Modern readers (or increasingly, modern
viewers) of Jane Eyre whether they
know it or not, have had their impressions filtered (via editors, directors
etc) by two immensely influential works.
Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean
Rhys, retold the novel from the perspective of Bertha Mason. Sandra Gilbert’s and Susan Gubar’s the Madwoman in the Attic, in framing a
theory of Victorian fiction, took a feminist perspective of Bertha as the victim of male oppression.
A quick survey of recent online essays on Jane Eyre shows three main lines of development from these two
seminal books of the 60’s and 70’s. Jean Rhys saw her protagonist as Caucasian,
but some of the postcolonial theory her work has generated sees Bertha as part
black, and Charlotte Brontë as guilty of racism. From Attic
have developed the views that either Bertha is not mad at all, or that she
is mad and the cause of her madness is syphilis. These are all interesting perspectives that
have come on stream since I first encountered Jane Eyre as a child and formed my own impressions, and all worthy
of consideration.
What is the postcolonial case for seeing
Bertha Mason as partly non-white? She is
described by Jane as having a discoloured, savage face, “fearful blackened
inflation of the lineaments”, the lips swelled and dark. (Ch 25).
In the statement of impediment to the marriage there is reference to her
mother Antoinetta, a Creole (Ch 26). Rochester
refers to his “Indian Messalina” (Ch 27), and describes himself as having come
from “a good race” (Ch 27). So, by implication, his wife didn’t? A case
can, it seems, be made for clear-cut racism.
Actually, it isn’t that clear cut at all. Bertha Mason is also described as having had good
looks when Rochester married her – she is, in fact, specifically compared to
Blanche Ingram: “tall, dark and majestic”.
(Ch 27) – in which case the “purple face and bloated
features” (Ch 26) of her later self would be the result of subsequent insanity
rather than ethnicity.
It should be noted that some others of those who are a threat to Jane
are described as dark: her cruel aunt Mrs Reed and bullying cousin John, for
example, who “sometimes reviled her for her dark skin, similar to his own”. (Ch
2). The stress here seems thematic (dark
personalities) rather than racial. Mr
Rochester – in his untamed state a threat to Jane – is also dark. And the beautiful Blanche Ingram, whom Jane
fears will marry Mr Rochester, is, despite her first name, “as dark as a
Spaniard”. (Ch 17).
That simile, I think, is key; for it leads us into the meaning of ‘Creole’
in the novel: about which there is some postcolonial critical confusion. Understandably. The term ‘Creole’ is as confusing as the term
Anglo-Indian: which can mean either those of mixed race, or those of British
stock in India. In the British-influenced Caribbean, ‘Creole’,
certainly nowadays, tends to mean those of mixed black/white race. But in Louisiana, ‘Creole’ was the word used
to describe French settlers. And Creole
was also the term for a Spaniard born outside Spain in the Spanish Empire. It is stressed (Ch 18, 19, 20) that Mason
comes from Spanish Town in Jamaica. Jamaica
was Spanish before it was British, and some Spanish terms lingered. So “her mother the Creole” might mean simply
that Bertha Mason had an English-origin father and a Spanish-origin mother. “Indian Messalina”, rather than having any
ethnic connotation, might simply mean that she behaved like Messalina and came
from the West Indies.
Mr Rochester’s good race. Does it
mean white (in which case, a slur on blacks) or English (in which case a slur
on Spaniards)? Or does it mean neither? There might be a case if Mason Senior had been
a Creole like his wife; but he is English, like Rochester. We might consider here the reason for Mr
Rochester’s marriage. As Mrs Fairfax
explains to Jane (Ch13), Rochester’s elder brother inherited all the estate
because Rochester Senior wished to keep it intact. However, he wished the younger brother to
marry money and so preserve the prestige of the family name. So then the reference to Mr Rochester’s good
race might be no more significant than the reference to his good family in determining
his marital eligibility. He might not have the money, but he’s still a good
catch. He comes of good stock. If so, a sense of offence is being generated by
some postcolonialist readers where none would have been intended.
Those influenced by The Madwoman in the Attic tend also to be influenced by Michel
Foucault’s Madness and Civilisation. Drawing on his own social experiences as
a homosexual sado-masochist, Foucault’s general argument is about society’s
dread of difference. Historically, many
of those merely different were seen as a threat and designated mad by society as
a means of social control. Homosexual sado-masochists,
for example. Or a girl confined to an
asylum merely for having an illegitimate child.
Is Bertha Mason, then, not mad at all, but simply perceived as a threat
by a patriarchal society? Rochester
describes her as “intemperate and unchaste”.
(Ch 27). For that read sexually
liberated and unsubmissive? Too independent to be easily controlled; so
lock her up? The Soviets dealt with
their dissidents by interning them as insane. Same sort of thing?
