『제인 에어』: 괴물성이 제거된 아내의 자서전

Abstract

Young Jane and Bertha are similar in that they are outside the boundary of human and social norms. Like Bertha, young Jane is compared to animals such as a rat and a mad cat, and she is also very passionate. Mrs. Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst label Jane’s passionate nature as madness and try to marginalize her as they think she threatens to undermine the established social order. Jane seems to empathize with Bertha since both are branded as freaks and defy the established order. Despite her initial empathy with the monstrous Bertha, Jane gradually conforms to the social norms and is incorporated into the mainstream society. At the same time she excludes and marginalizes Bertha. Jane’s defiant spirit is gradually repressed as she undergoes several crises. The first crisis comes when she is confined in the Red Room. From this crisis she realizes that she is a class freak belonging neither to the upper class nor to the lower class. In the ensuing crisis at Lowood, she is displayed as a freak overriding social norms in front of other students by Mr. Brocklehurst. However, under the influence of Helen Burns, a religious ascetic, and Miss Temple, Jane learns to suppress her defiance. The last crisis appears at Thornfield where she falls in love with Rochester and confronts Bertha. Jane undergoes major changes as she realizes that Bertha is punished for transgressing the conventional women’s roles and sexuality in Victorian society. After this, Jane’s radical ideas on women’s roles and intense sexual fantasies for Rochester disappear from the text. I think that Jane’s change is a strategy to establish herself in the society: Jane, an orphan, chooses to give up her monstrosity and accept established order to survive. Eventually, she is successfully incorporated into the mainstream society after suppressing her spontaneous sexuality and craving to be freed from the confines of home. Jane Rochester, the mature narrator writing her own autobiography Jane Eyre, has already been married to Rochester for about ten years. She vividly describes mental and physical abuses young Jane is subjected to in Gateshead Hall and the Lowood Institution. In a subtle way this vivid description leads the reader to sympathize with her and consequently accept her opinion on Bertha and Rochester without questioning her prejudices against the racial Other, Bertha, and the lower class people. Furthermore, the narrator often manipulates the reader’s responses by choosing favorable materials in writing her biography. In this study I argue that Jane acquires her identity as British middle class angel in the house after sacrificing her independent spirit, sexual spontaneity, and Bertha who tries to warn Jane of Rochester's deceptions. On the surface level, Jane is happily married to Rochester and all the differences are seemingly resolved at the end of the novel; however, at the deeper level the text with its dark images does not entirely approve Jane’s statements, and this suggests that Bertha’s madness at social injustices women suffer from persists even after her death.