Morgan

Kayla Morgan

British Literature

05/02/12 The Influence of the Gothic in Jane Eyre

In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, the title character, Jane, goes through a transformation

in the novel. She begins as a young girl, ordinary enough, living in unfortunate circumstances.

By the end, she has evolved into a very different woman, though she still maintains some of her

childlike characteristics. The gothic, which influences Jane, acts as an escalating force

throughout the novel which is personified by the other characters. With every major character

that Jane meets, whether positive or negative, she is introduced to another dimension of the

gothic which leads her to some form of enlightenment or power. Jane’s acceptance of the gothic

is slow, but as the novel progresses, the reader can see Jane slowly begin to embrace the gothic

due to the influences and information she has acquired from the other gothic characters and also

from her surroundings.

According to the editors Jack Stillinger and Deidre Shauna Lynch, the word gothic was

created in the Romantic era as a way to describe strange, scary, or unexplainable sights, sounds,

and happenings. They also write, though, that people saw this as a good thing. They liked the

things they couldn’t explain and the things that were intriguingly scary. As Stillinger and Lynch

explain, “In the long run, Gothic became a label for the macabre, mysterious, supernatural, and

terrifying, especially the pleasurably terrifying.” (577). All of this can be seen in Jane Eyre. All

of the scary, mysterious, and supernatural elements are there, but so is the pleasurable part. This

comes from Jane finally accepting the gothic at the end, but even before then, she becomes

intrigued, and later fully entranced, by it.

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At the beginning of the novel, Jane, only a child of about ten years old, is a separate

element from the gothic, but she accepts inklings of it on her own terms. She enjoys hiding in the

shadows and seeing other people when they cannot see her. This may be viewed as somewhat

creepy from someone on the outside, but Jane does not do it to be creepy. She does it, first, just

because she likes to watch people, and also because, due to her abusive upbringing, she knows

that if she is seen, then she will likely be abused again in some way. She is right about this, as

she is later locked in the Red Room of Gateshead for supposedly being disrespectful to her

cousin John. Inside the room, Jane is filled with memories of her kind, deceased uncle and

intimidated by the colors of the room and tricks of the light. After letting her anxiety get the best

of her, Jane says, “My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I

deemed the rushing of wings…” (Bronte 14). Here, the novel shows the first major scene that

features the gothic in the Red Room. Jane, though, cannot handle it, and so she flees into a

tantrum of screams and fear. Though Jane is scared by the Red Room, she is also emboldened, as

she discovers a sense of power. Due to Jane’s screaming, the maids come running to her. Though

her power in the Reed house is still quite minimal, Jane realizes that she does have the ability to

make things happen.

Due to this, one can see that Jane is shifting, though ever so gradually. One afternoon,

just before she leaves for Lowood, Jane says to her aunt, “You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad

character, a deceitful disposition; and I’ll let everybody at Lowood know what you are, and what

you have done.” (31). Jane stands up to her abusive aunt here, something that she had been

unable to do before, which gives her a sense of satisfaction with herself. Though Jane gains from

confidence from this, she finds Lowood to be no better of a place than Gateshead. Mr.

Brocklehurst, the headmaster, is selfish and religious, almost to the point of obsession, and he

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particularly likes punishing Jane. Interestingly, though, Jane reacts differently to the abuse.

Though she is outwardly quiet most of the time, inwardly she is fuming. Jane begins to realize

that she does not agree with injustice and unlawful punishments. Jane knew that she was

mistreated at Gateshead, but she was also too scared to really know what to do. Though she does

not really do anything at Lowood to fight the abuse, she does make a decision about what is right

and what is wrong.

The first character that largely helps Jane to evolve is Helen, a knowledgeable and

opinionated classmate that Jane comes to admire. Helen believes in taking whatever is coming to

you, even if that is an unfair beating. Jane believes in fighting back if the punishment is not just.

Though Jane never fully lets go of her own beliefs, Helen shows her a new way of looking at

things, something that Jane will keep in mind for the rest of her life. Not only that, but Helen

teaches Jane to think about her actions. At one point, Helen says to her, “Hush, Jane! you think

too much of the love of human beings, you are too impulsive, too vehement…” (59). If criticism

had come from anyone but Helen, Jane would likely not have listened. But since, by this point,

Jane has come to value what Helen says, she takes her comments into consideration.

