Introduction
Having developed a love for the novel Jane Eyre, I was excited to find, a few years ago, a novel called Wide Sargasso Sea. This was a side story to give more depth to the character of Bertha Mason. I’ve since discovered that there have been many such stories written. I’ve just gotten one called The French Dancer’s Bastard that is meant to explore some possible avenues of story on Adele, the child Jane is hired to govern over at Thornfield.
I’ve been thoroughly disappointed in nearly every one of these stories as they inevitably end up taking Jane Eyre to a different spot.
A particular example of this is the collection of stories from Reader, I Married Him. These were stories supposedly “inspired by Jane Eyre”, but most of which had only the most tenuous connection to the original.
One of the few that did was “Grace Poole’s testimony”. In this story, Grace shares that she started at around 15 as a girl in the house, and that she was lovely and often got attention from men much older. Rochester was drawn to her and they have sex, and she gets pregnant. He pays for her to have the baby elsewhere, promising to provide. While away she gets smallpox and her looks are ruined. She returned to Thornfield and, not wanting to be seen by anyone, she begins to wait on Bertha. She soon learns Bertha’s preferences and has a genuine concern for her.
Grace sees Jane as an interloper that could never really stir Rochester as she did.
Another, “Reader, she married me”, relates that on the night that Thornfield burned, Rochester found Bertha on the roof, with one of Clara’s (their child) toys. At that moment, Rochester had hoped for a reconciliation with Bertha, but she jumped to her death. Rochester is painted as actually preferring Bertha, but Jane had essentially pushed him into marriage and preferred him maimed so she could exercise more control over him.
Another has Rochester and Jane in couple’s therapy exploring all kinds of problems and resentments broiling underneath their relationship.
Each of these makes the novel look like a gussied-up version of reality that hides the ugly truth of what REALLY went on between Rochester and Jane.
Where I had hoped to see what some other writers might bring to the table to shed more insight, I instead got modern distrust of relationships and happiness.
That got me to wonder what sorts of things I might want to explore that would actually add to my understanding of the novel, rather than transform it from something I loved into a lie.
A few things came to mind:
1) What would lead Jane’s Aunt and her cousins to treat her so callously?
2) How would the justifications that Brocklehurst gives for his treatment of the girls even be possible?
I’ll take the first topic and explain the British mindset of class.
Class-Consciousness in mid 19th century England
Young Jane Eyre and Unequal Treatment
The opening 4 chapters of Jane Eyre have ten-year-old Jane living at Gateshead Hall, owned by the widow, her Aunt Sarah Reed.
Aunt Reed has three of her own children: John, Eliza, and Georgiana. Her Husband was brother to Jane’s mother, Sarah Reed had always despised Jane’s mother because Sarah thought she had married down. Hence she despised Jane too, even from an infant. But her husband had loved Jane and on his death bed, got a promise from his wife that she would raise Jane as one of her very own.
While Jane was maintained at Gateshead, her Aunt Reed made certain that Jane felt she was never on the same level as her own natural children. So Jane was excluded often to reinforce that inferiority.
On the night that Jane is punished by being sent to the red-room, she gets a very practical lesson from Bessie and Miss Abbot. Miss Abbot tells Jane, “For shame! What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress’s son! Your young master.”
Jane is indignant at this ordering and questions “Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?”
Miss Abbot responds “No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep.”
The two maids continue: “You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs Reed: she keeps you. If she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse. And you ought not to think of yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it is your place to be humble and to try and make yourself agreeable to them. What we tell you is for your own good. You should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would have a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will send you away.”
The Difficulty for Modern Americans
For us in 21st century America, this is hard to hear, but it was, at the time, a very practical outlay of the hard reality: They have money, and you don’t, so you will need to humble yourself make yourself agreeable to them. We have grown up with the notions of the equality of all men. That is a moral equality. No one is “better” simply because of the financial circumstances of their birth.
