Quest for Identity: Power and Agency in Jane Eyre
Erin Terrall, Yahoo Contributor NetworkMay 12, 2008 "Share your
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of the most constant themes in Charlotte Bronte's classic novel,
Jane Eyre, is that of personal power. Throughout the novel, the
title character is locked in a struggle to find her place in the
world, and establish herself as an empowered person. This conflict
is enhanced by Jane's social standing, family situation and gender.
Against many odds, she manages to establish her identity and breaks
free multiple times from disempowering circumstances. Feminist
scholar Sandra M. Gilbert discusses Bronte's heroine and her
narrative in depth in her essay "Plain Jane's Progress," examining
the nature of power within the novel, and the importance of gender
to the story. Gilbert particularly focuses on the power struggle
between the characters of Jane and Rochester, the enigmatic man who
employs Jane as a governess for his illegitimate daughter, and who
eventually becomes her husband. She also discusses the other female
characters within the book, and how they reflect and affect Jane's
need for empowerment throughout the story. A central theme Gilbert
emphasizes is that of Jane's "pilgrimage" - her life voyage from
"one significantly named place to another" (Gilbert 477). She
focuses these discussions on examining Jane's role as a woman in
Victorian England - a decidedly patriarchal society where women's
position was considered almost exclusively domestic. Through
examination of this article, and of the text of Jane Eyre, the
nature of the protagonist's "pilgrimage" becomes apparent as a
quest for identity. She manages to slowly gain personal power as
her life goes on, and she shows an uncanny ability to use whatever
power she has in order to overcome the next obstacle in her voyage.
Another theme that Gilbert works with is that of escape. Throughout
the novel, Jane escapes time after time from oppressive
circumstances, only to end up in another position of
disempowerment. Specifically, her experiences at Thornfield and the
events that follow are the most crucial in Jane's pilgrimage.
Eventually, Jane manages to find a place where she belongs with
Rochester, where she becomes his wife, caretaker, and social equal.
Jane Eyre becomes a boundary breaking character who manages to
transcend class and gender stereotypes through her resilience and
strength of character. She is a symbol of the struggle of
working-class women, and her pilgrimage exemplifies the difficult
obstacles that must be overcome in order for gender and class
equality to become a reality. In essence, Jane's discovery of her
personal identity in the world correlates to the identity of an
entire oppressed group.Jane's journey begins in her childhood, as
the orphaned ward of her aunt. From the very beginning of her tale,
she is a disempowered character, a Cinderella figure in a hostile
environment. Bronte establishes the disempowered child of Jane
within the first few pages, with the narration the child uses to
describe her situation. "...dreaded to me was the coming home, ...
humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza,
John, and Georgiana Reed [her cousins]" (Bronte 20). These
sentiments that seem to be present in Jane likely do not stem from
actual physical inferiority, but rather a psychological mentality
of her situation. Like any oppressed character, the impressionable
young Jane assumes the stereotypes and insults directed at her are
true, and develops the idea that she is inferior in every way to
her cousins. As a pariah in the only house that will have anything
to do with her, Jane has very few options to find empowerment. She
must find an escape wherever she can, and before she can truly
escape physically, she must escape mentally. The first glimpse of
Jane's resourcefulness and mental escape comes from one of her
first activities in the novel. She escapes from her powerless post
in the hostile household temporarily through a book - a rather
mundane book at that - as she retreats to a solitary window-seat,
burying herself in A History of British Birds. Through the images
and quotes contained therein, Jane manages to acquire the only kind
of power she has access to - knowledge. Her quest for identity and
power has begun, and the symbol of the working-class orphan woman
has begun to discover - from a young age - how she can begin her
journey to find her place as a social equal.Over the course of
Jane's life in the Reed household, a decidedly patriarchal
household in a decidedly patriarchal society, there is a striking
absence of the controlling male figure that signifies the ruler. In
fact, there is only one male in the house with any real power. This
character is Jane's fourteen-year-old cousin, John Reed, who abuses
her verbally and physically on a regular basis. Without the
presence of a strong male figure, the need for control falls to
John Reed, and through John's actions On one occasion, Jane
retaliates in self-defense, and then is punished for the whole
affair by her aunt. She is placed in the Red Room, In this case,
the struggle Jane must endure is not one of gender, but one of
class. With the absence of the late Mr. Reed (Jane's biological
uncle), Despite the punishment, she has gained power through her
resistance to her abuse, as well as through reading. Her character
has begun to form as a steadfast young woman who knows when she has
been wronged, one who is not afraid to strike back.While the
struggles Jane endures in relation to her gender are certainly
poignant and important to examine, Gilbert seems to overlook the
class struggles that are equally present. When Jane enters into her
position at Thornfield, she is still in the presence of
serving-class women for the most part. However, there has been a
shift. As Gilbert points out: "Many of Jane's problems ... can be
traced to her ambiguous status as governess at Thornfield" (483).