The other interesting thing about Helen is that she represents another level of the gothic

and how Jane responds to it. Helen is gothic, but only ever so slightly. She has a tendency to

wander into daydreams, and sometimes when she is talking to Jane, she will slip into a verbal

thought process, seemingly forgetting that Jane is there. Helen’s biggest impact on Jane,

however, happens by way of Helen’s death. While she is dying, Helen teaches Jane not to be

afraid of death, and she is also tells Jane of her belief in Heaven and God and the happiness that

she will be in. Jane does not really know what to think of Helen’s words. Later, though, Helen

dies in Jane’s arms in the night. After the night is over, Jane says, “I was asleep, and Helen

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was---dead”, which is something that leaves a permanent mark on Jane (70). Helen’s words will

now be forever remembered by Jane and so Helen, in a sense, dies for the cause. Through this,

Helen becomes the first one to plant a bit of the gothic in Jane’s mind through her words, and

therefore Helen provides Jane with a moral code to abide by. Helen’s words are now immortal.

After Helen’s martyrdom for the sake of the gothic, Jane begins to have a more mature

outlook on her life. She later becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, which looks eerily like

Gateshead. Jane says in her description, “The steps and banisters were of oak…A very chill and

vaultlike air pervaded the stairs and gallery, suggesting cheerless ideas of space and attitude…”

(83). The building itself is like a tomb with no life, despite the fact that people are living there.

Jane is intimidated by it at first, though she adapts to it more easily than she would have in her

earlier life. She is still a separate entity from the gothic elements in Thornfield, due to her being

in between, for she is not a member of the family, but she is not a servant. She is also roomed on

the second floor, in between the bottom floor, which is where Jane is usually happiest, and the

third floor, which is a complete mystery to Jane. In addition to being in between all of these

things, Jane is also in between the gothic. She now resides in it, though she no longer is terrified

like she was in the Red Room, but instead she is curious and intrigued by it.

Another gothic scene that Jane is involved in is her meeting with Rochester. She thinks

she sees a gytrash running along the road, when she says, “…I heard a rush under the hedge, and

lose down by the hazel stems glided a great dog…it was exactly like one mask of Bessie’s

gytrash” (95). This vision that Jane imagines acts as a moment of foreshadowing, signifying that

something dark is coming, though it is only a figment of her imagination. Her reaction, though, is

again different. Jane had a similar experience when she was in the Red Room. She let the Gothic

invade her mind, which led her into a fit of terror. Now though, instead of letting the gothic seep

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into her mind, she is letting it seep out through her vision, which shows that she also fully

internalized the gothic. Jane is still somewhat alarmed, but she is also drawn into a deeper state

of allure, and Rochester takes the form of the seductive side gothic, the kind that becomes

intimidating but pleasurable.

Rochester becomes the first fully gothic character that Jane does not shy away from.

Rochester, himself, is dark, gruff, and ugly. When Mrs. Fairfax describes him, she says, “…you

feel it when he speaks to you: you cannot always be sure whether he is in jest or earnest, whether

he is pleased or the contrary, you don’t thoroughly understand him, in short…”(89). Rochester

definitely has the mysterious streak, but he also gives Jane things she has never had before. Part

of her fascination with him comes from the fact that she has heard quite a lot about him and she

knows the house belongs to him, but she has never gotten to see him, so it stems a bit from

Rochester’s ethereal existence up until this point. In his article “Jane Eyre: The Apocalypse of

the Body”, Paul Pickrel, though, says that his undefined character is part of Rochester’s purpose.

He writes, “If we understand what Mr. Rochester is up to in the book…some of the absurdities in

his behavior begin to make sense…psychological and imaginative sense of a sort…” (165).

Pickrel says that Rochester’s otherworldliness enhances his character in a way that makes him

significant to the plot by embodying the marriage between romantic attraction and the gothic.

And, ultimately, Rochester provides something that Jane has been desperately craving, though

she rarely admits it, and that is love.

Even more than that, though, Rochester brings out yet another side of Jane. He does this

by often asking her opinion and what she thinks about things. This is something that Jane has

never really encountered before, even from the characters that were nice to her. She has never

met someone who was really interested in her mind. This leads to a revealing fact about Jane.

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After Rochester sees some pictures that Jane is drawn, he wants to know if she really drew them

herself, and then after she affirms, he wants to see them to judge for himself. Jane’s pictures are,

on most accounts, creepy. They are dark and dimly colored with haunting images, such as one of

a head sitting on an iceberg. The fact that Jane is pulling something like this out of her own

mind, like with her vision, shows again that she has further internalized the gothic. This is quite a

shift from the previous Jane. With a discussion of the internal meaning of her pictures in his

article “From Portrait to Person: A Note on the Surrealistic in Jane Eyre”, Lawrence E. Moser

writes, “The internal is the meaning they may have for Jane herself…and consequently must

refer to events prior to her departure from Lowood where the works were executed” (279).

