Jane Eyre

2007年4月16日星期一

"Angels and Madwomen"

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, which challenges the rigid gender constructions of femininity and the Victorian societal constraints designed to keep women enclosed, ultimately re-inscribes some of those very conventions that the author defies. Brontë's novel examines the pervasive, repressive, and controlling ideology of the "angel in the house" through female characters who embody the construct as they subvert it. At Thornfield, Jane, along with a "range of fallen women," searches for the key to release them from the containment of their "metaphorical attics" (Logan 23). And yet, despite the novel's subversive nature, Brontë's narrative ultimately functions as a warning against female rage which the author communicates through the racially inscribed character of Bertha Mason. In the end, Brontë demonstrates that women's anger is very political and to be an angry woman in nineteenth-century England is next-door to insanity.

Appropriately, Brontë utilizes the metaphor of houses, rooms, and enclosures throughout the novel to symbolize the patriarchal structures within society that inhibit or negate the possibility of female liberty. For Jane "the fresh air and open countryside remain . . . symbols of personal freedom and independence" (Meyer 85). In the red room Jane learns that she is without a place in society--"No, you are less than a servant" (Brontë 6). The interior of the red room reflects coldness, despite the fiery colour. Not an angel but a "revolted slave" (Brontë 9) presides over this hearth; a hearth which has not warmed the room for quite some time. Jane quickly assesses that "no jail was ever more secure" (9). The author evokes a pervasive atmosphere of suffocation, the inability to breathe, or to only breathe dead air--for in this chamber where Mr. Reed "breathed his last" (8). Although much has been made of Jane Eyre's name, it bears repeating that both her ire (Gilbert and Gubar 349 ) and the need to breathe fresh air drive this young girl and prevent her from embodying the construct of the "angel in the house."

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Biography of Charlotte Bronte

English writer noted for her novel Jane Eyre (1847), sister of Anne Brontë and Emily Brontë. The three sisters are almost as famous for their short, tragic lives as for their novels. In their works they described love more truthfully that was common in Victorian age England. In the past 40 years Charlotte Brontë's reputation has risen rapidly, and feminist criticism has done much to show that she was speaking up for oppressed women of every age. 'A little, plain, provincial, sickly-looking old maid', is how George Lewes described Charlotte Brontë to George Eliot. She was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, in the north of England. Charlotte was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman who had moved with his family to Haworth amid the Yorkshire moors in 1820. After their mother and two eldest children died, Chalotte was left with her sisters Emily and Anne and brother Branwell to the care of their father, and their strict, religious aunt, Elisabeth Branwell. To escape their unhappy surroundings, the children listened stories about the often violent behavior of the countryfolk. When other children enjoyed to play outdoors, they created imaginary kingdoms, which were built around Branwell's toy soldiers, and which inspired them to create continuing stories of fantasylands of Angria and Gondal.

Angel in the House

The popular Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman came to be "the Angel in the House," who was expected to be devoted and submissive to her husband. The Angel was passive and powerless, meek, charming, graceful, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, pious, and above all--pure. The phrase "Angel in the House" comes from the title of an immensely popular poem by Coventry Patmore, in which he holds his angel-wife up as a model for all women. Believing that his wife Emily was the perfect Victorian wife, he wrote "The Angel in the House" about her (originally published in 1854, revised through 1862). Though it did not receive much attention when it was first published in 1854, it became increasingly popular through the rest of the nineteenth century and continued to be influential into the twentieth century. For Virginia Woolf, the repressive ideal of women represented by the Angel in the House was still so potent that she wrote, in 1931, "Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer." The following excerpt will give you a sense of the ideal woman and the male-female relationship presented by Patmore's poem: Man must be pleased; but him to pleaseIs woman's pleasure; down the gulfOf his condoled necessitiesShe casts her best, she flings herself.How often flings for nought, and yokesHer heart to an icicle or whim,Whose each impatient word provokesAnother, not from her, but him;While she, too gentle even to forceHis penitence by kind replies,Waits by, expecting his remorse,With pardon in her pitying eyes;And if he once, by shame oppress'd,A comfortable word confers,She leans and weeps against his breast,And seems to think the sin was hers;Or any eye to see her charms,At any time, she's still his wife,Dearly devoted to his arms;She loves with love that cannot tire;And when, ah woe, she loves alone,Through passionate duty love springs higher,As grass grows taller round a stone. Initially this ideal primarily expressed the values of the middle classes. However, with Queen Victoria's devoting herself to her husband Prince Albert and to a domestic life, the ideal spread throughout nineteenth century society.

Jane Eyre

2007年4月16日星期一

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Charlotte Brontë

Biography of Charlotte Bronte

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