James Lorimer
If these remarkable works are the productions of a woman we shall only say she must be a woman pretty nearly unsexed.
—from the North British Review
(August 1849)
Charlotte Brontë
The North British Review duly reached me. I read attentively all it says about E. Wyndham, J. Eyre, and F. Hervey. Much of the article is clever—and yet there are remarks which—for me—rob it of importance.
To value praise or stand in awe of blame we must respect the source whence the praise and blame proceed—: and I do not respect an inconsistent critic. He says ‘if “Jane Eyre” be the production of a woman—she must be a woman unsexed.’
In that case the book is an unredeemed error and should be unreservedly condemned. ‘Jane Eyre’ is a woman’s autobiography—by a woman it is professedly written—if it is written as no woman would write—condemn it—with spirit and decision—say it is bad—but do not first eulogise and then detract. I am reminded of the ‘Economist.’ The literary critic of that paper praised the book if written by a man—and pronounced it ‘odious’ if the work of a woman.
To such critics I would say—‘To you I am neither Man nor Woman—I come before you as an Author only—it is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me—the sole ground on which I accept your judgement.’
—from a letter to William Smith Williams
(August 16, 1849)
QUESTIONS
1. William Makepeace Thackeray, knowing nothing about the author of Jane Eyre, immediately wrote to a friend, “It is a woman’s writing, but whose?” What do you think tipped him off? Is there anything about Jane Eyre that strikes you as especially characteristic of “women’s writing”?
2. Thackeray also said that he was “exceedingly moved and pleased” by Jane Eyre. Evidently, even if the novel is by a woman, it is not only for women. What in the novel could be described as appealing to our humanity rather than our gender?
3. Jane Eyre has been read as a proto-feminist protest against the conditions of women in Charlotte Brontë’s time and place. Is that reading justified by the actual text? If so, does the protest still resonate in this time and place?
4. There have been critics who said that most Victorian novels are built on either the Marriage Plot or on the Inheritance Plot. At the end of Jane Eyre the heroine is an heiress and, as she writes, “Reader, I married him.” But Brontë has decided to blind and maim Rochester, and to burn down the house that is the visible sign of his prestige and power. Do you think Brontë cut Rochester down to size for Jane’s sake—to make the happy ending happier still?
For Further Reading
BIOGRAPHIES
Barker, Juliet, comp. The Brontës: A Life in Letters. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1998. A useful and well-edited collection of letters with biographical context supplied.
Gérin, Winifred. Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967; Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1991.
Peters, Margot. Unquiet Soul: A Biography of Charlotte Brontë. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975.
Winnifrith, Tom. The Brontës and Their Background: Romance and Reality. London: Macmillan, 1973.
Winnifrith, Tom. A New Life of Charlotte Brontë. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988.
CRITICISM
Abel, Elizabeth, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland, eds. The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983. Much useful information about Jane Eyre as a bildungsroman, with a look at its sources in folk stories and fairy tales of female development.
Alexander, Christine. The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Oxford: Black-well, 1983. The best study of the juvenilia to date.
Allott, Miriam, ed. The Brontës: The Critical Heritage. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974. An invaluable casebook for understanding the history of the critical reception of the Brontës’ work.
Beaty, Jerome. Misreading Jane Eyre: A Postformalist Paradigm. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996. A fascinatingly complex analysis of Jane Eyre by an eminent critic; for the more advanced student.
Björk, Harriet. The Language of Truth: Charlotte Brontë, the Woman Question, and the Novel. Lund, Sweden: Gleerup, 1974. A resource for understanding the historical context of women’s social position in Brontë’s time and its influence on Jane Eyre.
Boumelha, Penny. Charlotte Brontë. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990. A reliable and well-rounded study for the beginning student.
Eagleton, Terry. Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës. London: Macmillan, 1975. Eagleton’s study is from the historical-materialist point of view and provides a different perspective on the Brontë canon.
Ewbank, Inga-Stina. Their Proper Sphere: A Study of the Brontë Sisters as Early-Victorian Female Novelists. London: Edward Arnold, 1966. Considers the Brontës in the light of Victorian beliefs and conventions.
Gregor, Ian, comp. The Brontës: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970. This useful collection brings together important critical essays written before 1970; for the beginning student of the Brontës.
