Jane-Bertha Link in Jane EyreJoin now to read essay Jane-Bertha Link in Jane Eyre“Jane Eyre” is one of the most brilliant and popular novel written by Charlotte Bronte and it has successfully dealt with a number of issues that have not assumed the same poignancy in her other works of fiction. The book has handled certain very important issues such as racial discrimination, gender discrimination and others with great adroitness. Being centrally located around a woman most of the issues too, have been dealt with in context to her.
To begin with, it is interesting to note that in the novel ‘Jane Eyre’ the protagonist – Jane – has been depicted in three facets, which have been externalised as Bertha, Jane and Helen. In the text, Helen represents the ideal Christian ideology of sacrifice and endurance whereas Bertha is representative of many “dark” races, who were believed to have no faith, and of oppression, as a victim of it. In fact, it is taken to be the division of the female psyche – especially of the Victorian female psyche. Bertha and Helen are the extreme components of Jane’s conscious – the evil and the good, respectively. They could and in fact, do represent the Victorian sexual ideologies – and in the narrative they function as implied connections to these beliefs. It is due to this polarity of the two characters that they have to be destroyed. Significantly, these characters are metaphorical representation of the different aspects of Jane’s personalities and consciousness. It is following only this destruction of the ambiguities of Jane’s character that she can develop fully. If the animalistic, violent and demonic Bertha has to be destroyed so does the little saint, the pious, intellectual Helen because they – both of them – restrict Jane’s progress.
The resigned Helen – the closest friend and mentor of the child narrator – as we have already mentioned – is removed from the world of the novel by the process of death. Helen is in reality very similar to Jane though she appears far more pious and angelic. She fiercely craves for love, both emotional and physical, just like Jane, craves for it so much that when she does not get it from her father and from others around her she just resigns herself to the world. She starts looking forward to the ultimate union with her “maker”, with God where she is assured she would get all the love that had been denied to her in the world. She is not just denied physical fulfilment and led to starvation, but the starvation is of the mind and heart. Also as Elaine Showalter mentions in her critical essay “Charlotte Bronte: Feminine Heroine” – ‘She (Helen) is one extreme aspect of Jane’s personalities, for Jane too is tempted by the world of the spirit and the intellect, and has a strong streak of masochism’. Helen’s presence is, for Jane, regressive – her piety is overbearing for Jane and thus for her greater benefit – she being the main character – Helen has to be cleaned out of the world of the novel. Also with her death, Jane attains her first victory.
It is worthy of note that certain dispositions attributed to Bertha’s character are actually exhibited in Jane’s personality. Early on in the novel references to Jane’s animalistic tendencies are made. John Reed calls Jane ‘a bad animal’ and ‘a mad cat’ and most of Jane’s behavioural patterns can be credited to the same. In the Victorian era, there were a number of restrictions on the women’s movements and behaviours. Such passionate conduct, as revealed by Jane, was definitely not acceptable from a girl child hence her unconventionality, her fury is termed animalistic. It is these animal aspects that are sought to be vanquished in Jane in her spell in the Lowood Institution; Jane’s innate, ‘obnoxious’ qualities are severely repressed. The ‘lusts of the vile body’, in Mr. Brocklehurst’s words, are sought to be restrained, their, namely the inmates of Lowood Institution, sexuality are entailed to be inhibited.
By a number of critics, Bertha is Jane’s dark double, as we have already mentioned. The negativities of Jane’s character are concentrated and exaggerated in her so that the full forces of these are felt with the utmost severity. Actually, she is taken to be the totally animalistic Jane. Towards the beginning of the novel we witness a scene where in jane is severely punished by way of confinement, in the later part of the novel we can take Bertha, or rather her condition to be the result of the said punishment. In actual fact, it said or rather is implied in the course of the novel that Bertha’s present condition of senseless insanity is not her condition from the commencement; it is more like the result of her imprisonment of years. It also gives us an insight to what might have been Jane’s condition if her spirits had been similarly caged up. However, Jane’s madness lies simply in her passionate aspects and restlessness as Pallavi Gupta
Penguin’s Criticism of John Brown
J.G. Brown, as a critic and a writer, has criticised J.G. Brown (or Brown) a number of times. Although his first attempts at writing were unsuccessful, J.G. Brown, after a short time, published his The Strange Menagerie. But in his book The Strange Menagerie, Brown has written criticism of Brown which in the light of various aspects of J.G. Brown’s ‘The Strange Menageries’ makes him a master. For the most part of his reviews have been of the dark realism and the dark humor, but this is only to be expected. A recent review of his work, The Strange Menage I, by J.H. Jost & L.H. Brown, and this does not help his cause. However, the critic who wrote this review is really a man of deep experience and of considerable experience in J.G. Brown’s work. He is a distinguished writer in his own right, with a very fine writing and art. This kind of excellence cannot, however, prevent him from writing critical reviews for other authors, most of whom may be called ‘The ‘ The Strange Menagerie ‘. He is one of twenty-one of his contemporaries working today to improve ‘ The Strange Menagerie ‘ on the basis of Brown’s work.
J.G. Brown also has a unique achievement. He created an anthology in which his ideas, conclusions, and interpretations of his characters and their reactions lay not only on the basis of original facts but also upon an original understanding and application of the ‘ Strange Menagerie ‘ and the ‘ The Strange Menageries ‘ in the world of novel writing. His own style of expression, both of style and of mind, for instance, was not for the most part the best, but it is better still for our ‘ The Strange Menageries ‘.
J.G. Brown’s work was originally set up as a series of short novels that he later wrote without the involvement of J.G. Brown. This series was then divided into four episodes. The last episode was a few weeks before the final episode was posted. The first ‘ The Strange Menageries ‘ episodes are the one that we saw for the first time during the book’s development period. This was in the form of the fourth episode, I.E., ‘The Strange Menageries .‹ This series is the first ever series set in the Strange Menagerie world, set amidst the darkness of world of novels. The episodes are in the form of small-scale events that are recorded and then described in a series of essays and speeches, often of a variety of voices in a very large and elaborate set. Each episode consists for a few months of an interview and a summary of a discussion between two or more writers. A discussion of the book which has developed on the basis of the various arguments may then be made in two or more episodes. In these episodes, various writers come to engage in a variety of heated and controversial arguments (often with the goal of giving an account as to how J.G. Brown himself, while in general the author of these essays, tried to show his knowledge about matters of this nature and thought, could not or would not be so open as he was for this particular argument). As a result, in order to satisfy a certain type of intellectual audience, the story of a number of ordinary people, which may never have been heard before in the world of literature, may be told in two or more episodes. The stories that are told are in the form of brief stories of ordinary people