#Charlotte Jafari | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zahrakhans · 4 years

Text

Bewildered but not afraid: Edward Rochester as Jane Eyre’s Uncanny Double

While the enigmatic Mr. Rochester is the subject of Jane’s affections in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, he is also a source of terror for her — his existence is a threat to Jane, because she is unsure of his true intentions. All throughout the course of Jane’s life she attempts to avert power and control over her sense of self; first from her Aunt’s cruelty at Gateshead, and then at the oppressive Lowood school. When she is hired at Thornfield hall as a governess and she meets Edward Rochester and his family, Jane finds that she sees in Mr. Rochester something she has never seen before — she sees a kind of likeness, intellectually and emotionally, and finds that she has fallen in love with him. However, Jane does not always perceive the similarities she shares with Mr. Rochester as romantic or touching, and at times Rochester’s position as her “uncanny likeness” is a source of terror or bewilderment in their interactions. This bewilderment — characteristic of gothic literature — is shown on Jane’s part at times when she confronts Mr. Rochester. After they meet, the two characters are able to find an understanding of each other in their discourse and discussion, and their mutual attraction is based in the similarities of character they share. But at times, this likeness reflects Jane’s worst fears of physical harm and imprisonment of her “self” at the hands of Mr. Rochester. For this reason, it can be said that Mr. Rochester is an uncanny double of Jane, representing the threat of impending patriarchal violence that she so dreads.

The concept of the “uncanny” in gothic literature works off of Freud’s definition of it as “that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar” (Freud 1). The uncanny is a source of terror for Jane all throughout the novel, but it is reflected back to her through Rochester and the consistent challenge that he offers to Jane’s sensibilities and wit. Jane asserts herself at the outset of the novel as having a strength of character, or that “inward treasure” (Bronte 282) born with her that allows her to stand attempts at control that have plagued her whole childhood. Mostly, this “control” is of a patriarchal nature, and manifests itself as control of Jane’s desires, her intellectual and emotional voice, or her general free will within a situation. In one case, Jane faces violence and imprisonment at the hands of her relatives at Gateshead, with her cousin’s “violent tyrannies… and proud indifference” and Aunt’s “aversion turn[ing] up in her mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well” (72). Later, Jane’s aunt imprisons her in the Red Room, at which point Jane has a fit out of fright. This treatment has an impact on Jane, and is what establishes the terror of imprisonment for Jane later in her life. This is first way Jane internalizes the kind of repressed, uncanny terror that Freud describes. Jane is faced with this patriarchal control again when she is sent to Lowood academy, where she must conform to the rigid rules of the school under the instruction of headmaster Brocklehurst. The headmaster and the school itself exerting an attempt at power over Jane’s character is yet again another representation of the terror of control in Jane’s childhood, and something she later confronts as an uncanny fear. Since these events — experiences with punishment through imprisonment, and impending violence and control of a patriarchal nature — occur in Jane’s past, they are sources of that exact repressed terror that was “once long known to [her]” as said by Freud. Jane’s experience with these past dangers is then exemplified by Rochester in all his similarities to her.

Both Mr. Rochester and Jane are shown to be similar to one another in small, uncanny ways, and for this reason they are a set of doubles that represent that which the other fears, but also that which the other can grow to love. The little differences between the two characters represent instances of exact opposition — and this fact draws the two to each other when it does not aggravate tension. Jane is female while Rochester is male, and while both are described as unattractive in the narrative, Jane is described as “plain” while Rochester’s features are “harsh”. While Jane is submissive and Rochester oppressive at first glance, Jane still matches his wit and Rochester finds that even she “masters” (346) him sometimes. Both have a kind of restlessness in their positions, and both desire someone to have a worthy connection with. Jane desires “intercourse with her kind, of acquaintance with variety of character” (178) and finds her match in Rochester, who desires to “form [some] new tie” (399) with a new wife. These differences are at times shown to draw the two characters in harmony — such as when Rochester tells Jane, in flirtation, that “[he has] never met her likeness,” that she can “please” him while still “master[ing]” him, and that she has a “sense of pliancy” but he is still “conquered” by her. (Bronte 345-346). They have much of the same taste in discussion and literature, and are different in ways that can still allow them to find a “likeness,” as Rochester calls it. Levenson describes the uncanny in Jane Eyre as being in its “most softest, most gentle guise” through Bronte’s writing, and that the gothic in her writing is “less a turn to terror, more a node in plot”. And indeed, there is a romantic aspect to the uncanny differences between the two characters, with Rochester insisting that he feels there to be a sort of string connecting his “left rib” to Jane’s own (337), and with Jane saying she has “something in [her] brain and heart, in [her] blood and nerves, that assimilates [her] mentally to [Rochester]” (Bronte 253). In these instances the uncanny similarity that Jane and Rochester exemplify for each other that is not a source of terror for Jane, and instead draws them together in love and understanding. However, in other ways their uncanny similarity suggests the threat of impending violence upon Jane.

