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July 9, 2006

Gone Teaching, Back in September

Thanks for Reading! Have a great summer, all.

Posted by Jane on 2:09 PM | Comments (0)

Part IV: Jane, Cordelia and Cinderella

Reading Freely into Jane Eyre

From once-upon-a-time to happily-ever-after, Jane Eyre is an elaborate fairy tale involving equivalent factors of wicked stepsisters and –mothers, lost fortunes, found relatives, superhuman journeys—even a castle surrounded by thorns.

The novel is particularly close to the Cinderella story. Jane and Cinderella are deserving and pure, but degraded and humiliated by cruel relatives. In the fairy tale, the Prince searches for the elusive owner of a tiny glass slipper that had been lost at a ball. All the eligible girls are urged to try the slipper, but none can squeeze her foot into the glass shoe. The Prince learns of a poor, obscure girl who has been overlooked; the shoe fits; the match is set. In Jane Eyre, Rochester, disguised as a gypsy, sends his footman into the drawing room to invite the eligible young ladies to have their fortunes told. Blanche and Mary Ingram and the Eshton sisters, haughty and silly, emerge from their gypsy interviews displeased and rattled. The footman [the footman in Cinderella is a crucial messenger as well) says: “The gypsy declares that there is another young single lady in the room who had not been to her yet…� So Jane takes her turn. Rochester finally reveals his identity, and only to her, establishing an exclusive intimacy between them: she alone is fit to confide in. According to Bruno Bettelheim, the Prince’s act of slipping the shoe onto Cinderella’s foot is a betrothal symbol, as a groom slips a ring on his bride’s finger. Perhaps Rochester’s revelation is an equivalent spiritual betrothal, as is the circular bench around the chestnut tree under which he proposed.

Jane is essentially sublime in character, as is Lear’s youngest daughter Cordelia. Jane’s cruel cousins Eliza and Georgiana Reed are versions of Goneril and Regan. Jane calls them “selfish� and “heartless.� Cordelia (whose name means “heart�), like Jane, is the heart’s desire (and both are called “spirit�) of a flawed, larger-than-life tragic hero. Each girl defends her integrity in the temptation of excess. Cordelia won’t eulogize her father or bow to his arrogance; Jane won’t succumb to Rochester’s desires. Both heroines remain taciturn rather than condescending to showy conversation. Pressured, Jane says nothing. This pregnant “nothing� dwells in both Jane Eyre and King Lear, a significant metronomic pulse. Truth needs no description, fanfare, or apology: it is “the shape which shape has none,� as Jane says. Rochester tries to talk her into talking:

“‘…It would please me now to draw you out…therefore speak.’
“Instead of speaking, I smiled; and not a very complacent or submissive smile either.
“‘Speak,’ he urged…
“Accordingly I sat and said nothing: ‘If he expects me to talk for the mere sake of talking and showing off, he will find he has addressed himself to the wrong person,’ I thought.
“‘You are dumb, Miss Eyre.’
“I was dumb still. He bent his head a little toward me, and with a single hasty glance seemed to dive into my eyes.�

Lear and Cordelia have a related interview:

Lear.…what can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sister? Speak.
Cordelia. Nothing, my lord.
Lear. Nothing?
Cordelia. Nothing.
Lear. Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.
Cordelia. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty according to my bond; no more nor less.

When Jane discovers Bertha Mason’s existence, she goes to her room and endures a lone and mighty moral struggle, to which Rochester laments, “You shut yourself up and grieve alone!� When Cordelia learns of her sisters’ treachery and father’s madness: “…away she started/To deal with grief alone.� Jane faints in Rochester’s arms; Cordelia dies in Lear’s arms. Though the one embrace ends with departure and the other with death, the dramatic effect is similar.

