Podcast Postscript: Chapter 13

There is rampant symbolism in the novel Jane Eyre, and in the latest episode of the podcast, Mike and I discuss the potential meanings behind Jane’s three paintings.  They seem to reveal something of her mindset at the time or they foreshadow something coming later in the book.

First painting: of a shipwreck featuring a cormorant holding a gold bracelet in its beak, and a drowned woman’s arm and wrist above the waves.

Rendition from the 1973 miniseries adaptation

Rendition from the 1983 miniseries adaptation

There is a bird reference again - which features many times in the book. This is thought-provoking imagery to have the woman drowned and the bird able to take her possessions and fly free.  Another allusion to the limitations put on women.

Second painting: a woman blending into the twilight sky, her head crowned with stars.

Rendition from the 1973 miniseries adaptation

Mr. Rochester references the Greek legend of Selene and Endymion when he mentions Mt. Latmos. In the story the goddess Selene falls in love with Endymion and vows to protect him forever. This seems to foreshadow Jane’s potential commitment to Rochester.  Although Rochester is the one to connect it to Latmos, so is he hoping Jane will fulfill this role?

Third painting: A colossal head resting against an iceberg with two hands supporting the head and drawing a dark veil against it.

Jane uses these lines to describe this painting: “the likeness of a kingly crown;”…“the shape which shape had none.”’ - which are quotes from Paradise Lost by John Milton.

Although I’ve not read Paradise Lost - I’ve read online that these words draw on descriptions of Satan and Hell in that book - such a dark and forbidding tone for a schoolgirl’s paintings.  Her thoughts are full of despair, but do these images also foreshadow some of her and Mr. Rochester’s suffering to come?

I absolutely love analyzing this book, and if you would like to hear more, please listen to our discussion of Chapter 13 of Jane Eyre Files.

Podcast Postscript - Chapter 8

There is a moment in Chapter 8 where young and impulsive Jane says:

A dramatic statement to be sure, but it highlights a main theme in this novel - that Jane Eyre is wants to be loved.  At the Reed’s house, that commodity is hard to find - as even when we get to Jane revisiting Gateshead as an adult there is a lack of love between any of the family members.  Jane’s fear that she has lost the potential to be loved by Mr. Brocklehurst’s statements in front of the school spur on this extreme reaction to not being loved and it makes me think of how I took family love for granted as a child.  What a terrible thing for any child to grow up not feeling loved.  

Mike and I talk about this moment in our podcast, but thinking about it more, I really feel that Jane (and Helen) are not being dramatic or “over-reacting” in they way they speak about dealing with life.  It is a deep reality to them that - Jane desires love and family, and Helen wishes for the peace and calm of going to God.  And as I touch on in the podcast episode, we understand Jane’s desires, but it is more difficult to understand Helen’s as we don’t really know everything she has gone through.  

If you want to hear more discussion about Chapter 8 of Jane Eyre, please do give the latest episode of Jane Eyre Files a listen!

Podcast Postscript: Chapter 5

My husband and I talk about Chapter 5 in the latest episode of the Jane Eyre Files podcast, and I mention the way Jane travels to the next stage of her life in the National Theatre production from 2015.  During the pandemic in 2020, National Theatre put the full production online for free, but I don’t believe there is a free source for it at the moment. However there is a clip of the bit I talked about on YouTube!

Enjoy the latest episode of the podcast:

https://anchor.fm/janeeyrefiles

Podcast Postscript: Chapter 4

In our podcast discussion of Chapter 4 we talk about how Bessie is gradually becoming a more positive character in Jane’s life - just as Jane is about to leave Gateshead.  But I wanted to mention something that comes up when Bessie goes looking for Jane:

It seems that Bessie sometimes treats Jane with disdain because she is such a shy and timid child.  That it is “provoking” when Jane starts at Bessie’s words when she chances to speak harshly.  Jane does seem to become a more “venturesome” person when she goes to Lowood, but I find it intriguing that Bessie is annoyed by Jane’s shyness. 

It is easy to understand why Jane is generally timid among the Reeds, so I find it callous of Bessie to compound the issue by being abrupt with her when it seems that is her only way to cope.  But Bessie seems to be pretty young herself, and perhaps with her youth she is impatient because she doesn’t quite understand Jane.  Just another instance of a character misunderstanding Jane.  

Jane being difficult to read is a constant in this book for the other characters, but luckily for the reader of her book, we can understand Jane perfectly.

Listen to Episode 5 of our podcast Jane Eyre Files here:

5 Things I Learned About Jane Eyre

A few years ago I was interviewed by a UK based educational company in preparation for their release of content about the Brontës aimed for teachers and students. Sadly the company, Train of Thought Productions, seems to be no more, but at the time they sent me a complimentary copy of the DVD titled “Brontës in Context”.  Unfortunately I believe it is hard to find now, but I found it a very interesting examination of the Brontës’ lives and work.

The Jane Eyre section of the DVD was especially illuminating.  I’ve never studied Jane Eyre in school, and although I've read critical texts about the story, there are schools of thoughts that I haven’t really explored.   Jane Eyre is such an intertextually rich story, that I should have anticipated that this DVD would be eye-opening in unexpected ways. So this post is about the things I learned from the "Brontës in Context" DVD. 