According this statement, Jane used the pictures to show the internal darker sides of herself while

she was at Lowood. Rochester is now the one who is intrigued, because this is obviously not

what he expected from Jane, and so he feels a sense of camaraderie with her by seeing his own

darkness mirrored in her pictures. Though she is evolving slowly, Jane’s encounter with the

gothic still remains a fascination at this point, though, rather than a full acceptance.

Also at this point, Jane is still in at a level of being in between acceptance and

understanding. She wants to accept Rochester and what he has to offer. Furthermore, she likes

Rochester and is curious about his secrets, and she has even begun to like Thornfield. Rochester

himself seems to bring life to the house. On the other side, though, she is still scared by things

that she does not understand, and that is something that irks her. For one thing, she hears noises

in the upper rooms of the house, usually some sort of strange laughter. When she first hears it,

Jane says, “While I paced…a laugh, struck my ear. It was a curious laugh: distinct, formal,

mirthless…the sound eased, only for an instant; it began again louder…” (91). Noises like these,

as well as other strange occurrences, lead Jane to believe that there is a ghost in the house, which

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leads Jane to feel uneasy about Thornfield itself. Though Jane has come to like it there, she also

knows it has secrets. And though she wants to know what is really happening, she is also

frightened, though not enough to run away. Interestingly, Jane compares the upper hallways of

the house to looking like Bluebeard’s Castle. In the old tale, Bluebeard was a man who would

marry, murder his wife, and then keep his dead wives locked off in a room while he brought

another wife home. Though Jane does not know it at the time, her comparison is quite ironic.

Jane also meets a person who shows another level of the gothic, even more so the

Rochester. This turns out to be Grace Poole, a servant who is seemingly living upstairs. When

Jane describes her, she says, “…a woman of between thirty and forty; a set, square-made figure,

red-haired, and with a hard, plain face…” (91). Jane describes Grace as someone without a

personality and, even more, without humanity. Though Grace is never openly hostile to Jane,

Jane still does not trust her. Even more, she thinks her to be some kind of demon. In her article

“Plain Jane’s Progress”, Sandra M. Gilbert writes, “Grace Poole…is obviously associated with

Bertha, almost as if…she were the madwoman’s representative.” (789). It is this quality that

really gives Grace her gothic factor, the identity of being the speaker for Bertha, though Jane

does not know this yet. The other thing, according to Gilbert, is that Grace reminds Jane of the

Red Room, the unknown but frightening place from her childhood. Like she did when she was

locked in the Red Room as a child, Jane lets her imagination get the best of her. Even with all of

this, though, Grace provides Jane with another tidbit of knowledge, though only slightly. Grace

provides Jane with a manifestation of her fears, which may not seem good, but for Jane, she

finally has something that she actually can fear, which is a comfort, in an odd way.

Jane finally sees the highest form of a gothic character as a human, if one can call her

human, which is Bertha. Jane has several dealings with Bertha, without knowing who she was.

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The descriptions of Bertha show her also has some kind of demon, like Grace. In Jane’s mind,

the person in the attic is frightening, mysterious, and formless. She is a person who is unnatural,

unseen, and animalistic, and this sentiment is only enhanced by her demonic laugh that is heard

in the house, which is something that Jane comes to associate with uneasiness and unfamiliarity.

Like Rochester, most of Jane’s beliefs about Bertha come from not truly knowing. Before Jane

sees Bertha, though, Jane thinks all of this is actually Grace.

Jane finally gets a glimpse of Bertha on the night before Jane’s wedding to Rochester.

Bertha apparently comes into Jane’s room at night and rips up her wedding veil. When she is

describing Bertha to Rochester, Jane says, “…I saw the reflection of the visage and features quite

distinctly…it was a discolored face-it was a savage face…the lips were swelled and dark, the

brow furrowed…” (242). Bertha shows the epitome of a gothic character, and Jane is quite

terrified. The next day, during Jane and Rochester’s wedding, Jane learns who Bertha is. Despite

her fear, Bertha also gives something to Jane, and that is knowledge. This is something that Jane

has been aching for due to the unknown sounds and happenings in the house. Jane is braver after

this because, even though she is still afraid, she now knows what she is facing.

