For my senior thesis paper, I wrote about the novel Jane Eyre. Our assignment was to write an extensive literary analysis of a text using a theoretical lens through which our analysis would be filtered. I used feminist literary theory, specifically that of Judith Butler’s theory that gender is an act of performance, a thing that is learned rather than a thing that we are born: “…gender is in no way a stable identity of locus of agency from which various acts proceede; rather it is an identity tenuously constituted in time – an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” (Butler, 402). My thesis was that Jane Eyre learns her own performance of gender through the influences of four primary female characters: Mrs. Reed, Helen Burns, Blanche Ingram, and Bertha Mason. I also argued that through the influences of these four characters, Jane either resists the social expectations of her gender, or she conforms to it.

This question is important to me because I have always identified with Jane Eyre. I’m not an orphan or unloved by my family, but I have always felt myself on the outside of social groups. I have often felt misunderstood, misrepresented, and underestimated. I am not quiet and shy like Jane, but I struggle to stand up for myself. I feel injustices strongly and often react in angry, passionate ways. In these ways, I have seen a lot of myself in Jane. Looking at her character and the development of not only her gender, but also her internal authority, is something I have done unconsciously each time I’ve read this novel.

The first time I read this novel, I was sixteen. My grandmother encouraged me to read it because I had been consuming Jane Austen’s novels like water and she thought I would enjoy Jane Eyre. I did not enjoy it. I hated it, in fact. When Mr. Rochester takes Jane to see Bertha in the attic and admits to lying to Jane about her, I threw the book across the room. It hit my closet door and fell to the floor. I left it there for weeks, angered each time I looked at it. Curiosity eventually got the better of me and, rather than read the rest of the novel, I skipped to the end to see if she married him or not. I saw she married him and decided I didn’t care how it happened. My grandmother was disappointed that I hated the novel with so much enthusiasm and, when she asked me why, I couldn’t say.

This paper is my long-winded answer to her question, only today it’s also why I love this novel as much as I do. I have read it nine times. It remains, to this day, my second all-time favorite novel, surpassed only by Wuthering Heights and only barely beating Pride and Prejudice. This novel was, when I read it, only the second in which my relationship to the primary character was complicated and multi-faceted. Even if I could see a primary character’s flaws and mistakes, it didn’t necessarily impact my impression of the character. This novel was different. I didn’t like Mr. Rochester at all in my first reading; I thought him unkind and misleading and emotionally abusive. I didn’t understand why Jane loved him, and that made me dislike her. And even though my understanding of the novel has deepened the more I’ve read it, I still see this paper as the explanation for why my sixteen year old self reacted to it so vehemently. I didn’t yet understand gender dynamics and power dynamics and gender equality, but I could tell that things were not right. Something about these interactions and choices made me uncomfortable.

As I wrote this paper, I kept thinking back to how I threw the book across the room (and I threw it hard), how angry I was whenever I looked at it, how I even shouted at my mom not to touch it when she came into my room a few days later. Something about Jane, her nonchalance at Mr. Rochester’s treatment of Bertha, her return to a man who lied and had been before and was planning to again be an adulterer, made my skin crawl. I felt I was misunderstanding the novel; the marriage is supposed to be the happy ending, so why wasn’t I happy? I’ve never been satisfied with the ending of Jane Eyre, and now, more than ten years later, I can finally say why.

Here is a summary of each of my subclaims:

The first character, Mrs. Reed, impacts Jane in an overwhelmingly negative way. Mrs. Reed rejects and neglects Jane because Jane does not behave in the way she is, as a female child, expected to. Jane is rebellious. She is obstinate. She is not meek or gentle or patient. She is not thankful to Mrs. Reed or respectful. In this, Mrs. Reed sees a willful intention in Jane to make her (Mrs. Reed’s) life as difficult as possible. Mrs. Reed punishes Jane for her incorrect performance of female child, and these punishments only reinforce to Jane that she is unwanted and unloved.

This is Jane’s first moments as a symbol of resistance. Instead of conforming to Mrs. Reed’s expectations, instead of accepting the abuses she’s suffered (abuses she does not believe she deserves), Jane relies on her own judgment and learns what it means to be a person acting outside of the boundaries of their gender. She is still only a child, but in suffering Mrs. Reed’s emotional abuse and neglect, Jane learns to identify when she’s being treated wrongly and why; essentially, her internal authority begins to develop, and it is through Mrs. Reed that Jane is somewhat forced to become her own authority.

The second character to impact Jane is her friend from Lowood School, Helen Burns. Helen’s influence on Jane, paired with the early developments of her internal authority, emphasize to Jane the importance of a strong internal compass. Helen, an otherwise patient and submissive (good) child, is punished by the teachers of Lowood for things Jane sees as petty. Helen is punished for slouching and for not washing her fingers, even though the water was frozen and she couldn’t. Helen is beaten for these mistakes and Jane, horrified that Helen silently accepts her punishment when it was clearly unwarranted, is infuriated. Helen tries to rebuke Jane by saying it’s better to silently suffer an abuse that is felt by no one but yourself than to act out, but Jane cannot agree. She has suffered horribly at the hands of her Reed relations, she has been wrongly labelled a liar by the head of Lowood School, Mr. Brockelhurst, and she is ignored by all of the other students.

