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Jane Eyre: Fanning the Flames and Seeing Double

© Pamela St. Clair

Eyre sounds uncannily like ire. Coincidence? I think not! Throughout Jane Eyre, a bildungsroman novel with menacing gothic overtones and mystery, Jane journies to overcome various forms of repression. Circumscribed by a patriarchal culture that dictates women's limited roles, opportunities and passions (both creative and sensual) and which similarly suppresses the underclass to which Jane belongs, she maintains her genteel composure, as she conforms to society's restrictions. Jane embarks on a quest, seeking her true self. And in her travels, she will confront numerous obstacles, as foreshadowed in the opening line of the novel: "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day" (19). As the cold winter landscape provides the backdrop for her thwarted walk, images of redness and of fire underscore the passions buried within Jane, passions which will surface quite forcibly in her alter-ego, the tempestuous and crazed Bertha. In Jane, Charlotte Brontë creates a strong, independent heroine who struggles to find a voice in a world intent on denying it.

The first place of entrapment from which she will escape is named, appropriately, Gateshead. She is grudgingly adopted by her father's family, the Reeds. Out its door (or gate) she will begin her travels when her own anger displaces her. After retaliating to the taunts of the young John Reed, she is punished with solitude in the imposing red room, the room of the deceased Mr. Reed (the family patriarch). Frightened in the overbearing room, she seeks out her mirror image (her first double): "I had to cross before the looking-glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed" (26). In fear, she falls into an anguished fit of momentary madness; thus, Jane learns early on what happens to a female who succumbs to her passions and enacts on her anger. Punishment must prevail. From then forward, Jane inwardly deflects her anger and frustrations.

Her first stop along her pilgrimage toward maturity and independence soon follows as Mrs. Reed hands her out her "gate" to Lowood, a strict girls' school. She first meets its headmaster, the imposing Mr. Brocklehurst. Emblematic of the patriarchal world, he appears to Jane in subtle phallic imagery. She sees at first "a black pillar!" which is a "straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug: the grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital" (42). (One cannot ignore his name, either, which connotes images of sausages.)

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