prisoner in his dungeon” (p. 196). For Jane the episode presents the first intimation of her unexpressed emotions and desires, while it also embodies the instauration of a new level of intimacy with Rochester; for Rochester it emblemizes the brusque awakening from the peril of the fiery hold of Bertha to the cooling salvation of Jane; for Bertha, it represents her action as unseen and invisible force in the lives of the two protagonists, and documents her destructive nature and passions, the scorching dimension of which is symbolized by the fire that she lights and the flames she produces. It may also be noted that the episode anticipates the final conflagration of Thornfield.

Act III, in Chapter 20, is the Mason episode, perhaps the most dramatic Gothic moment and therefore the climax of the Gothic drama. It again takes place at night. This time Jane is wakened by the moonlight streaming through the curtain of the poster bed, that she had forgotten to draw, and the heroine, half-rising to pull it, hears a cry that blocks her: “Good God! what a cry! [...] a savage, a sharp, a shrilly sound” (p. 247). Jane is paralysed by fright, and she retains that “whatever being uttered that fearful shriek could not soon repeat it: not the widest-winged condor on the Andes could, twice in succession, send such a yell from the cloud shrouding his eyrie. The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere it could repeat the effort” (p. 247). The shriek had come from overhead, from the third floor, and Jane next hears the sound of a struggle, as also a half-smothered voice crying for help, and, while sounds of s...

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE - NECROPOLIS AND ITS SPECTRES: THE MANIPULATION OF REALITY
• CHAPTER TWO - THE MAGIC OF ENCHANTMENT: THE TRANSFORMATION OF REALITY
• CHAPTER THREE - PARADISES LOST AND REGAINED: THE TRANSCENDENCE OF REALITY
• CHAPTER FOUR - THE MINOS SYNDROME: THE EVALUATION OF REALITY
• CHAPTER FIVE - VISIONS AND REVERIES: THE PREMONITION OF REALITY
• CHAPTER SIX - AND TO CONCLUDE...
• BIBLIOGRAPHY