Jane doesn’t understand why she should suffer silently these abuses that are not deserved. But she also sees that being obstinate and passionate will not help her to find peace or happiness in her situation. She realizes that acting out will not improve the opinions of those individuals who are already inclined to think badly of her. Because of this, Jane learns to develop a gentle authority; she vows to never hit a child as a governess and a teacher, even though it was the acceptable social practice for the era. She uses, instead, patience and kindness and affection. In this, Jane continues to be a symbol of resistance, and it is through Helen’s submission to physical violence that this internal authority is further developed in Jane.

Blanche Ingram is the third character to impact Jane Eyre; by the time Blanche is introduced, Jane is an adult serving as a governess at Thornfield Hall. She is in love with her employer, Mr. Rochester. Watching Mr. Rochester pursue Blanche pains Jane. Blanche is the personification of the kind of woman Mrs. Reed wanted Jane to be; Blanche is the woman Lowood School tried to mold Jane into; ultimately, Blanche Ingram is the woman Jane refused to become. To see Mr. Rochester pursue her after he and Jane have developed such a strong friendship makes every injustice she has ever endured light up inside of her.

Blanche Ingram is the catalyst which propels Jane into her first outward state of resistance; Jane verbally declares herself an equal to Mr. Rochester, a man with tremendous economic influence and respect in the county. To even hint at such feelings would not have been acceptable in any form at the time, and yet she does it. She even disparages Blanche, a woman who would have been considered her social superior. This is the culmination of her resistance; she is through suffering her pains in silence. She cannot allow the chance to declare her love for Mr. Rochester to slip by.  Even though Jane, in comparison to Blanche, performs her gender wrongly in many ways, it is Jane that Mr. Rochester loves. It is Jane he chooses, not Blanche. Jane is finally vindicated and validated in her resistance.

But, Jane is not only a symbol of resistance. There are moments when Jane conforms, and one such instance occurs when Jane is first introduced to Mr. Rochester’s insane wife, Bertha Mason. Since Jane narrates the novel, the reader only has her description of Bertha to use in imagining the character, and Jane’s description is jarring. She makes Bertha seem like an animal, often likening her to a hyena, a lunatic; she describes her as being on all fours and howling, snarling. Mr. Rochester calls her a “demon.” All of this is an attempt to dehumanize the madwoman in the attic, and in doing so, Jane conforms to how people viewed the insane in the 19th century. This is justifiable because, where Jane’s performance of gender has been only just outside the boundaries of her gender, Bertha’s performance abandons any resemblance of gender or humanity. She is not seen or identified as human because she behaves in such inhuman ways.

This is the moment where Jane becomes the oppressor she has so often resisted. Instead of being the oppressed, she oppresses. She never questions Mr. Rochester’s treatment of his wife. Moreover, as she narrates the scene, there isn’t a single moment where she’s appalled or shocked or angry at the fact that the man she loves has locked his wife away, reducing her world to no more than the space of an attic. In this, Jane’s character undergoes a paradigm shift. She can’t admit to the horrifying cruelty that she sees unfolding before her, so instead she retreats back to the reality she can bear: that Mr. Rochester is doing the best he can with what he has. Once she hears his explanation, she forgives him immediately, and then flees Thornfield to escape temptation.

Jane is, therefore, a symbol of both conformity and resistance. So much of who she is and what she does bends or breaks the stereotypes and expectations of women in the 19th century, and that made it difficult for me to see her flaws. But they are there. Not only does she perpetuate Mr. Rochester’s abusive behaviors toward Bertha, she also returns to him at the end of the novel. It’s not a surprising choice, considering that before she ever flees Thornfield she forgives him for his folly. But therein exists another conformity: women were expected to forgive men for their mistakes and turn a blind eye to their infidelities. Mr. Rochester, in concealing his true marital status, essentially strips Jane of any real chance to consent to be his wife. He knows she would reject him if he asked her to openly live in sin with him, because of how strong her spiritual convictions are. So instead of doing the respectful and honest thing, he lies. This is not something that should be forgiven, and yet she forgives him. She forgives him and she marries him, despite the fact that he essentially imprisoned his first wife.

But Jane’s return to Mr. Rochester is also an act of resistance. By the time she goes back to him, she has inherited a great deal of money, which means that she is no longer the friendless, poor governess she was when she left. She’s now a wealthy, independent woman with many options. She also has another suitor, a man who, even though he doesn’t love her romantically, respects her strength and spiritual devotion. Still, Jane breaks the social convention and, rather than marry for advantage, chooses to marry for love. Mr. Rochester is now blind, which means their roles in the relationship have reversed. Where he was previously the provider and protector, now she fulfills that role. Where he was her liberation, now she is his. In many ways this return to him is a symbol of equality between them, and were it not for his previous selfishness and deceit, I would happily label Jane a complete symbol of social resistance and one who breaks the stereotypical performances of gender for the period. But I can’t. In perpetuating his abuse of Bertha and in so quickly forgiving him for such a horrendous act of betrayal and deceit, and in then returning to a man who, in my opinion, is not to be trusted at all, her acts of resistance are tainted. She is not wholly a symbol of resistance, but nor is she wholly a symbol of conformity. She occupies both spaces simultaneously.