Bertha
“Look on her,” cried Mr Rochester in a wild bitter tone. “My wife. The woman to whom I am chained. That is where I am told by the law I must seek for human comfort and happiness.”
The creature snarled, and appeared ready to hurl herself at him, but he quelled her with a growl and an upraised arm.
“I was young and foolish, and the victim of my father’s greed and my brother’s ambition. They formed a plot to marry me to the daughter of a rich West Indian merchant. The fortune was real enough, but the girl was a sham, a deceit. The family was decaying into madness, and she worst of all. At first my youthful ignorance was dazzled by their wealth and her voluptuous body, and I could not, or would not, see the rotteness inside. We married in great style, and some haste, for they knew well what lay beneath that ivory skin, those rounded limbs, that witching smile. On our wedding night she began to disgust me by her sexual demands, for it was clear from the first she was no virgin. As our married life progressed, so did her wild adventures, becoming more and more indiscreet, while her behaviour became more and more violent, creating actual danger to her servants, and even to myself.
Her distance from all decent standards of womanly behaviour may be judged from the fact that, far from expressing remorse for her actions, and deriving benefit from the corrections of her lawful husband, she openly gloried in her exploits and, though she was frequently corrected, could not be made to mend her ways. On more than one occasion, I had her triced up taut on the triangle where the household slaves were whipped, and flogged her myself, until the blood ran down her shoulders, but all to no avail. She was so lost to decency that a husband’s hand had no influence over her.
The climax came when we had endured this dreadful marriage for a year. On a night, I was walking in the town with friends when we came across a lighted doorway advertising an amusement of some kind under the sign or L’ƒme d’Or; The Golden Ass.
Encouraged by my friends, and the drink we had taken, I entered, to find myself in a form of small theatre, where a performance of some kind was about to start. The audience was mainly of men of all sorts and conditions, with a few women of the town. As I looked around me more, I spotted a small group of more heavily veiled females, half hidden by the pillar that sheltered them. The rows of seats ran in circles round a shallow pit in the centre, which was empty, save for a simple wooden structure, formed like a trestle for supporting a table or such, but with a padded top, one end formed into a domed boss. From there the rail ran downwards, the far legs being somewhat shorter than the near.
We had not been there above five minutes, when the crowd gave a deep murmur, as a woman entered the arena, accompanied by two men. She wore a golden veil about her head, but otherwise she was quite naked. Her voluptuous body stalked to the trestle, a hand on one shoulder of each of her escorts.
Showing no shame at her exposure to so many lustful eyes, her proud breasts thrusting before her, like figure-heads before a great ship, the delicate narrowing of her waist, before the flaring of her haunches, lending her a certain grace, despite the depravity of her display.
She reached the trestle, and positioned herself at one end, her legs spread wide, the padded boss pressed against the tangle of curls that adorned her fork, just below the firm swelling of the gently rounded belly. Her assistants helped her to lie forwards along the sloping top. The boss under her belly raised her slightly so that her heels left the ground a little, but left her comfortably positioned enough. With her chest supported by the padded rail, her breasts hung either side, although they were so firm that they still kept much of their fine shape, the large dark teats seeming to be fully engorged as they thrust towards the floor. While one of the men left the arena, the other laid a species of thick rug, or pad across the woman’s back, covering her from her neck almost to her waist.
Positioned where we were, my party had a clear view from a little behind her and to one side, the wide spread stance opening up her thighs, so that the split fig of her vulva pressed back between. Indeed, her hips were canted up so by the boss under her belly, that the pouting vulva pointed upwards like a mouth set to catch a thrown sweetmeat. One of the attendants approached with a small pot and a soft brush, and gently lathed the gaping labia with a greasy ungent, though they were so swollen and glistening already, I did not think she would have need of further lubrication, for such it was clearly intended to be……….”.