Gloucester, an echo of Lear, achieves insight only when blinded, like Rochester. Gloucester’s lament: “I stumbled when I saw� relates to Rochester’s: “Of late, Jane—only—only of late—I began to see.� Gloucester must “see feelingly� as Rochester does, and their exclamations are virtually identical: “Oh! I cannot see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst� (and Edgar says, Viii: “O, that my heart would burst!�). Rochester cries, “Whatever, whoever you are, be perceptible to the touch, or I cannot live!� Gloucester, yearning for his son, says, “Oh, dear son Edgar…/Might I but live to see thee in my touch,/I’d say I had eyes again!�

Rochester’s world reflects his hellish state: “To live, for me…is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any day.� How like Lear’s mad inner world, reflected by the storm on the heath: “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!/You cataracts and hurricanes, spout…/You sulphurous and thought-executing fires…/Crack nature’s moulds…� [III:ii:1]. Though Cordelia does not survive the world’s madness and man’s duplicated errors, Jane prevails, retains faith and self, and emerges to lead Rochester, re-formed through remorse and repentance, and who can ultimately meet her all the way.

Posted by Jane on 1:51 PM | Comments (0)

July 4, 2006

Reading Freely into Jane Eyre--Part III

Domination & INDEPENDENCE

Though Edward Rochester is master over his “paid subordinate,� Jane Eyre is authentically independent in spirit. She transcends social convention, cannot be captured, and Rochester is equally attracted and bemused by her singularity. The two constantly exchange ripostes and silences, and watch and vex each other. They impose absence on each other as well. Rochester is apt to gallop off (his horse is "Mesrour," which means pleasure in Arabic) at any moment, causing Jane great anxiety. “Will he leave again soon?� she frets. Later: “Journey!—Is Mr. Rochester gone anywhere? I did not know he was out,� followed by a resolve to keep her “raptures� and “agonies� to herself.

But once she makes an abrupt departure herself, returning to Gateshead and to the odious Aunt Reed, who is dying. Here she learns of her uncle John Eyre’s will and of her inheritance, the source of financial independence. Rochester can come and go as he pleases, but does not want her to leave. He prolongs the good-bye, resists and abhors it. In the end, he exacts a pledge: “Promise me only to stay a week� (as the Beast begged Beauty, called home to her father’s deathbed, to stay away no longer than one week). For her journey he gives her more money than her salary. She protests that she has no change; he says he wants no change, but then reconsiders and tries to turn her stipend into collateral. “Better not to give you all now; you would, perhaps, stay away three months if you had fifty pounds. There is ten, is that not plenty?� Yes, Jane says, but now he owes her five. “Come back for it, then,� he enjoins. Now he regrets giving her the means of independence: “I wish I had only offered you a sovereign…Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.� But Jane throws the ball back handily:

“And so have I, sir,� I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me…
“Little niggard!� said he, “refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds, Jane.�
“Not five shillings, sir, nor five pence.�
“Just let me look at the cash.�
“No, sir; you are not to be trusted!�
“Jane!�
“Sir?�
“Promise me one thing.� [This makes two things.]
“I’ll promise you anything, sir, that I think I am likely to perform.�
“Not to advertise; and to trust his quest of a situation to me. I’ll find you one in time.�

But he cannot lord it over her entirely. She will not be dominated, though his style of courtship verges on the sadistic. When they become engaged, Rochester wants to dress her up, possess her, chain her with jewelry; but Jane stands fast, will accept neither jewels nor domination, insists on her identity. Still, she manipulates him: “I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in, and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far; beyond the verge of provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked to try my skill.�

One flirtatious device is that of looking: the askance glance; the penetrating gaze; secret observation back and forth. From the start she scrutinizes his face, which arouses his curiosity about her; as, “with a single hasty glance [he] seemed to dive into my eyes�; or, “He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance.� Jane is often behind some curtain, secretly watching—or stealing away from a potential encounter. From her window-seat she thinks: “I am not looking…yet I see him enter….No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I might gaze without being observed…� She thinks he hasn’t noticed, which stimulates her: “He made me love him without looking at me.� The day after she rescues him (from fire this time), she thinks: “I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night: I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye.� His deliberate evasiveness contrasts with his cold scrutiny of the beautiful, conniving, conventional Blanche, with whom he is constantly on guard--with Jane examining the whole show.