Maynard, John. Charlotte Brontë and Sexuality. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. This study focuses on the meaning of sexuality as an important element in Brontë’s work.
Michie, Helena. The Flesh Made Word: Female Figures and Women’s Bodies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Critical work that focuses on women’s bodies in narrative texts; sheds a different light on Jane Eyre.
Poovey, Mary. Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Important study that considers Jane Eyre in light of the historical position of the governess in Victorian Britain.
Ratchford, Fannie. The Brontës’ Web of Childhood. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941. The first study of the Brontës’ juvenile writing, and still a classic in criticism.
Weisser, Susan Ostrov. A “Craving Vacancy”: Women and Sexual Love in the British Novel, 1740-1880. London and New York: Macmillan and New York University Press, 1997. A study of class conflict between middle-and upper-class women and its role in shaping sexual and romantic ideology in the British novel, including Jane Eyre.
WORKS CITED IN THE INTRODUCTION
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. London: J. M. Dent, 1960. First published in 1857 after Brontë’s death, a work that has become a classic in the history of biographical writing, though it is not entirely accurate or objective.
Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Important and groundbreaking feminist study of the Brontës, among others.
Illouz, Eva. Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.
Jackson, Stevi. “Women and Heterosexual Love: Complicity, Resistance and Change.” In Romance Revisited, edited by Lynne Pearce and Jackie Stacey. New York: New York University Press, 1995, pp. 49-62.
Moglen, Helene. Charlotte Brontë: The Self Conceived. New York: W. W. Nor-ton, 1976.
Moser, Thomas. “What Is the Matter with Emily Jane?” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 14 (June 1962), pp. 1-19.
Nudd, Donna Marie. “Rediscovering Jane Eyre through Its Adaptations.” In Approaches to Teaching Brontë’s Jane Eyre, edited by Diane Long Hoeveler and Beth Lau. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1993, pp. 139-147.
Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
a See Donna Marie Nudd’s “Rediscovering Jane Eyre through Its Adaptations,” in Approaches to Teaching Brontë’s Jane Eyre, edited by Diane Long Hoeveler and Beth Lau, New York: M
odern Language Association of America, 1993, and “Inspired by Jane Eyre,” in this edition on p. 539.
b In plot elements of Jane Eyre, we can also see the influence of folk tales such as Cinderella and Bluebeard, in which a dark sexual predator exercises murderous eroticism and violates the sanctity of marriage.
c Opinion.
d Combustible material for setting fire to enemies’ ships.
e Lightning or any bright flame. Poetic usage, found in Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto 6, stanza 25, line 10.
f Ill-natured.
g Maidservant.
h Deceitfulness.
i A fabric of stiff cotton.
j Deep hollows.
k Bearing.
l Peacock chicks.
m Destination (archaic).
n Kin, literally and figuratively.
o Performing wearying labor.
p Device for punishing offenders by locking their hands and feet in a wooden frame.
q Boards strapped across the back to straighten posture.
r Any small room.
s Roused my temper (dialect).
t Child’s bed.
u Slapped.
v Trade, commerce.
w Part of a garden.
x Coward.
y Linen cloth.
z Of excellent flavor.
aa About to snow (dialect).
ab Cloak.
ac Plain woolen material.
ad A particular prayer that varies according to day.
ae Exhaustion caused by hunger and thirst.
af A cloth worn around the neck.
ag A small bag or pouch.
ah Irises.
ai Forehead.
aj Rancid (dialect).
ak Marks of punctuation.
al Embroider.
am Twilight.
an Frozen (dialect).
ao Weekly.
ap Overcoat.
aq An up-and-coming man; one rising to prominence.
ar A hairpiece worn over the forehead.
as The supreme god of Hinduism.
at A title of Krishna in Hinduism, used metaphorically to refer to blind devotion to idols.
au An imaginary feast, from a tale in The Arabian Nights.
av The reference is to Aelbert Cuyp, a Dutch landscape painter of the seventeenth century.
aw Fluently (now rare).
ax In northern English dialect, “ing” means a swampy meadow, “holm,” low-lying land near water, and “beck,” a brook.
ay A tablet that releases aromatic medication when burnt.
az Grave.
ba By the rules.
bb Remain awake.
bc Expelled due to failing exams.
bd A drink of sweetened wine and hot water.