[Forgive me reader, I cannot bring myself to pen more. Thus far in my account I have been totally frank with you, baring my body, as my soul, holding nothing back, but the events that Mr Rochester described on that fateful evening, I cannot set on paper. Indeed, I must believe, since the law and those who have responsibility for the well-being of the body politic declare it so, that, should the facts of what took place come to the ears of the lower classes, servants and the like, or those weaker vessels, women, civilization would collapse. Men might run rabid in the streets, bent on rapine, women throw off their clothes and their restraint, and openly invite even worse debaucheries than the woman of Jamaica. The mighty British Empire itself might topple, as that of Rome in its decadance, and its crowing jewel, the Monarchy, be swept away.
I cannot risk to be the instrument of such a catastrophe and, if there are among my readers those endowed with Academic Curiosity, and strong stomachs, who would like to know the whole truth of the depraved episode, they must apply elsewhere. For myself, I can only pass over that part of Mr Rochester’s narrative, and take it up again when the terrible doings in that evil place had reached their monstrous conclusion.]
“Her assistants helped her to her feet, and she walked back between them, albeit a little stiff and limping, but still holding herself with pride, as she had at her entry. In the throes of the jolting intercourse, her veil had become loosened, and now, as she retraced her steps, a hand on each assistant as before, it slipped to one side, just as she passed before me. It was Bertha!
The shock was such that I did not react for some moments and, when I came to myself, she had disappeared. Distraught I burst from that place of depravity, and ran through the midnight streets shouting and cursing. Then I calmed, my mind instantly made up, and returned to my home. When Bertha returned I forced her to the dungeon beneath the house, and stripped her to confirm her guilt, for even then I did not wish to believe what I had seen with my own eyes.
In a cold fury I bound her wrists and hauled them up tight to a hook in the ceiling. With leather thongs I drew her legs apart and secured her ankles to iron rings set in the floor.
‘Since you seem incapable of having an excess of sensation in these parts,’ I cried, ‘it would be ungallant to refuse you more,’ and I took a black snake whip and lashed her back until the blood came, her buttocks until they, too, wept red, that insatiable gash between her legs, until it contributed its share. The next day I took ship to England, bringing my hideous bride, to incarcerate her in this attic. Now she still poisons my life by depriving me of my chance of happiness with Jane.”
Whether she understood any of what was being related, I do not know, only that she became more and more agitated as the narrative progressed. At his final words, she gave an animal snarl and leapt at me, grabbing for my throat, missing as I leapt back in horror, and grasping the neckline instead, ripping it to my waist, leaving my breasts exposed in their lacy nests atop my corset. Mr Rochester had rushed to defend me and seized the rabid woman, wrestling her to the ground. With a knee in her back to quell her, he drew the belt from his waistband, and tied her wrists. Amid frantic struggles and lurid curses on his head and mine, she was dragged to the chamber next door, where stood the triangle on which both Grace Poole and I had been flogged. In a moment she was strung up as tight as either of us had been, and her one garment ripped from her back. Her husband, for that was what I must call him now, took up his whip and set about to lash her to the blood.
Flight
I ran from the room and sought my own. I stripped off the ruined dre
ss, and aught else he had ever given me, found one of the dresses I had come to Thornfield in and, with a small bundle of clean linen and private possessions, left the house, crossing the park to the fields beyond.
I avoided the drive and the main road, for he would surely seek me there, and headed across the open fields to the road West, that I knew ran that way. Twenty minutes later I came across it, and waited patiently by the roadside for the afternoon stage. When it came it was empty. I asked the driver how far he might take me in exchange for the few coins I had in my purse, and he named a town sufficiently far to be out of my perfidious bridegroom’s reach. By evening we were crossing a bleak moor, the light nearly gone, when he stopped the horses, and came round to the door of the coach.
“This is as far as I take you,” he said. “Out with you now.”
I looked around that bleak and deserted scene and protested.
“You said the town. This is a wild place and no habitation in sight.”
“Never the less, ‘tis as far as your fare paid will take you, unless you have more.”
