'An unutterable wretchedness of mind': The Silent and Subconscious Dreamland of Jane Eyre

*Note: this essay was originally submitted for a university assessment as part of an Victorian British Literature module. Looking back there are quite a few edits I would make (to refine its specificity, in-depth analysis, some technical mistakes etc.) and it was overly ambitious in scope, so this may be a work in progress that I return to and expand upon some day. For now, enjoy!

Charlotte Brontë’s Bildungsroman ‘Jane Eyre’ (1847) follows its protagonist’s struggle “out into unhoped for liberty” (Brontë, 36), often seen as forged through her assertive power of speech. Yet I aim to argue that what remains unsaid, in thought, dreams or the unconscious, comprises an inherently female dream-landscape, which Brontë utilises as an essential tool both in Jane’s liberation and in illustrating the impossibility of the female position within a patriarchal structure dominated by male-codified modes of communication and understanding. I develop the arguments of critics to claim they converge on one central point: the friction between Jane’s lack of power under patriarchy and her intense thoughts, desires, and need for liberation. Beset by male figures dictating her narrative, Jane learns to cease being a “discord” (Brontë, 15) and master “forms of communication based less in speech than silence” (Kreilkamp, 133) to escape Bertha Mason’s punitive fate. She navigates the world by attempting to balance restrained speech with wild “fantasies of escape-into-wholeness” (Gilbert and Gubar, 336) which provide a brief repose from the all-consuming nature of patriarchy. I set out to prove the existence of a female space of ‘un-reality’ which guides Jane through Brontë’s novel, and the critique of patriarchy it embodies. Additionally, that Brontë provides a resolution for Jane, who gains the spiritual equal whom she has long searched for, in the loss of Rochester’s eyesight; allowing him to finally enter Jane’s dream-space and ‘view’ the world through her eyes, sharing a mutual understanding rather than one that is patriarchally dominated.

Our introduction to Jane’s strange mode of communication is as an orphan-child at Gateshead, palpably inferior to the Reeds socially and physically. Siebenschuh asserts that “the acute sense of loneliness [...] her need to be loved [...] will follow her throughout the book” (Siebenschuh, 309). Indeed, Brontë’s choice of an isolated protagonist connects the orphan child’s plight to that of the adult woman—both alienated, misunderstood, and burdened by narratives of adversity. Brontë uses physical and mental space to highlight Jane’s isolation: “humbled by the consciousness of [her] physical inferiority” (Brontë, 7), Jane escapes by removing herself to the space behind the curtain of the window-seat, simultaneously retreating to a space of interiority - her imagination. “I possessed myself of a volume [...] shrined in double retirement” (Brontë, 7).

Gilbert and Gubar note that Brontë’s novels envision a “female figure [...] trapped [...] in the architecture of a patriarchal society, and imagining, dreaming, or actually devising escape routes” (Gilbert and Gubar, 313). This is most evident in Jane’s childhood entrapment within (and subsequent escape of) the red-room. The image of the bitterly cold and dark room confronts the reader with the consequences of defying authority, in this case Jane’s male cousin, the ostensibly innocent victim of her “fury” of “passion” (Brontë, 11). The red-room is portrayed as a microcosm of the patriarchal society of the external world, and its harsh feeling towards passionate, ‘hysterical’ women. Jane’s method of escape - madness - arises from this interior space she enters to combat suffocating oppression. Being taken to the room, she confesses to feeling “a trifle beside myself; or rather out of myself, as the French would say” (Brontë, 11). Here Jane invokes a foreign language as an alternative mode of communication, to express the inexpressible; that her “hunger, rebellion and rage” (Gilbert and Gubar, 339) has carried her off to an entirely Other spiritual plane. Catching her reflection in the mirror, she does not perceive her own image belongs to the mortal realm, fancying herself “half fairy, half imp” (Brontë, 14), reflecting a deep lack of belonging, in not only a household, but a patriarchal society that refuses to accommodate her.