be A piece of armor; breast and back plates.
bf “Is that my governess?” ... “Why, yes, of course.”
bg A short song.
bh “What’s the matter then?” says one of the mice to her; “Speak!”
bi A lustrous mineral.
bj Dyed purple or crimson, as in ancient Tyre.
bk White marble.
bl Here meaning moral qualities or reputation, rather than personality in the modern sense.
bm An alley or passage.
bn Sounds that are divided into syllables like speech.
bo “Ladies, dinner is served!” ... “I am very hungry.”
bp Parenthetically.
bq “Come back soon, my good friend, my dear Miss Janie.”
br “Hips” are berries of the wild rose; “haws,” of the hawthorn.
bs A sound like a sigh or murmur.
bt Woolen material.
bu Pruned.
bv Friend.
bw Adèle adds the “de” to indicate the status of nobility.
bx “And that must mean... that there will be a gift inside for me, and perhaps for you too, Miss. Mr. Rochester has talked about you: he asked me the name of my governess, and if she wasn’t a small person, rather thin and a little pale. I said yes; because it’s true, isn’t it, Miss?”
by Irascible temper.
bz Free of embarrassment.
ca “Isn’t it so, sir, that there is a gift for Miss Eyre in your little chest?”
cb Deserved rewards.
cc Types of tables and cabinets.
cd Fairies were said to dance in rings.
ce Nuns.
cf Pressed close together, like soldiers in ranks.
cg Crowned.
ch The mountain where the goddess of the moon, Selene, saw her beloved Endymion.
ci Little chest.
cj “My box! My box!”
ck “Keep quiet child; do you understand?”
cl “Oh, heavens! It’s so beautiful!”
cm One who takes part in a conversation.
cn A young nun.
co And I insist on it.
cp Rusting (dialect; obsolete).
cq Knows.
cr “I must try it on! ... and right away!”
cs “Is my dress all right? And my shoes? And my stockings? Wait, I believe I am going to dance!”
ct “Thank you so very much, sir, for your kindness... Mama used to do it just like that, didn’t she?”
cu Like that.
cv Great passion.
cw Athletic build.
cx Town house.
cy Lacework.
cz A foolish lover.
da Munching. It is unclear whether “the barbarism” refers to the use of French as the participle with the English “was,” or to the combination of eating chocolates and smoking tobacco.
db Carriage.
dc My angel.
dd Gate.
de Sky, heavens.
df Rake; a man devoted to sensual pleasures, especially sexual conquests.
dg Masculine beauty.
dh A hen that has roup, a respiratory disease that causes hoarse, labored breathing, is said to be “in the pip.”
di Little girl.
dj Domestic tableware, often of silver.
dk Bread or cereal made from sago starch.
dl “What’s the matter? Your hands tremble like a leaf, and your cheeks are red: as red as cherries!”
dm An illusory light in the marshes, used figuratively for delusive hopes; also called will-o‘-the-wisp.
dn Outmoded.
do The name of an executioner in The Arabian Nights.
dp “They are changing.”
dq “At mama‘s, when there were a lot of people, I would follow them everywhere, in the drawing room and to their rooms; often I would watch the maids dress the ladies and do their hair, and it was so much fun; that’s how you learn.”
dr “Yes, of course; it’s been five or six hours since we’ve eaten.”
ds “Projection” and “crucibles” refer humorously to the transmutation of metals in alchemy.
dt “And then what a shame!”
du “May I take just one of these magnificent flowers? Just to add the finishing touch to my outfit.”
dv A funny little face.
dw Diana, goddess of hunting.
dx “Hello, ladies.”
dy A distinguished old gentleman of the kind found in the theater.
dz Subject.
ea “Too bad!”
eb discordant music.
ec Naughty.
ed Like a sick hen that breathes hard; see page 173.
ee The beautiful passion.
ef At any rate.
eg Tease.
eh Provision, possession.
ei Pirates; Lord Byron published his very popular poem The Corsair in 1814.
ej With spirit.
ek “Be very careful!”
el Saques, modes, and lappets were articles of women’s clothing antiquated in Brontë’s day.
em Heathen, especially referring to Muslim (archaic).
en Used for strangling.
eo Prison.
ep “Mr. Rochester has returned!”
eq Candleholders set in the wall.
er Old wives.
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