“I have nothing,” I cried. “At least take me to where there are people and shelter,” but he would not, and ordered me out. As I stood by the road, bemused and bewildered, he demanded a tip. I repeated that I could give him nothing.
“Then I must take it myself,” he replied, in an evil tone, throwing me to the ground.
This rape had none of the ritual inevitability of the Reverend Brocklehurst’s deflowering of me, or Mr Rochester’s masterful use of me, and I fought and struggled, biting and kicking, but all it earned me was a cut lip, and more bruises to my back, plus my poor vagina split at its mouth where he made brutal entry without care of his aim. I shrieked and sobbed, but all to no avail, and he finally discharged his juice into my battered body, wiped himself on my ripped drawers and drove off, taking my poor bundle of clothing with him, for I had left it in the coach. I was left alone, penniless, with neither possessions or provisions, on a desolate moor, raped and lost.
The only fortunate circumstance that night was that the weather was still fine. I found shelter in a hollow guarded by heather, and lay down exhausted, my weakness leading me quickly into slumber.
Dawn found me somewhat recovered, though stiff and sore, especially in that part that had taken the worst of the previous evening’s assault, but we women are so constructed as to survive such batterings, or how would mankind survive, and I set off to seek some habitation or shelter. Shortly, I came to a crossroads, where I turned off, either road looking as well or ill travelled, and thinking it would throw off any search that was made for me.
At mid-day I came to a large village, where I hoped to find something to eat and drink, for I had had nothing before my promised wedding breakfast the day before and, with that snatched so rudely from me, it was some thirty-six hours since food had passed my lips.
I asked a woman in the street if she knew if there was any work to be found there, but she glared at me and did not answer. In the bakers shop I entered, the woman that served was equally unfriendly. I told her I was looking for work, and had not eaten for two days. Could she spare me a bite to eat, and I would repay her later, but she turned me away, crying that I was a beggar and a vagrant, and should be taken up. When I could find no other help in the district, I remembered the embroidered handkerchief I had in my pocket and returned to the shop, offering to sell it to her in exchange for a piece of bread.
At this, she made a great outcry, until her neighbours came running, saying I was not only a vagrant and beggar, but a thief also, for where else had I obtained a lady’s handkerchief. At once they all laid hands on me, despite my protests of my innocence, and hauled me off to the Beadle, to be put in the lockup for the night. There I slept on stone, shivering with cold, but, out of charity, someone pushed a piece of stale bread into my cage.
In the morning I was taken before a Magistrate, a fat redfaced man, who would not listen to anything I might say, telling me not to make things worse for myself by denying what the good people of the village told.
“Has she been examined?” he asked and, being told not, “then send for the midwife at once. I will pass sentence later, when I know if she be honest.”
In minutes came a large sour looking woman, who ordered me onto my back upon a bench. There, in that public courtroom, the generality of people standing around to watch, she lifted my skirts and pulled my knees apart, probing at my woman’s parts with rough, unclean, fingers.
“Ha,” she cried, “no drawers, and a cunt as well trodden as the road to perdition. Why, she’s still swollen and wet from her last cockfight. We’ve a whore here, your honour, as well as a thief. Nothing honest about this trollop.”
In vain did I try to explain how I had been raped and abandoned. None would listen, and the magistrate seemed incensed that I should try to excuse myself.
“An arrant whore,” he declared, “one would tell by her tongue, even if her cunt did not denounce her. Have her whipped at the cart’s tail and stood in the pillory, and see she is out of town by nightfall, or she shall suffer as much again tomorrow.”
I begged for mercy, but was told my behaviour in denying my guilt deprived me of the right, and that I must be made an example for other young women who thought of leaving the protection of father, brother, husband, for all women should be ruled.
“If you be not ruled by a man,” he said, “you shall be ruled by the rod.”