In the same vein, the unearthly scream Jane emits - a “wild, involuntary cry” the others consider to be a “dreadful noise!” (Brontë, 17) - suggests a patriarchal ‘irrationality’ in women and children. ‘Involuntary’ implies it is inherent in nature, and ‘wild’ that it is savage, uncivilised, something to be controlled and tamed, positioning Jane as ‘Other.’ Her animalistic scream signifies that to defy ‘rational’ (patriarchal) modes of communication is to make oneself alien, ‘dreadful,’ to others, operating within a reality that refuses to be understood in patriarchal terms. One becomes inhuman; Jane is metaphorically degraded to the status of animal - “mad cat” (Brontë, 12), “bad animal” (Brontë, 9) - irrational and illogical if she cannot be controlled, in being understood. Freeman argues, “the truth implicit in the child’s wordless scream did not serve to free her from bondage: only words, in the world of this novel, have that kind of power” (Freeman, 689). I propose this is because the ‘world’ of Jane Eyre is like ours; in the words of feminist critic Hélène Cixous, our society is ‘phallogocentric’ – “language conceals an invincible adversary, because it's the language of men” (Cixous, 887). Jane’s plea is unacceptable because it contains no words at all, and therefore does not function within the ‘discourse of man.’ Mrs Reed’s final words to Jane in the red-room echo this: “tricks will not answer [...] it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you” (Brontë, 17).

Jane learns that despite injustice, some conformity is required to survive patriarchy and seek liberation. As false narratives are increasingly thrust upon Jane - a “wicked heart,” a “naughty child” (Brontë, 31-2) - silence becomes a method of asserting some measure of control over her image. Brontë’s juxtaposition of men as active speakers and doers, and women as passive receivers with little control, highlights a critique of the restrictive role of women. When Jane is questioned by the cruel Mr Brocklehurst - “are you a good child?” - she knows her screams will not produce the desired outcome, that her “little world held a contrary opinion.” Jane “was silent” (Brontë, 31). She recognises that her wild, passionate world of interiority is disagreeable, does not translate – silence, she discovers, is better than protest.

Brontë’s most overt warning against stepping outside patriarchal bounds of permissible behaviour is Jane’s demonic double, Bertha Mason. Bertha is described as horrific and inhuman in her mode of communication, producing “eccentric murmurs” (Brontë, 107), gurgling, moaning, a “demoniac laugh—low, suppressed and deep” (Brontë, 144). She has transgressed so far outside the bounds of patriarchal communication, even Jane “could not account for the sounds she made” (Brontë, 108). Interestingly, this description appears in the same passage that describes Jane’s interiority, a moment in which she does not speak aloud, yet allows herself to be free of patriarchal constraints in her “mind’s eye,” constructing an imaginary tale of “feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence” (Brontë, 107). Jane’s “sole relief” is to pace “backwards and forwards” (Brontë, 107) on the third floor corridor, directly next to Bertha, similarly ‘haunting’ Thornfield. Here Brontë delineates Bertha as the mirror image of Jane, the savage orphan-child before she was tamed, and the adult Jane mirrors Bertha as a woman oppressed, desirous of liberty. Brontë contrasts Bertha’s fiery passion with the controlled, intellectual demeanor of adult Jane, emphasising Jane’s ability to temper emotion with reason in her pursuit of independence. The Gothic imagery and focus on the extra rational - dark corridors, locked doors, and ghostly presences - serves as a metaphor for the repressive social structures Jane seeks to escape; the stuff of true horror and irrationality.