1st Person Narration

Okay, I do know that Jane Eyre is written in the first person. And I know that because the novel has a first person POV, the reader is drawn more into Jane's story, her spirit and her fiery nature. But one comment from a professor on the DVD really struck me - the idea that Jane addresses the reader personally (by saying "reader") more and more as the story progresses. "Reader, I married him." being the famous example. I was curious though to see if that was really true, so I went to the Gutenberg online copy and did a search - in the scroll bar, there are little yellow ticks that show where the word comes up in the text, so I took a screenshot of that bar to illustrate (I made the scroll bar horizontal).

From left to right: The beginning of Jane Eyre to the end

Again the yellow marks are every time Jane says "reader" (which is not absolutely accurate since there are like three times it's in the novel, and it's not addressing the reader of the book) But it's true that Jane does directly reach out to the reader more as the novel progresses. The professor on the DVD explains it as Jane wanting to take control of her story, and one way she does this is by correcting the reader's thoughts - by giving them the truth directly. I thought that was a fascinating and accurate explanation of the purpose of Jane addressing the reader.

Bluebeard

To me, Jane Eyre is most succinctly compared to two fairy tales - Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. I am aware of a Bluebeard connection, but I feel like the aforementioned tales encompasses the story more. But after watching this DVD I am leaning more towards seeing Jane Eyre in a "Bluebeard" light. Especially as Jane Eyre is a Gothic novel, and Bluebeard fits that genre the best of these three tales. There's a "secret at its heart" (quote from the DVD) which is a thoughtful encapsulation of both stories. And there was a comment made by one of the professors that placed the reader of the novel as the curious Bluebeard wife, reading the novel to discover the secret. Such an interesting idea! (And does that mean that Mr. Rochester is my husband??)

St. John and Helen

The role of religion is touched on in the DVD, and there was a thought that the character of St. John Rivers (who is not a bad person, but is kind of unforgivably self-righteous - oh, just me?) hearkens back to Jane's friend Helen Burns.  Helen is such a positive character and St. John considerably less so, that I initally felt it's almost a slur on Helen to link the two. But in the context of what the professor on the DVD said it makes sense -  they are similar in that they 'quash physical desires'.  And in that way I can understand why Jane would be drawn to them - they both encourage Jane to embrace a devotion to God and reason, at a time when her passionate nature is giving her the most pain. Unfortunately for St. John, his function later in the novel means he also has to show Jane that living such a cold, dispassionate life is not for her. And hey, both Helen and St. John meet untimely ends. Which to my mind is Charlotte making a harsh judgement on the idea of living just for God.

The Great Dickens Christmas Fair

I hope you will excuse this tangentially related post on my Jane Eyre blog  - but recently I was able to re-live aspects of Victorian England at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair, held every year in San Francisco, California.  And this event enabled me to represent my favorite Victorian heroine in a small way, as I based my outfit on her.

The event is held in an exhibition hall and a lot of work goes into making over the space into Victorian London.  There are “streets” with theater performances in different areas, a space for shops, a dance hall space, and of course local pubs and ale houses.  There is also a docks area which is the seedier part of town.  Talking to a few of the participants - I was surprised to learn how much work goes into recreating the era - everyone must have clothes appropriate to their station, and they all have a role to play.  My first stop at the Fair was Madame Louise's School for Lady's Maids (you can get your hair done in braids there!) and the lady who dressed my hair told me their backstory was that they were prostitutes rescued from the docks and training as lady’s maids - so their costumes could not be too fine.  The Dickens Fair really pays attention to authenticity.

Those lady’s maids did a fantastic job with my hair, by the way - I asked for something reminiscient of Mia Wasikowska’s Jane and they totally delivered (the added deocrations were very appreciated):

Rochester, Bertha and Passion

In a recent post I talked about my dislike of comparing Jane and Bertha as psychological doubles, and in that post I mentioned that for me, Rochester and Bertha have much more of a connection in terms of character development and literary analysis.  And that in many ways Bertha foreshadows Rochester’s potential.  I find this dynamic more interesting because there seems to be support for it in Charlotte’s novel and I enjoy examining the ways in which Charlotte foreshadows events.

Physicality

Aside from the obvious link that Bertha and Rochester are married, another link that is commented on in the novel but perhaps not really talked about is in their physicality.  “She was a big woman, in stature almost equalling her husband, and corpulent besides: she showed virile force in the contest—more than once she almost throttled him, athletic as he was. “ (Chapter 26)  Bertha and Rochester are almost equal in bulk and seemingly strength.  They are both dark featured, with possibly a similar “swarthy” skin tone.  (From Chapter 18 describing Rochester:  “ His dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features”  Paynim means “non-Christian, especially a Muslim)  Bertha is described with dark features with dark hair and eyes, but also in ways that perhaps relate to her hygiene - “blackened”,  “dark”,  “purple”.  There is also the possibility of her having a darker skin tone by her being “Creole”.  In beauty they are not so alike, but coloring, stature and bulk appear to be similar.  These two people who are visually alike, are then set on a narrative course that to me intertwines closely.

Literary Perspectives

I find it interesting that Rochester and Bertha both have a role to play in Jane’s story that is defined by Gothic literary traditions.  Jane Eyre the novel is a Gothic story that combines horror, romance, and suspense with many traditional elements.  One of those is the Byronic hero as represented by Rochester.  Byronic heroes are anti-heroes - protagonists who act out of self-interest or unconventional beliefs.  They are usually mysterious, arrogant, rebellious and anti-social.  In Gothic novels they don’t always have a happy ending, but they are viewed in a romantic light.