I was dragged outside, my gown torn down the back, and left hanging at my hips, my stays taken from me and my shift torn like my gown, until I was naked to my waist, my bare breasts, to my shame, not only open to all eyes, but hardening, until their points stood out like a babe’s thumbs. They tied my wrists together with coarse cord, and fastened them to the tail-gate of the noisesome cart that was used to remove the nightsoil from the better houses. As I walked behind this evil smelling conveyance, the length of the street, then round the church and back again to the magistrate’s house, a slow half mile, the Beadle followed, lashing my poor bent back with a heavy whip, more suited to a dray horse than a woman’s weak frame and tender skin.
Each vicious jolt sent agony through my shoulders, intensified when, as often as not, he directed the lash to wrap round my sides, clawing into the soft and tender spot under my arm or biting into the vulnerable side of my breast I writhed and flinched, as much as my wrists, bound to the cart would let me, but my movement was limited by the slow moving bulk of the stinking cart and I must needs stand under the blows from one end of my doleful promenade to the other.
I do not know how many blows they dealt me, I lost all count, or any other reckoning long before the end, but, when they took me from the cart, I was hoarse with screaming, and I could feel the blood at my waist from the cuts to my back and sides.
Though they released me from the cart I was not free. I was made to stand to the pillory, my neck in the larger, my wrists in the smaller, of the three grooves in the heavy timber crosspiece, and the top lowered and locked to confine me immobile and defenceless within. The idlers of the town, the apprentices and guttersnipes, the lewd women and, worst, the pious women, all came to jeer and enjoy the sport, hurling mud, dung, abuse and pious admonitions in equal quantities. Though the mud stung, and the dung fouled me, it was the venomous utterances of the ‘good’ women that were the hardest to bear.
The cries of the rude boys were bad, as they made bets on whether they could hit my poor dependent tits with their muddy missiles and pungent projectiles, but at least they only hurt my body. The spiteful barbs of those that named me harlot, and called on me to repent my lascivious ways, to wash out my impure vessel and show respect to those, like themselves, who were pure, wounded my very soul.
As the light began to fade, early, for the year was well advanced, I was taken to the edge of the town and directed to be gone. Holding my torn clothing about me to shield my battered breasts, I stumbled from the scene of my torment and degradation, heading back to the more frie
ndly moors.
Again, I slept in the heather, but the next day the weather turned against me. I wandered on in mist and drizzle, soaked and cold, finding but a few wild berries to eat, though there was water now and to spare.
By evening of that day I was becoming weak, and feared I would not last another night. Just as I had given up hope, and reconciled myself to expiring on those desolate slopes, my body food for the wild creatures that lived there, I thought I caught a chink of light, a mere spark in the darkness. I looked again, and again spied it, as it blinked through bushes moved by the wind that chilled me. With my last strength I stumbled in its direction, now losing it, now finding it again, getting stronger until I could determine that it was a lamp in the window of a house set in the shelter of a hollow in the hills.
Wet, mired, exhausted, with my last strength I knocked on the door. I was answered by an old serving woman, of whom I asked shelter and food. When she denied me, I asked if she would call her mistress, but she replied that her ladies would not want to be bothered by such as I, and to be off.
“And if you have companions as dishonest as you appear to be, in the neighbourhood, be warned, we are protected by dogs and a gun,” and she slammed the door in my face. I could do no more, and fell, half sensible, to the sodden ground.
Rescued
I was roused my a hand on my bare breast through the rips in my clothing, and a man’s voice.
“Why it is a woman, and a young one by the feel of her. I thought it a bundle of rags.”
He hammered on the door and, when the same servant answered, cried to her to fetch his sisters, get blankets and hot water, there was a Christian soul in need at their door.
I remember little of the next few hours, but I learnt they took me in, stripped me, washed my wounds and laid me in a bed, forcing a little hot broth between my chattering teeth. The first I recall clearly is waking to a warm sunny room, to find a young woman sitting by my bed, reading quietly. She must have heard me stir, for she closed her book and leant over me.
Jane and Her Master Page 13