When she approaches Mr. Rochester in disguise as a palm-reader, Jane is caught in a strange instance of confusion before he reveals himself. She wonders, after seeing Rochester’s face half in shadow, if she had “been dreaming” or if she “dream[s] still,” after meeting the disguised Rochester, and says that the accent and gesture of the disguised Rochester are “familiar to [her] as [her] own face in the glass — as the speech of [her] own tongue” (282). There is bewilderment on Jane’s part in this moment that is characteristic of the gothic uncanny, at a point where she is confused as to where her perception of Mr. Rochester starts and where she begins. There is also a kind of supernatural confusion in this meeting of Rochester in disguise that signifies uncanniness in their interaction, and the influence of these supernatural tendencies impact Jane and Rochester’s relationship at many other times. Rochester repeatedly teases Jane for being “elfish” (263) and at times compares her to a fairy or a witch (reference). While Rochester only means to joke with Jane, this shows that he has an uncanny terror in perception of her. The idea that Jane is “elfish” or magical portrays the uncanny in the sense that it adds a fear of the unknown to the everyday occurrences in Bronte’s narrative; and the supernatural wonder that accompanies the description of Mr.Rochester shows that he has an uncanny nature as well. Mr. Rochester fascinates Jane because his intentions and past are not clearly known, and this uncertainty is shown when Jane says he enters Thornfield guided by “great dog… with strange pretercanine eyes…” and that he as a rider, “the man, the human being, [breaks] the spell at once” (181). Because she sees Rochester’s arrival as something strange and new and describes him as “breaking a spell” when he rides in, the supernatural is shown to be a way of perceiving the uncanny for Jane, and is something that she sees as being emulated in Rochester. Mr. Rochester therefore represents Jane’s uncanny match, and later represents her fear of patriarchal power and the threat of violence that comes with it.

This impending threat is represented in Rochester’s attempts to exert power over Jane as best he can through the course of her stay at Thornfield. In Mr. Rochester, Jane finds an intellectual equal who is not only able to match her questioning nature and curiosity. Even in their discourse, however, Rochester tries at many times to ‘discomfort’ Jane or bewilder her by an attempt to exert dominance in conversation. When Rochester first sits her down for discussion, she insists that “though [his] language is enigmatical, though [she] is bewildered, [she is] certainly not afraid” (211). Rochester replies that she “is afraid”, and that her “self-love fears a blunder”. Though Jane’s fear of Rochester’s enigmatical language and uncertain intentions are indeed representative of her strength of character in the face of Rochester’s judgement, this fear can also come out of her repressed fear of power and control. As said by Jafari, the literary double “implies that there is a deeper level, a hidden side, to the protagonist that the double possibly embodies,” showing their repressed fears as coming to the surface where the protagonist must confront them. In Rochester’s constant struggle for power over Jane, he represents that exact idea of power over her person that she fears — over that “inward treasure” she has always had at Gateshead and then at Lowood. Rochester notices Jane’s fear of this control, and tries to further exert that power through her sense of fear, such as when he assures her that he “[has] a right to get pleasure out of life, and that he will get it, cost what may” (Bronte 208) and suggesting that he can get whatever “pleasure” out of her that he chooses. But Jane proves herself able to counter these kinds of exertions, telling him that his person will only “degenerate still more” by seeking this thoughtless pleasure — or by attempting to control her.