This sort of reading seems to me to run against the grain of the
novel. It has got things the wrong way around. Bertha is not declared insane because she is
intemperate; her intemperance is a symptom of her insanity.
Some feminist criticism has seen Bertha as the victim of Rochester’s
oppression. There is something in it
(Jane is also a victim of his attitudes).
But if Bertha’s madness is a general symbol of a male-dominated society’s
oppression, then it seems to me to be a failure. The
novel’s attitude towards madness reflects bewilderment with how to deal with it;
that, and pity. Mason implores, “Let her be treated tenderly”, to which
Rochester replies that he does his best.
(Ch 20). When grappling with
Bertha, Rochester could have felled her with a blow, “but he would not strike”
(Ch 26). When Rochester elects to make a
fresh start by quitting Jamaica for England, he could have settled Bertha in
the dampness of his other property Ferndean Manor where the atmosphere would
have finished her off (we should remember that that Mason (Ch 18) finds even Thornfield too cold and
asks for the fire to be replenished) but his conscience recoils. (Ch 27) His solution is to “place her in
safety and comfort: shelter her degradation”.
(Ch 27). Rochester tries to
rescue Bertha from the fire, and calls to her by name. (Ch 36).
Far guiltier than Rochester in their treatment of Bertha are the
respective male parents. Mason Senior
conducts the marital negotiations with Rochester Senior behind the son’s back,
with a settlement of £30 000 as the price for getting shot of her, and with the
mad mother carefully concealed in an asylum. (Ch 27).
Rochester the younger son is
quite as much a victim as any of the female characters.
Yes, there is oppression in the novel, but rather than primarily male
over female it seems to me to be primarily that of the old over the young. The tyranny is not confined to elderly
males. Mrs Reid, for pure spite, tells
Jane’s wealthy uncle Mr Eyre that Jane is dead, thus hindering her life
chances, when he is trying to find Jane in order to adopt her (and subsequently
leave her his fortune). Overwhelmingly, the law forbidding divorce is the most
crushing tyranny of all. Hardy arraigned
against it too, and so did Dickens in Hard
Times. Stephen Blackpool must remain wedded to a drunkard, and unable to
marry the woman whom he loves.
Whatever take modern readers might want to put on the novel, there seems
no doubt that Charlotte Brontë intended Bertha to be mad. One of the great houses near Haworth had had
a mad woman in it for several years: a story that the Brontë sisters discussed
with one another. Charlotte consulted
the section on madness in the family medical dictionary to acquaint herself with
the symptoms. Jane Eyre is at least as much Gothic as it is realistic. There are frequent references to elves and fairy
tales, and Bessie’s songs and folk tales, and one senses the story of Bluebeard
hovering somewhere in the background. Of
course there’s room in such a work for a literal mad woman.
Why, then, is Bertha mad? We are told that there has been insanity in
the family for three generations, and the mother is in an asylum. (Ch 26). The
younger brother is a congenital idiot. (Ch
27). Observing Richard Mason before she knows who he is, Jane is struck by an
impression of vacancy (Ch 18) and Rochester says that Richard, too, is likely
to go the way of his sister. (Ch 27).
It is possible to inherit the consequences of syphilis – a point made forcibly
in Ibsen’s Ghosts – but there many
more obvious causes than syphilis for hereditary insanity.
Why then, the idea of syphilis: when there is nothing in the text to
suggest it? Power. To inherit madness is passive; to acquire it
as a result of your own actions is active.
And it involves a fight back against male dominance. Rochester’s bitterness arises from his
knowledge that his infected wife has infected him.
This theory, it seems to me, in either of its manifestations, is not
supported by the text. It isn’t Bertha’s
fault if her madness is inherited. But
If she had acquired her madness as the result of her sexual actions, then it would
be. Charlotte Brontë could have
indicated culpability had she wanted to.
Instead, Jane says, “she cannot help being mad”. (Ch 27) And Rochester’s personality, like Heathcliff’s,
has its origins in Byronism rather than sexual disease.
Even
wider of the mark, it seems to me, are those who – insisting on the awfulness
of male dominance, and unable to leave the syphilis theory alone – see
Rochester as guilty of infecting Bertha, rather than the other way around. But, allowing for a moment the validity of
the concept, Bertha is five years his senior (Ch 27) and would have had a five-year
head start in getting herself infected. She
would not have needed any help from Rochester.
And there is no suggestion in the text that Rochester is initially
promiscuous; although he is later driven to three different women – French, Italian
and German (Ch 27) – by the circumstances of his marriage. We can say that Rochester is lying, or
telling less than the whole truth, but we are then moving into the argument
from silence and away from the realms of literary criticism which – for me,
anyway – is about what the text actually
says.
The words may remain constant, but the
significance attributed to them will change as new readers bring new
suppositions to the text. Jane Eyre’s popularity seems destined to
last for a long time; and for as long as it does, Bertha Mason will continue to
invite controversy.