Jane further cultivates silence under Miss Temple’s tutelage, who “will never allow “something” to speak through her” (Gilbert and Gubar, 343) as Jane does in the red-room; she has successfully learned to suppress the wild ‘female spirit.’ After Mr Brocklehurst’s humiliation of Jane at Lowood, Miss Temple gives her the opportunity to vindicate herself by teaching her to speak with ‘self-editing’ and restraint. Jane’s story, “restrained and simplified, [...] sounded more credible” (Brontë, 69). Kreilkamp notes that through Miss Temple, Jane “attains a new rhetorical power, one that allows her to erase and change her character as verbally defined by Mr Brocklehurst” (Kreilkamp, 136). I argue that this ‘rhetorical power’ is patriarchal; at once oppressive and advantageous. Using the language of patriarchy allows the speaker to cultivate a favourable opinion of themselves, particularly among men, granting power and a measured kind of liberation. For example, when Jane arrives begging at the Rivers house, she ‘self-edits’ to fashion the alias ‘Jane Elliott.’ Introducing herself, she is restrained, unlike her childhood self who might have lamented her unfortunate situation in a passionate torrent, deterring the master of the house. It is on St John, as patriarch, that the matter of Jane’s residence depends, and his mode of understanding is undeniably patriarchal - he proclaims that “Reason, and not Feeling, is my guide” (Brontë, 365). Simultaneously, Brontë critiques patriarchy by showing, via the motif of Jane’s frequent retreats into her imagination, that this power suppresses passion, creativity and authenticity, reducing women to mere users of language and uplifting men to the status of inventors.

Like Miss Temple, Helen Burns has a calm disposition which Jane admires, bearing the reproof of schoolteachers with quiet obedience. Her tranquility in the face of the negative narratives, she attributes to an unwavering belief in a spiritual realm in which virtue shall be rewarded and her oppressors punished. “There is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits,” she tells Jane, “commissioned to guard us; [...] angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence” (Brontë, 68). After Helen’s death, Jane internalises this, her interiority expanding into a dreamland guided by a guardian angel. Jane’s narrative voice, marked by its introspective tone and frequent, intimate addresses to the reader, communicates her interiority in a non-verbal mode, granting us witness to her journey towards self-definition. The inward process of ‘female intuition’ directs Jane towards what she requires, while outwardly, her newfound rhetorical power allows her agency. Considering what kind of ‘new servitude’ she should undertake, Jane finds that logical patterns of thinking fail her. Rather, “a kind fairy [...] dropped the required suggestion on my pillow” (Brontë, 84). Then, in the methodical process of letter-writing, Jane may ‘self-edit,’ and advertise for a governess position, seizing agency and advancing toward survival and the possibility of independence. Brontë’s increasingly fantastical descriptions as the novel develops create a warped sense of reality; it is ambiguous until the end, whether her language is purely metaphorical or whether a genuine spirituality permeates the novel. The distinctions between the natural and constructed - the external male world, or the internal female one - become blurred, ‘looking through’ the machinery of patriarchy.

These distinctions blur further at Thornfield, where Jane’s fairyland swells to include strange, troubling dreams and “presentiments” (Brontë, 214), the guardian angel’s voice growing louder to disentangle Jane from deceitful traps of patriarchy. In contrast to Jane’s growing internal world, Rochester orchestrates a confusing external reality through a web of lies - being a “master prevaricator” (Freeman, 693) - to ensnare Jane. Discussing the paintings that spring from Jane’s imagination, Rochester observes that she exists “in a kind of artist’s dreamland” (Brontë, 123). In reply Jane expresses her frustration at the difficulty of adequately translating her interior landscape: “tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: [...] I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realize” (Brontë, 124). As the holder of power within their relationship, Rochester manipulates Jane, taking advantage of the fact that she exists primarily in her imagination and lacks mastery over patriarchal reality. She comes to rely on him as an anchor to reality, as he sweeps her up in his narrative: “I could not be certain of the reality till I had seen Mr. Rochester again” (Brontë, 250). Jane’s anxious dreams present her with foreboding images regarding her impending union with Rochester, and come to blend with reality when Bertha enters Jane’s bedchamber to tear up her wedding veil. A liar from their very first encounter in the woods, Rochester is deliberately cryptic and withholding, trivialising Jane’s experience as mere “mental terrors” (Brontë, 276) and telling her that he will explain one year after they are married; once she is metaphorically trapped.