Back and forth Rochester and Jane describe and analyze each other. From her point of view it is she who is doing the observing while Rochester remains aloof. But he has, of course, noticed her from the start: “I observed you—myself unseen—I could both listen and watch.� … “I was…stimulated with what I saw: I liked what I had seen, and wished to see more.� He follows her when she slips from the room (she thinks unseen); he observes that she is “getting paler…as I saw at first sight.� He has been aware of her all along, and even maneuvers her responses by caprice. But perhaps Jane knows that he knows, and is playing along all the while.

Thornfield symbolizes Rochester’s mystery (to Jane he seems an unexplored room; and he holds keys to forbidden chambers, “mystic cells�). In the middle of one night (their encounters often occur at dusk or midnight) she barges into his chamber to save him from fire. An intimate call is sanctified by a symbolic baptism as she drenches him, along with the flames. (The fire-and-water trope appears often in myth; cf. Tamino’s initiation by fire and water in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.) The night Bertha mauls her brother, Rochester appears at Jane’s door to marshal her aid as co-conspirator. He sends her twice to his own room, to rummage in the drawers of his wardrobe for a phial containing some illicit crimson tincture.

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Jane’s innocence cloaks real insight, unrealized by Rochester, who takes pleasure in toying with her. The novel reads like an elaborate courtship ballet in which the two alternately present and revoke themselves in an ever-building cat-and-mouse parley. Nor is it always apparent who is predator. In their first encounter, she arbitrates their roles as master and dependent, roles that are ultimately reversed. Having helped him limp to his horse after the icy skid, Rochester asks who she is. “Ah, the governess!� he says, without revealing his own identity. He uses the occasion to fish for information, or to tease:
“Whose house is it?�
“Mr. Rochester’s.�
“Do you know Mr. Rochester?�
“No, I have never seen him.�
“He is not resident, then?�
“�No.�
“Can you tell me where he is?�
“I cannot.�

Later, disguised as a gypsy, Rochester uses the same ploy to discover Jane’s feelings. “Is there not one face you study?� the gypsy asks. “You don’t know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a syllable with one of them? Will you say that of the master of the house?�
“He is not at home.�
“…A most ingenious quibble!...Does that…blot him, as it were, out of existence?�

Jane’s dawning awareness is triggered not by the intellect, but by her gifted feeling. Rags and soot do not prevent the usually vigilant Jane from falling into a kind of trance, a hypnotic swoon. “Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming?� she wonders, realizing that the gypsy had “wrapped me in a kind of dream,� involving her in a “web of mystification.� Jane Eyre hits the “nail straight ton the head� in guessing that Rochester is slyly drawing her out—or in; and leading her on.

As has been suggested, they lead each other on. “I do not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchards.� Jane may not like it, but out she goes, protesting too much. “No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like….Here one could wander unseen…� Her panic at his appearance seems almost disingenuous. “I must flee…I see Mr. Rochester entering…if I sit still he will never see me…I can slip away unnoticed.� But Rochester, his back to her, begins a conversation; as she is “sheepishly retreating,� he entices her to stay “while sunset is thus at meeting with moonrise,� a redolent innuendo worthy of Coleridge.

The moon appears again shortly after Rochester alters Jane’s fate (temporarily) by his proposal. The blood-red disk passes between the fissure of the rent chestnut tree. The stricken tree is Rochester’s namesake and pagan twin. It is “a ruin, but an entire ruin,� just as Rochester becomes a ruined man, yet somehow intact. When Jane says, “I faced the wreck of the chestnut-tree; it stood up, black and riven,� she foretells of Rochester at the end: “His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour…his port was still erect, his hair was still raven-black…� The wounded tree (its circular bench symbolic of a wedding-band) portends Rochester’s suffering. Only when blind does he become inwardly sighted, like an Oedipus, Tieresius, or Gloucester. And in this state of humility and insight Rochester is finally worthy of wedding his counterpart.

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