Term Paper on "Jane Eyre the Single Most Dangerous Trap"

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Within the introduction of the third edition, penned by May Sinclair there is a clear indication of the level of strain that would have been felt by the reading public in Bronte's time, as the words of Jane were liberating and titillating, yet extremely conservative by today's standards.

For, as there was nothing to account for Jane Eyre, "Jane Eyre" refused to be accountable. It made havoc of all literary tradition. It is hard to realise the enormity of Jane's behaviour nowadays, when we take up the book and find to our surprise that, when all is said and done, the ten commandments remain much as they were before. In fact very little is said and nothing at all is done which we can take exception to.

Bronte, 1922, p. vi)

Sinclair expresses in her introduction that Bronte's words and Jane's actions were indeed radical and that her standards were far-reaching, morally, religiously and especially womanly. The work was shocking and disturbing on many levels and to many people, yet Jane does nothing outside of the strict moral code she has developed for herself. Today's readers might find her tame but her questioning of convention was clearly revolutionary. Though Sinclair does contend that the war Jane was fighting was in part a war of class, it was none the less a war of liberation and feminism.

It is not the Ten Commandments that are broken: it is the unwritten laws of literature. It was one of these laws that a governess should know her place and that a plain woman should know hers and be kept in it. Then Jane Eyre came and made waste paper of this convention. She put ideas into the heads of governesses and plain women.

Bronte, 1922, p. vi)

Jane begins with her voice expressing the injustice of the trap of her "enclosure." She cannot speak of her pain and the devastation of her pride, when she is striven by her cousin because he is favored to her, she is simply a squatter within this disturbed family of selfish ne'er-do-wells.

Unjust!_unjust!" said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into precocious though transitory power; and Resolve, equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression_ as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.

(Bronte, 1922, p. 9)

She is so trapped that her pride drives her to think of resorting to starvation as the only means to control her being and the outcome of her life. She makes resolute plans to waste away in her own silent misery, rather than bend to the wills of her keepers. Her next enclosure is not much better, excluding the absence of the very direct and emotional assaults of her own family. The children at the school are starved and exposed to horrific conditions resulting in physical weakness and for some eventual death from typhoid. In one scene in the text the garden of the school is described and without the injection of the appearance of a few healthy children the garden would seem more like the courtyard of a prison.

The garden was a wide enclosure, surrounded with walls so high as to exclude every glimpse of prospect; a covered verandah ran down one side, and broad walks bordered a middle space divided into scores of little beds...now, at the latter end of January, all was wintry blight and brown decay. I shuddered as I stood and looked round me (Bronte, 1922, p. 42)

The careful description of the cold surroundings of the school and the school itself leaves only a glimmer of a message form the seeming futility of Jane's stay there, and that is the lessons she learns from her two friends there. She learns that her expression of grief over depravity must be concealed as there is ultimate peace in her future. Her dialogue with Helen as she lay dying is proof of the face of serenity that Jane must wear, unquestioningly through her life.

I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest....By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world:" (Bronte, 1922, p. 76)

Given the circumstances of Jane's life this could have been her own fate but she held within her the resolve to struggle through much more. When she questions Helen about her faith she is left with the legacy of peace she almost never wavers from in her life.

But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?" believe; I have faith: I am going to God."

Where is God? What is God?"

My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what he created. I rely implicitly on his power, and confide wholly in his goodness: I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to him, reveal him to me."

You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as heaven; and that our souls can get to it when we die?"

I am sure there is a future state; I believe God is good; I can resign my immortal part to him without any misgiving. God is my father; God is my friend: I love him; I believe he loves me."

And shall I see you again, Helen, when I die?"

You will come to the same region of happiness: be received by the same mighty, universal Parent, no doubt, dear Jane."

(Bronte, 1922, p. 76)

With this resolution Jane goes about to shape her own fate, on her own terms. She does not break her compact with faith and what she feels to be right.

By discerning for herself what she perceives to be God's will, Jane effectively resists Rochester's and St. John's attempts to possess her spirit as well as her body. Ultimately, Jane marries Rochester because it is her vocation -- the divine call that only she herself can hear...Gallagher's reading of Jane Eyre as a "Christian feminist bildungsroman" suggests a similarly balanced and unproblematic ending: "The novel's religious assertion of a woman's right to self-identity and its depiction of marriage as a relationship of equality," she argues, "anticipate twentieth-century Christian feminism" (68). (Lamonaca, 2002, pg. 245)

Keeping within the context of the work there is a clear indication within Jane's words that her revolution was holistic and many critics agree that she and her time demonstrated the clear value and importance of individualistic faith as a guide for the right path, for both women and men. Though Jane chooses a corporeal marriage to Rothschild rather than a loveless marriage to a missionary, devoted as a wife of such a man to God not love, she does so as a woman whose voice, from above is clear.

So intertwined were discourses of religion and gender in the Victorian period, that a close examination of Jane Eyre's religious themes inevitably furthers our understanding of the novel's gender politics: that is, we see more… READ MORE