In the US, we accept this as fundamentally true. The Declaration of Independence begins with this sentiment: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
Class-consciousness in Jane Eyre's England
But this sentiment was far from being held as universally true. England was a classed society with a hierarchy. There were different rules for different classes and it was certainly expected that individuals of a lower class were expected to show deference to those of higher classes. What was the basis for this assessment of life? How could the upper classes think they were morally superior to the lower classes?
Raising Children in a Class Society
Particularly, why would it seem like a good idea for Aunt Reed to raise her children with this mindset of superiority? It could certainly lead to very un-Christian mindsets in people who were openly supposed to be Christians.
But the answer is in the society itself. England was a hierarchical society. In watching Korean shows today, I still see this mindset.
Aunt Reed wasn’t teaching her children to “despise inferiors”, she was teaching them to know their position and behave appropriately toward each rank of society.
While they considered themselves superior to Jane, they would just have quickly bowed to someone in a rank above them. The governing principles wasn’t to treat everyone with equal human dignity, it was to treat everyone according to the relationship between stations.
In a class-conscious society, parents were preparing their children for an existing social world, not an ideal. A child brought up to treat an individual from an inferior rank as an equal, may also treat one of a superior rank as an equal. This would have rankled a lot of feathers in a hierarchical structure. A properly educated person would know when to command and when to obey.
This, of course, happens even in our society today. When I was raising my sons, I commanded them at home, and obeyed my boss at work. As a modern American, I do this with less of a class-conscious mindset, but nonetheless the vestige of it lives on in understanding when to lead and when to obey. Understanding that distinction is still part of a well-formed person. One can find police body-cam videos on YouTube of adults, who when pulled over and told to do something by the police ,will say things like “Don’t touch me bro, I ain’t even playin‘ wichoo“. These are people who were apparently never taught the difference in how to act between different levels.
So while in America today, we have less class-consciousness than Charlotte Bronte’s England, it shouldn’t be too far beyond our comprehension why the Reed children would have been brought up with this attitude. The novel makes it clear that class-consciousness wasn’t really the determining factor in their behavior, but I thought it might be helpful to understand it.
19th Century Arguments for Class
Just in case you were wondering how this class society was justified, I’ll give some contemporary evidences. However, one should be aware that class distinctions have been accepted as the common sense norm throughout civilized society. In small tribal societies, man was more egalitarian, but in large civilizations, it is the idea of equality that is new.
The religious argument
Church of England Book of Prayer catechism:
What is thy duty towards thy Neighbour?
My duty towards my Neighbour is to love him as myself, and to do to all men as I would they should do unto me: To love, honour, and succour my father and mother: To honour and obey the King, and all that are put in authority under him: To submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters: To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters:
This is a difficult argument for us to accept, but it is the idea that Christian virtue didn’t consist in escaping one’s station, but behaving dutifully within it. While all people are equally morally accountable before God, they are not all assigned identical authority, property, or social position on earth. 1 Corinthians 12 speaks of a body. While all parts of the body are equally a part of the body, some parts are meant for honor, others for dishonor. Equality in one sense didn’t mean equality in all senses.
Inequality as the natural order of society
Edmund Burke was a defender of a conservative set of values, which, at the end of 18th century England, meant defending the traditional monarchy and aristocracy. Many of his thoughts are best known through the 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France. Within, he argues against attempts to reconstruct society on abstract principles of equality. His essential argument was that society was too complex to be reordered. It had arisen over long-periods of time and through the accumulated wisdom. Hereditary institutions connect the living with past generations. People differ in ability, education, occupation, and circumstance, and a stable liberty requires inherited law and recognized authority.
Burke recognizes that the aristocracy is not perfect, only that stability required a governing class shaped by property, education, tradition and the habits of responsibility. While we might start with equality and ask how inequality can be justified, Burke began with society ordered in classes and asked whether abolishing its distinctions would produce justice or order. His view of the French revolution was that it did not.
Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts
Following the French Revolution there was concern about a similar uprising in England. She wrote Village Politics in 1792 as a rebuttal to Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, and then followed that with a series meant to provide “religious and useful knowledge as an antidote to the poison continually flowing through the channel”. As the Wikipedia page says, these had a series of moral arguments, but one of them was the pitfalls of seeking to rise above one’s station, and accepting one’s pre-ordained place in society.
William Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy
Paley understood that property ownership would be unequal, but reasoned that if everyone possessed an equal claim to everything, then the incentive to produce, improve, and preserve property would be weakened. Inequality was an unfortunate but necessary consequence of an economically productive society. This of course means that some will be richer and others poorer, but to change it would be to make things worse overall. In context of Jane Eyre, Aunt Reed’s wealth doesn’t prove virtue, but she does have a legitimate command over her property and household. Jane’s maintenance at Gateshead is not something Jane has as an equal right, but as her Aunt’s private beneficence.
Property
This is at the center of the argument because the Reeds have property, and the means to maintain themselves, whereas Jane does not.
Owning land, or an independent income, meant a person could think beyond immediate survival. They could get an education. If there were workers or tenants on the land, the owner would need to develop habits of command. The property meant that they were invested in the long-term interest and stability of the country. These factors meant that property and wealth, as they have in cultures throughout history, gave those that possessed them an advantage.
The English mindset
Christianity taught that rich and poor alike were sinners subject to judgment and both capable of salvation. Wealth might even inhibit virtue, as in James 1 and 2. But at the same time, social rank was considered a meaningful indication of upbringing, manners, trustworthiness, authority and fitness to command. A respectable defender of English hierarchy might articulate this as: The aristocrat isn’t necessarily better before God, but his position, education, property, and responsibilities entitle him to social precedence.
But in daily life it might easily translate as: He is your superior, therefore his feelings and dignity matter more than yours.
Back to Jane Eyre
Human pride will always make us susceptible to move from 1) distinctions in circumstances to 2) therefore, I’m better than you; this is the inference young Jane refuses to accept. She can accept that her Aunt has money and she does not. She even accepts that she must therefore make herself agreeable. The novel makes it clear that, at least in Jane’s mind, she did attempt that, and she would have loved to fit in, even as a subordinate. She is not a complete rebel against class.
For example, later in the novel, Jane becomes the schoolmistress in Morton. The school is said to be for village rustic girls. As Jane visits the families, she says “There was enjoyment in accepting their simple kindness and repaying it by a consideration- a scrupulous regard to their feelings- to which they were not, perhaps accustomed, and which charmed and benefited them; because, while it elevated them in their own eyes, it made them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they had received.”
The passage makes clear that there was a class distinction between the more educated Jane, and the less educated farmers. Her regard for their feelings “elevated them in their own eyes” and made them eager to “merit the deferential treatment”…. They desired to live up to the treatment, which was clearly above what they considered for themselves.
The difference between Jane and her Aunt was that while she saw a distinction in classes, she also recognized it was due, not to inborn merit, but upbringing. She writes in the second paragraph of chapter 31 “I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born.”
But the novel also made it clear that her Aunt didn’t like her for reasons beyond Jane’s control.
In chapter 33, while St John is explaining Jane’s inheritance, explains “Twenty years ago a poor curate (Jane’s father) fell in love with a rich man’s daughter (Jane’s mother), and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who consequently disowned her.”
From her Aunt’s own deathbed words, we are told “I had a dislike to (Jane’s) mother always; for she was my husband’s only sister, and a great favorite with him: he opposed the family’s disowning her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; … I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it… Reed pitied it… He would try to make my children friendly to the little beggar; the darlings would not bear it and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike.”
Jane’s Aunt’s hatred showed itself in unfair condemnation for things that Jane didn’t do. Jane had been accused of deceit when she knew that it was not her that was lying. She had been accused of attacking her cousin John when it was him that attacked her unprovoked.
Jane rebellion isn’t against class per se, but against the unjust hatred.