The Read Queen

I recently finished reading Jane Eyre- a book that has been on my radar for some time now. Jane Eyre is one of those books that everyone has heard of, and when you publicly admit that you haven’t read it, there is inevitably one or two people who will look at you with disbelief. (Whether or not they themselves have actually read it is another matter. One can just as easily recite the events in the novel after watching one of the many small and large screen adaptations of it.) I chose to read it because a friend of mine was reading it and I already owned it- I could read it with her and broaden my horizons at the same time.

My reasons for reading the novel are completely irrelevant.

Two things struck me as I was reading Jane Eyre. One: that Rochester is an ass that enjoys “testing” Jane for his own self-serving sport, and Two: that Bertha, although she is a very real threat when we are introduced to her, was basically shut up and neglected for a decade. That does stuff to people. No wonder this woman wants to attack anyone who comes too close. Jane describes her as a wild animal, a “clothed hyena,” with “shaggy locks” that “snatched and growled.” (380) But Jane is not quite right, is she? Bertha may be frenzied at that moment, but she is no uncontrolled wild animal. This woman has the wherewithal to wait until her nurse has passed out to steal the door key. Admittedly, this is not the best argument for Bertha’s stealth, since Grace Pool is drunk off her rocker whenever she passes out, but there is more, I promise. Bertha can sneak through the house, watch Jane sleep, sneak up and down the halls doing who knows what, light her husband’s bed on fire, and then return upstairs to her bedchamber. Willingly. From what I understand, when a cage door is left open, the animal inside runs free.  Bertha was not a hyena, she was a woman who was scorned by her family, pawned off onto a virtual stranger, and locked into an attic when she became too difficult to deal with.

I understand that the cultural understanding of mental illness in the 1840’s was vastly different than our understanding of it in today’s society. However, given Rochester’s propensity for toying with Jane (Forcing her to sit in the parlor every night with company, posing as the gypsy woman to get Jane to confess her emotions to him, letting her believe that he is to marry Miss Ingram…) I think that he locked his first wife up in the attic because he just flat out didn’t want to extend any compassion or patience to a person in need. Rochester’s games with Jane were all about control, and he couldn’t control Bertha. Of course, his tune changes in the end, when it is he that is in need of some patience and compassion, when he can no longer control those around him…when he has been humbled. I don’t hate Rochester. He is human, and the journey that his character takes is fascinating, but I just can’t help feeling that Bertha deserved more: more from her family, more from Rochester, and more from Brontë.