Truthfully, Bertha does not get a fair deal. Jane and the reader only get to know the story

from Rochester’s side. She is seen as evil and vicious, and according to Rochester, she always

had some bad blood in her. She is Creole, though, and those people were often seen to be less

than human, just from sheer prejudices. Even more so, being locked in an attic for a few years is

liable to drive anyone crazy. Jane really has no way of knowing if Bertha was always bad,

because she has only Rochester’s word to go on. Bertha, however, causes another change in Jane

and scares Jane away, but perhaps not for the reason that one would think. Jane, who compares

Bertha to a vampire, is repulsed by Bertha’s appearance and by her barbaric ways. Still, though,

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Jane leaves not because she is afraid of Bertha, but because Jane realizes that Bertha is trapped.

Not only that, but Bertha is trapped in every way possible. She is trapped physically, mentally,

and emotionally, and her only hope for some kind of redemption comes from her full dependence

on Rochester. Jane realizes that, and no matter how much she loves Rochester, that is something

that she never wants to be.

After Jane learns about Bertha, she has to decide what to do next. Though Jane is not

really angry at Rochester, she decides to leave him. During her time away, she discovers that she

has some living relatives and even becomes rich when an uncle leaves her his fortune. She is still

not satisfied, though. Jane knows that anything she has will go to Rochester by law when they

are married. Though Rochester would probably let her have whatever she wanted, Jane does not

want to be trapped like Bertha, even if it is a merciful or inadvertent trap.

While Jane is away from Thornfield, she again becomes a separate entity from the gothic.

The people she meets are, in a sense, normal people. The strangest one is a man named St. John,

whom Jane later learns is her cousin. He is handsome, unlike Rochester, but he is also cold and

self-righteous. He has a gruff nature as well, but his is different from Rochester’s. While

Rochester’s harshness stems from a lack of human love because he had no one to give it to, St.

John’s stems from a lack of human love because he does not have it at all. When she is talking of

St. John, Jane says “…I began to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard

and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for him…” (334). As shown in

this description, one sees that St. John is even a bit internally gothic himself. Previously, though,

all of the gothic characters that Jane has encountered have offered her something that is useful to

her and have shown her a new dimension of the gothic. St. John is not like this though. He is a

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flat gothic character, and he has no dimension, which puts Jane off. Though St. John expresses

an interest to marry her, for business reasons, Jane has no desire to marry him.

In the final stages of the novel, Jane finally fully accepts the gothic. For one thing, it calls

her back home. When Jane is losing her resolve and will to fight, she begins to consider

marrying St. John. She then, however, hears a voice on the wind, when she says, “I had heard

it…And it was the voice of a human being—a known, loved, well-remembered voice—that of

Edward Fairfax Rochester…”(357). In this part, Jane believes she hears Rochester’s voice

calling her. Whether he was or whether it was another figment of her imagination is unclear. Jane

believes it, though, as the sign she needed to go back.

And so, Jane’s acceptance of the gothic is because of Rochester, but also because of

Bertha, who are the two characters that influenced Jane’s actions the most. Rochester is the

gothic male, a Byronic hero. Bertha is the gothic woman, seemingly a vicious madwoman. The

house of Thornfield acted as a shield for Jane from the outside world. It also shielded Jane, as

well, from other characters, since they would often hide in other parts of the house. Once Jane

learns that the house has burned down, though, her shield is gone. Rochester is still gothic,

perhaps even more so because of his deformities. Now, though, Jane is equal with him, so she

accepts and marries him, like she accepts the gothic. Bertha, now deceased in the fire, is finally

free, like Jane. When Jane learned of Bertha’s death, Jane’s fear died along with her. Jane was

not so much scared of Bertha, but Bertha represented the inhibitions that Jane had about being

bound to Rochester. Now, because of the influence of all these characters and some of the places,

Jane becomes a wife of the gothic.

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Works Cited

Bronte, Charlotte. “Jane Eyre.” New York: Norton & Company, 2001. Print.

Gilbert, Sarah M. “Plain Jane’s Progress.” Signs 2.4 (1977): 779-804. Web. 29 March 2012.

Moser, Lawrence E. “From Portrait to Person: A Note on the Surrealistic in Jane Eyre.”

Nineteenth Century Fiction 20.3 (1965): 275-281. Web. 29 March 2012.

Pickrel, Paul. “Jane Eyre: The Apocalypse of the Body.” ELH 53.1 (1986): 165-182. Web. 30

March 2012.

“The Gothic and the Development of a Mass Readership”. The Norton Anthology of English

Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton & Company, 2006. 577. Print.

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