Jane’s ‘inner voice’ is a combative force against this patriarchal threat, guiding her to safety - “a voice within me averred that I could [leave Thornfield]” (Brontë, 289), which acts in place of the rational surface of her brain, unwilling to leave comfort behind. She leaves, silently, refusing to become Rochester’s mistress, despite her deep love for him, representing her ultimate assertion of autonomy. Soon after she experiences a “trance-like dream” depicting the moon, symbolic of female intuition, urging her to “flee temptation” (Brontë, 311), so she is not caught up in deception and may be led by a cosmic thread to her ultimate fate; the discovery of her family and fortune, forging her independence. To further demonstrate the inherently female nature of Jane’s dreamland, it is important to make a connection to Brontë’s own writing process. Termed a ‘trance-writer’ by several critics, Brontë “relied on nonrational, unconscious modes of knowing and rendering experience” (Hague, 584) – much like her heroine. Elizabeth Gaskell notes that for Brontë, narratives would appear suddenly in vivid detail, similarly to the way in which Jane’s ‘kind fairy’ delivers her guidance, suggesting that this creative process arises when one operates within a world not designed for them.

The isolation Jane feels in her interior world leads her to seek a partner who is her spiritual equal. Though she previously believed this to be Rochester - “I feel akin to him [...] mentally [assimilated]” (Brontë, 170-1) - he cannot be an equal to Jane with his physical and material privileges, which allow him to abuse his power over her. Brontë provides a resolution in an appropriate ‘punishment’ for him, leaving him crippled and blind in the fire at Thornfield. It is only upon this point that a spiritual connection may be formed: Rochester relates how he telepathically received Jane’s reply to his call, “whispering on the wind” (Brontë, 435). Jane’s marriage to the now-dependent Rochester signifies her arrival at a partnership built on mutual respect and shared vulnerability, as he now shares a pair of metaphorical ‘eyes’ with her, allowing him to enter her dreamland and forge a shared narrative, rather than exercise control. “I love you better now [...] than I did in your state of proud independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector” (Brontë, 433). Not only does Rochester lose sight, but in this newfound equality, Jane gains speech, reaching self-definition - “I am Jane Eyre” (Brontë, 422).

Brontë’s portrayal of subconscious objects can therefore be read as a critique of patriarchal structures, in the sense that they suppress and wound female characters in the novel. Jane, however, learns a balance of conformity (externally) and resistance (internally) that allow for her own kind of liberation, in the form of an equal spiritual connection with Mr Rochester. Brontë acknowledges “it is only through the imagination that “reality” can fully be explored and understood,” (Lewes quoted in Gribble, 281) and I have proposed that this operates within a gendered framework in this novel.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1847. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019.

Secondary Sources

Cixous, Hélène. Laugh of the Medusa. The University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Freeman, Janet H. “Speech and Silence in Jane Eyre.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 24, no. 4, 1984, pp. 683–700. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/450486.

Gilbert, Sandra M, and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. “A Secret, Inward Wound: The Professor’s Pupil” & “A Dialogue of Self and Soul: Plain Jane’s Progress” New Haven, Yale University Press, 1979.

Gribble, Jennifer. “Jane Eyre’s Imagination.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 23, no. 3, 1968, pp. 279–93. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2932556.

Hague, Angela. “Charlotte Brontë and Intuitive Consciousness.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 32, no. 4, 1990, pp. 584–601. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40754953.

Kreilkamp, Ivan. “Unuttered: Withheld Speech and Female Authorship in ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Villette.’” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 32, no. 3, 1999, pp. 331–54. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1346151.

SIEBENSCHUH, WILLIAM R. “THE IMAGE OF THE CHILD AND THE PLOT OF ‘JANE EYRE.’” Studies in the Novel, vol. 8, no. 3, 1976, pp. 304–17. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29531799.