THE DOUBLE

The literary technique of the double has been used throughout history for many purposes. In Shakespearean comedies, we see characters doubled (as twins, most especially) in order to achieve comic effects. In novels such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the double is used for more serious purposes, to demonstrate two sides of a single self: the civilized self and the primal being that lies just below the surface of civilization’s veneer. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte ¨ uses the technique of the double in several ways. Locations double one another (Gateshead and Thornfield as places to learn to be passionate and to indulge those passions; Lowood and Marsh End as places in which to learn and develop restraint of passion and self-sacrifice), creating a structure of the novel that has its foundation on the effects of doubling. But there are also doublings of characters throughout the novel. Sometimes those doubles operate on a surface level, demonstrating overt similarities. But the doubling effect also, at times, betrays the shadow side of characters, the actions and attitudes that characters sometimes feel tempted to display but cannot because of social mores.

THE COUSINS

Among the minor characters, the clearest set of doubles is Jane’s two sets of cousins. The Reed siblings and the Rivers siblings consist of three children each, an older brother and two younger sisters. The cousins of Jane’s childhood are selfish and spiteful, excluding Jane whenever possible and mistreating her whenever they are forced to be with her. The cousins Jane meets as an adult appear to be exactly the opposite. They take her into their home, not even knowing her true name and having no idea that she is related to them by blood. They nurse her to health, having saved her from an almost certain death, and provide her with a job and a place to live. Despite their money and position in the world, the Reed cousins are not, by the end of the novel, successful. John Reed, having gotten himself deeply into debt (with hints of more sinister troubles), kills himself. Of his sisters, one is a frivolous woman concerned only about appearances who plans to move to London and live the fashionable life after the death of her mother. The other is an austere spinster who intends to spend her life cloistered in a nunnery, as isolated as possible from the world. Her intent is not to be of service to God and to those in need, but to find a place of comfortable retirement for herself where she can indulge her desire to live a life of isolated contemplation. The world of the Rivers cousins is considerably more productive. St. John actively works at his profession. When we first meet him, he is a clergyman, serving a parish in the English countryside near his father’s home. After his father’s death, he goes to India as a missionary. There he spends the remainder of his life in service to God and humanity. His sisters, Diana and Mary, also work. When Jane meets them, they are visiting their late father’s home from the homes of the families for whom they work as governesses. Jane decides to share the inheritance she received from her uncle with her cousins, enabling Diana and Mary to resign from their positions in other people’s households so that they may create a household of their own from which they can do good in their home community. And yet the contrast between the Reeds and the Rivers is not complete. Jane faces difficulties in both cousins’ homes. Both John Reed and St. John Rivers attempt to control her. Both use coercion— the child John Reed resorting to physical coercion as well as emotional torment; the adult St. John Rivers to emotional and spiritual coercion. Jane suffers under the heat of John Reed’s passionate outbursts in childhood. As an adult, she suffers from the coldness of St. John’s determination to marry her (despite the fact that the only passion he feels toward her has to do with the work they could perform together) and take her to India as his partner in missionary work. With the Reeds, Jane is made to feel alone in the world— even while living with blood relatives. With the Rivers, Jane finds the family she had wished for as a child. Even before they know of the blood bond, the Rivers siblings accept Jane into their home and into their lives as though she belongs with them. St. John Rivers, like John Reed, believes that he, as the man of the family, has the right to determine how she should spend her time and her future, but unlike the young John, St. John eventually accepts Jane’s right to exist and to thrive in a world that had previously brought her little more than pain. With the Reeds, Jane’s orphan status and dependency are apparent at every turn; with the Rivers, she truly becomes a member of a close-knit and loving family.

TEACHERS

Since Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman, focusing on the education of a young woman, teachers abound in the novel. Some are teachers by profession, others merely individuals who teach Jane valuable lessons. Within the ranks of the professional teachers, Bronte ¨ depicts two specific individuals who provide Jane with models for her own behavior, both as a teacher/governess and as an adult woman. One is a negative model; the other positive. Miss Scatcherd is the epitome of the bad teacher in Bronte ¨ ’s work. Her emphasis is on punishment for infractions of the rules. The punishments she inflicts are painful both physically and emotionally. She uses corporal punishment (beating girls with birch branches) and shame (pinning signs on girls for sloppiness, making them stand on stools for all to see their shame, etc.) as ways of trying to change behaviors of which she disapproves. The reasons behind those behaviors are irrelevant to her. For instance, when Helen Burn’s fingernails are dirty because the water in the basin in the dormitory that morning was frozen, Miss Scatcherd refuses to hear the explanation. The fact of unclean fingernails is all she needs or wants to know before doling out punishment.

Miss Temple, on the other hand, is the epitome of the good teacher. As superintendent of the entire school, her responsibilities are far greater than those of any of the other teachers; yet she takes the time necessary to get to know her students, to provide for their needs emotionally as well as physically and, to the extent allowable, intellectually. When the porridge is so burnt at breakfast that it is inedible, she arranges, against the orders of Mr. Brocklehurst, the clergyman in charge of the school, to have the children fed a different, better meal. When Mr. Brocklehurst announces to the entire school that Jane is a bad and deceitful girl, based on information given to him by her aunt, Mrs. Reed, Miss Temple takes the time to hear her side of the story and to promise that, if her story is corroborated by the doctor who had recommended she be sent to school, her name will be cleared before the entire school. Miss Temple then follows up on the information and, when receiving corroboration from the doctor, does indeed announce to the entire school that Jane has been exonerated of the charges Mr. Brocklehurst made. Miss Temple teaches Jane that it is her present and future behavior that matter most, that if she behaves herself well at Lowood, her reputation will be based on that behavior, not on the criticisms of someone from her past. The intellectual rigor of Lowood, like that of most early nineteenth century schools for girls, is not strong. More attention is paid to suitable behavior and rote learning of basic information than to advanced knowledge or critical thinking skills. In the early nineteenth century, girls were not expected (nor desired) to have rigorous intellectual lives. Miss Temple does, however, make certain that those girls who are capable of learning basic intellectual (as well as practical) skills receive some education in them. As a result, by the time Jane leaves Lowood at age eighteen, she has sufficient knowledge and skills to be hired as a governess in a well-to-do family. Her knowledge of French, a requirement in most schools for those of genteel birth, is essential to her work with Adele Varens, the young French girl who is Mr. Rochester’s ward and Jane’s student. Her knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic is sufficient for Adele’s educational needs, and her understanding of and adherence to the rules of propriety for young women in society make her a satisfactory model of behavior for the young girl. These qualities and skills are ones that Miss Temple made certain Jane developed while at Lowood, not through punishment and shame (Miss Scatcherd’s means of teaching young women), but through of positive reinforcement of those qualities and skills whenever she saw them displayed. When Jane becomes a teacher herself, she models her own behavior on that of Miss Temple. She recognizes the potential loneliness and isolation a child like Adele can feel— alone in a strange country with people who don’t even speak her language— and she tries to provide comfort and security for the child, along with proper training of her morals and her mind. Miss Scatcherd is a good reminder to Jane of what she does not want to become as a teacher or as a woman. The small-minded, embittered spinster is not a happy person. Miss Temple, on the other hand, is that all too rare individual: a working woman with neither fortune nor strong family ties who, on the basis of her goodness and openheartedness, is found by a good man who marries her and provides her with a happy home of her own. Few women who were reduced to teaching or governess work in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries ever found their way into such domestic happiness as Miss Temple. Jane Eyre, like her creator Charlotte Bronte ¨ , was fortunate in finding such a felicitous domestic situation after having worked for years as a teacher and governess.