THE MEN IN JANE’S LIFE

Jane spends much of her life under the thumb of various men, all of whom, to differing extents, bully her. John Reed believes he has a right to bully her because of her dependent status in his family. He will inherit everything at Gateshead, and she has no right even to be there, let alone to touch the books or anything else in the house. Such is his rationale. When he chooses, he hits her or pinches her, knowing that he will suffer no repercussions because of his importance and her complete insignificance to the household. When Jane does fight back, she is punished in a fear-inspiring manner; she is locked in the “red room,” the room in which her uncle died. Locked in that room for hours with the thought of her uncle’s ghost still haunting it terrifies young Jane so much that she falls seriously ill from the terror. This illness, while horrendous at the time, actually precipitates a positive outcome— her removal from Gateshead. Thus, Jane learns in this situation that rebellion can eventually work to one’s benefit where bullies are concerned— even if one must sometimes endure severe trauma in the process.


When Mr. Brocklehurst arrives at Gateshead to arrange for Jane’s admission to Lowood, he too bullies her. When Jane does not agree that she is the deceitful and morally corrupt girl Mrs. Reed makes her out to be, Mr. Brocklehurst threatens her with the full exposure of what he has been told are her misdeeds. When he follows through with his threats, Jane feels as though she has been branded for life, that no one will ever believe that she is, in fact, a truthful girl. She also watches as Mr. Brocklehurst berates Miss Temple for coddling the girls by giving them additional food when the porridge was badly prepared. She sees Miss Temple stand up to him, insisting that she had done what was right and taking responsibility for her own actions. From watching Miss Temple’s adult responses to Mr. Brocklehurst’s bullying, Jane learns that standing up for oneself and for what one believes to be right can, in fact, end in something other than pain and shame.

As Jane enters adulthood, she is faced with yet another man who, despite his love for her, at times, presents himself as a bully. Mr. Rochester, like most men of property in nineteenth-century England, is used to getting his own way in almost everything. Because he dislikes the bustle involved in getting the house ready for full occupancy after it has been closed up due to his absence, Mrs. Fairfax keeps the house ready for full occupancy at all times, despite the extra work it creates for her and the servants. When Mr. Rochester decides to take a trip at a moment’s notice, he does so. When he decides to return, he returns without notifying the staff. His comings and goings are completely unrestricted, despite the trouble that fact often causes others, especially the dependents of his household. For a man like Mr. Rochester, who is not used to restriction or argument from those dependent on him, a woman like Jane Eyre is an enigma. She performs her duties as Adele’s governess admirably and is a help to Mrs. Fairfax in other ways as well, but she does not show Mr. Rochester the degree of deference to which he has been accustomed. She shows him respect, but she does not try (initially, at least) to anticipate his desires and satisfy them before he is even aware they exist, as Mrs. Fairfax and many of the other women in his life do and have done in the past. As a result, he finds Jane fascinating, because she is different. He insists on having her company and often, when finding himself using the commanding tone with her that he is used to using with other women, apologizes for his rudeness to her. Most of the time his behavior toward her is respectful, but, at times, her rebellion and insistence on being treated as his equal as a human being (while recognizing her dependency on him as an employee) become serious irritants to him, causing him to behave in ways that cause her emotional pain. For instance, when Mr. Rochester wants to know whether Jane is as emotionally attached to him as he is becoming to her, he forces her to watch as he courts Blanche Ingram, a local heiress of great beauty who intends to marry him. He forces Jane into conversations about Blanche, trying to get her to feel (and admit) some jealousy over his attentions to the dark beauty. Jane is clearly pained by such conversation and struggles to get away from it and him, but Mr. Rochester refuses to allow her to leave him, sadistically enjoying, it seems, his ability to cause her discomfort at the idea of his marriage to Miss Ingram. When Jane discovers on her wedding day that Mr. Rochester is not free to marry her, that he is legally married to another woman, she is tormented by the thought of the cruelty of the deception Mr. Rochester has practiced upon her, as well as the moral degradation into which she has almost sunk (a woman of her time who had sexual relations without being properly married was considered “ruined” regardless of whether she has knowingly and willingly done anything wrong). Mr. Rochester does not, however, allow her peace and privacy in which to deal with her situation. Instead, he tries to bully her into staying with him, into going with him to the Continent where they could live as though they were married, with no one knowing the difference. Jane knows that whether others know the difference or not is not important. She and Mr. Rochester would know, and they would be living in sin; those are the important issues in Jane’s mind. Also, Jane is well aware, from the manner in which Mr. Rochester has spoken about previous mistresses, that he could not continue to respect her if she gave in to his demands. His attempts to bully her into agreement are so strong, however, that she finds it necessary to face the dangers of running from Thornfield in the middle of the night rather than staying to face Mr. Rochester’s coercive manipulations.

Whereas Mr. Rochester’s attempts to bully Jane into a semblance of marriage are based on the deep passions of the heart, St. John Rivers attempts to bully her into marriage with him by appealing to her sense of duty, honor, and gratitude. He uses the fact that he saved her life and provided her with a means of supporting herself as a way to try to make her feel guilty for refusing his proposal. He reminds her that there is something in her past (she has not told him the entire story, though he suspects it has to do with disreputable behavior on the part of a man) that she must avoid reverting to, something that had almost cost her her innocence and her honor. He reminds her of her duty to God and uses that reminder as a means of trying to force her into an acceptance of his advances. She assures him that she could never marry without love, but he insists that love such as she refers to is overrated, that it is, in fact, almost blasphemous in that it can get in the way of one’s service to God. Ultimately, Jane is able to resist St. John’s bullying, but only with great difficulty. She is influenced by his arguments; they make sense to her intellectually even though they leave her heart cold. In a time when many more marriages were entered into for practical reasons than for passionate love, St. John had every reason to expect that Jane would accept his proposal to marry him and share his missionary work in India. When she doesn’t, he takes it as an affront not only to himself, but also to God. He believes that Jane’s return to Mr. Rochester, albeit an honorable return after his first wife dies in the fire that destroys Thornfield, demonstrates a rejection of duty on Jane’s part to both God and propriety. St. John goes to India to perform his work as a missionary without her, but he is cold toward her and her marriage to Mr. Rochester for the remainder of his life. Jane Eyre was written in a period when men believed they had a right to determine what was best for the women in their families and under their hire. Women were taught that their duty was to submit. Jane Eyre is the story of a woman who is unwilling to submit to anything she perceives as wrong or unfair. She believes that she should have the right to determine her future for herself, that she should have the right to make her own choices, and that she should be considered the equal of any man as a human being, even if she is his subordinate in terms of money, position, or employment. Such a position was difficult for any Victorian woman to adhere to. For a woman raised as an orphan, dependent for her very existence on the compassion of others, it would have been quite remarkable. Perhaps that is one of the reasons the novel touched so many of its earliest readers so deeply.