Jane has transcended another barrier at her new post, moving from a
working-class orphan bringing herself closer to a higher social
position, but she is still "ambiguous," blurring the lines between
classes. As with every person, Jane's identity is moulded and (at
least somewhat) determined by the people that surround her,
especially within her adolescence. Strikingly, nearly all of the
important characters in Jane's life seem to be female (with a few
powerful exceptions). As a result of this, her most viable option
as a woman of discovering how to behave herself is to observe and
learn from the women that surround her. Rather than doing as the
others do, she simply figures out what not to do from them. "...As
a counterpoint to Jane's representation of working-class women in
her society, it makes sense that Rochester - the most prominent
male figure in the novel, represents the upper-class male that
truly oppresses Jane and her kind. The development of Rochester's
character is second only to the development of Jane's character.
Interestingly, the first encounter between the two characters seems
to be symbolic itself. While in the woods surrounding Thornfield,
Jane first encounters Rochester, where he has fallen from his horse
and injured himself. This could be interpreted almost as a slightly
ironic and powerful metaphor about class. The upper-class man has
fallen from his "high horse" (so to speak), and cannot function
without the working-class woman. Not only does this meeting
foreshadow the ending of the book, but it sets in motion the
relationship between Rochester and Jane to be unconventional.One of
the most prominent points within "Plain Jane's Progress" relates
the character of Jane with that of Bertha, Rochester's crazed first
wife who lives in secret in the attic of Thornfield. Gilbert argues
that Bertha is the embodiment of Jane's darker side, the wild and
violent aspects of Jane's character that would like nothing better
than to use physical force to break free of the oppression of
Rochester. This seems to be complicated by the nature of Jane's
character, who has little trouble resisting when she feels she has
been wronged. This is shown by her resistance to John Reed's abuse,
and her ability to escape from situations where she is
disempowered. Instead, while Bertha may embody some of Jane's
repressed feelings, she seems to be more of a cautionary tale. She
represents the oppressed married woman of her time, forever bound
to a fate of servitude. Bertha has become so disgruntled that her
description is chillingly animalistic. "What it was, whether beast
or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled,
seemingly, on all fours" (289-290). Rather than attempting to
simply steal away from Thornfield, Bertha tries constantly to
physically destroy Rochester and the prison that holds her.
Bertha's violence represents the constant - yet futile - struggle
of women in the Victorian world to find their voices and destroy
the patriarchal society that dominates and suppresses them, as she
struggles to break free of Rochester. Jane, in contrast, represents
the progressive woman, a new approach to woman's quest for equality
that works not from a place of retaliation and destruction, but of
escape. Jane's departure from Thornfield shows her unwillingness to
continue to be controlled by this oppressive society, and she can
only return to Rochester when he has lost the mansion and the wife
that haunts him. These things are representatives of the society
that Rochester has always been a part of, and that he cannot break
free of until they burn to the ground.The feminist argument that
Gilbert and many others try to find in this novel is compelling,
but becomes very complicated by the ending of the novel. Jane does
not truly become Rochester's equal until he has been crippled by
the fire that destroyed Thornfield, when they finally become wed.
However, this development does not (as one might immediately
assume) undermine the feminist nature of the book or the struggle
that Jane has had to overcome in order to be in this position. In
fact, if both Jane and Rochester are considered to be symbols for
their respective classes, Rochester's injuries become not about
crippling or (as Gilbert quotes other critics) "a symbolic
castration" (Gilbert 499). Instead, the destruction of Thornfield
represents the deconstruction of the class-based, patriarchal
society, and Rochester's wounds are the punishment for the
perpetuation of said society. Oddly enough, this deconstruction is
not brought about by Jane's reason and escape, but by Bertha's
self-destructive and vengeful actions. In the end, Jane's
pilgrimage - with help from Bertha - finally brings her to a place
of social equality. She finds love with Rochester, while staying
true to her nature, which seems to
