ADELE: the "genuine daughter of Paris"

“I looked at my pupil, who did not at first appear to notice me. She was quite a child – perhaps seven or eight years old – slightly built, with a pale, small-featured face, and a redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist”.

As a plot mechanism, one shouldn’t ignore the “genuine daughter of Paris” who becomes the structural instrument behind Jane Eyre’s entry to Thornfield Park. Through her presence at the manor, she enables Charlotte Bronte to touch upon a multiplicity of complex themes without explicitly violating standards of appropriate novelistic representation as a 19’th century author and subject of the British Empire. For instance, the pervasive Victorian issue of the controversial role of the “gouvernante” is explored through Jane’s relationship with Adele, with English morality simultaneously viewing this position as a threat to their status (novels such as Thackeray’s ‘Vanity Fair’ feature the desire of a governess to usurp the position of a mistress), yet recognizing her indispensability to the household (the governess could not be called a ‘servant’, since she was the educator of the future bearers of the elitist flag).

More specifically, Adele’s character symbolizes a nuanced, well-disguised British condescension of the French (on account of the colonialist rivalry and race for global supremacy the two powers were engaged in); Bronte does not denigrate her overtly, but she definitely drops multi-dimensional hints. For starters, Adele’s supposedly the daughter of Mr. Rochester’s French opera-singer mistress, Celine Varens - making the child a constant reminder of the (recently transformed) libertine’s past engagements with a woman of 'loose' moral values. However, Bronte cleverly leaves room for the likelihood that Adele may NOT be his daughter after all (since this mistress wasn’t exactly a model of fidelity, and Jane sees “no trait, no turn of expression” in Adele that could possibly announce “relationship” to Rochester), and the reader’s able to give credit for Rochester to be humane and give her a good home despite the regular reminder of the “grande passion” and consequent heartbreak he suffered at Celine’s hands.

Adele says, “I lived long ago with mamma; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin”, yet she constantly evokes her mother’s presence without realizing it. When one questions what this foreign child is supposed to represent in terms of individuality, Bronte gives us this quote - “Mamma used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses. A great many gentlemen and ladies came to see mamma, and I used to dance before them, or sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it”. That’s Adele for you, everybody. She likes to sing, dance, wear pretty frocks, accept gifts and basically spend her whole day engaged in frivolous activities unless ‘governed’ by Jane to study. Bronte’s characterization of every ‘otherized’ character in ‘Jane Eyre’ is meant to further an agenda (refer back to Said’s argument of the British novelist’s responsibility to uphold the status quo by representing the Empire as positively as possible, and glorify Britain’s imperialistic ventures), and the SUPERFICIALITY associated with Adele is a direct critique of her despicable “Frenchness” that desperately needs grooming. It’s also important to note how Bronte isn’t completely harsh here, Adele’s constantly French speaking character does highlight how knowledge of this language was a core quality every governess’ resume had to showcase, since it was a pre-requisite for the formation of any proper, ideal English lady.

Rochester claims to have “transplanted” Adele from the “slime and mud of Paris” (connotations of impurity and immorality) to “grow up clean in the wholesome soul of an English country garden” (pointing at Britain’s unmatchable honour and virtue). Hence, Jane becomes the colonizer, who will propagate English values of right and wrong, and transform Adele into a subject that will fit well within the geographical boundaries and national discourse of Britain. This is most evident in the closing chapter of the novel, where Jane tells the reader how “a sound English education corrected in a great measure her French defects”, and aptly moulded her into a “pleasing and obliging companion: docile, good-tempered and well-principled”. This makes Adele a force that is tamed for the better at the hands of the English, portraying the merits of British imperialism as an expedition that can lead to the moral and cultural elevation of ‘uncivilized’ subjects.