The threat of control, of course, is still present in all of Rochester’s interactions with Jane, first in the threat of marriage to Rochester tying her down, and then through the threat of literal violence on her person or autonomy. Jane insists that “soft scene, darling demonstration, [she will] not have” (359) when Rochester approaches her for a show of affection, and that “a weapon of defence must be prepared” in the form of her asking Rochester “whom he was going to marry now?” It is shown here that Jane defends herself against any sort of power that Rochester tries to exert over her, even in romance — and because she feels the need to do so, Rochester represents her repressed dread of patriarchal power established in her childhood at Gateshead and Lowood. The threat of marriage, of violence in marriage, of harm through violence and violent imprisonment in marriage manifests itself through Rochester, who makes sure to tell Jane that if she will not listen to “reason” (392), that he will try “violence” in order to get her to stay. This threat comes right after it is discovered that Rochester has imprisoned his old wife, Bertha Mason, in the Thornfield attic. The “hidden side” (Jafari) to Jane that is embodied in Rochester is her fear of power of her, and she counters by asserting her own power over Rochester — refusing to stay when he demands her to after he reveals a potential to lock her down — like some fallen woman in the attic, or like she was in the Red Room as a child. The purpose of the uncanny double in gothic literature is described as the “experience of the double with the ego's evolutionary development” (Jafari), or the mental repression in the protagonist undergoes a stage of development so that they might mature. The worst case scenario of patriarchal power finally taking a hold over Jane is represented in her master, Mr. Rochester, and all his attempts at breaching her autonomy. Rochester is therefore a gothic double of Jane’s alter ego — showing not only her repressed fear of patriarchal power but also the concept of power in contrast with Jane’s choice to submit to him in marriage.

Though the threat of violence by Rochester — that submissive terror that Jane faces after having evaded control her whole life — amounts to Jane finally meeting the captive Bertha Mason and not any violence on Jane herself, she decides to leave Thornfield hall and emphasize to Rochester that she will “not” be his (Bronte 407). Jane evades capture in her flight from Thornfield, and after she leaves, Bertha Mason burns down the house in a display of the kind of fate Jane might have narrowly avoided—a wife locked up for refusal to bend to Rochester’s control. While Jane escapes the control of her relatives at Gateshead and lived past her instance of imprisonment in the Red Room, and while she survives punishment at Lowood by maintaining a mental sense of self, these occurrences instill in Jane a terror of imprisonment and violence at the hands of a patriarch or family. After being hired as a governess in the Rochester household, Jane takes on a submissive yet still self-assured role in her discourse with Mr. Rochester. But Jane’s repressed fears of patriarchal violence represent themselves through Mr. Rochester, and even the most harmonious differences between them — such as submission versus power, and male versus female — become a danger to Jane, and the threat of violence that Rochester emulates becoming a source of uncanny terror for her. The fact this threat of violence on Jane is emulated by Mr. Rochester’s character shows that he is her literary double — not only because of their differences but also because he represents that threat of terror, or the “hidden side” (Jafari) of Jane’s childhood development and desire to conform to patriarchal power as a result. Yet even though Rochester, as a double, represents a threat to Jane, he is the figure that allows her to develop her sense of self and power apart from the fear of patriarchal control in her past — given that when she returns to Thornfield to find him a threat neutralized, blind and missing his hand, she makes sure to proclaim that “she married him” (Bronte 552) to the reader, and asserts herself as a formidable opposite to the terror in her uncanny match.

Works Cited

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Edited by Richard Nemesvari, Broadview, 1999.

Freud, Sigmund. "The Uncanny." Imago V (1919), rpt. Sammlung, Funfte Folge. Translated by Alix Strachey. https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf

Jafari, Morteza. "Freud's uncanny: the role of the double in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights." Victorian Newsletter, vol. 118, 2010, p. 43+. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.kpu.ca:2443/apps/doc/A246011445/LitRC?u=kwantlenuc_lib&sid=LitRC&xid=7c24f0fd. Accessed 12 Apr. 2020.

Levenson, Karen Chase. "Bronte's Domestic Uncanny." Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, no. 130, 2016, p. 124+. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.kpu.ca:2443/apps/doc/A514850338/LitRC?u=kwantlenuc_lib&sid=LitRC&xid=fb041ef7. Accessed 12 Apr. 2020.

0 notes