Bertha's Laughter

Bertha Mason attempts to kill her husband, rips apart Jane’s wedding dress, eventually burns Thornfield Hall and needs constant supervision of Grace Poole, yet despite her potential to create havoc everywhere, we NEVER hear her talk or utter a single word. She is always identified with laughter, something that becomes a part of Jane’s first encounter with Bertha’s mysterious presence when she comes to Thornfield Hall. This outrageous laughter may be an echo coming down from the third floor but becomes seeped in Jane and the reader’s consciousness way before Bertha’s physical appearance in the novel.

The fact that Bertha is never heard speaking to anyone makes the reader only infer about her through Jane’s thoughts or through Rochester’s long monologue about his wife and his unfortunate circumstances as her husband. Because Bertha herself is silenced and unable to defend herself through language in the novel, we see Bronte attempting to paint her picture and she does so through multiple narratives. There are first the elaborate and varying descriptions that Jane gives to Bertha’s laughter: “tragic...preternatural and mirthless” (Chapter 11), “demonic laugh....goblin laughter” (Chapter 12) “a snarling snatching sound almost like a dog quarrelling” (Chapter 15) “snatched and growled like some strange wild animal” (Chapter 26). Then, her physical descriptions and reckless state after ten years of imprisonment in Thornfield Hall are offered by both Rochester when his wife is finally revealed to everyone including the reader. And finally, there are descriptions we get through Rochester’s memory of what Bertha’s past used to look like. These descriptions though changing are very peculiar and exact in nature drawing attention to the importance and function of the mysterious figure. Bertha’s inability to talk or lack of conversation is then compensated by the many efforts made by multiple narratives of various characters. Bertha’s language is only her laughter in two-thirds of the book and it is because of her maniacal sounds that the reader too is unable to sympathize with the mysterious prisoner in the attic.

In fact, the reader at some level is frightened by this antagonist who does not talk and only makes noises, literally making her into an animal which she is often described as. But what she actually is, a white or a black woman, her exact body figure as a man, a monster, a vicious animal or something else, these lines of distinction are always blurred when it comes to Bertha Mason precisely because of there being no narrative or dialogue from her side. She remains the only character in the novel that is subjected to interpretation, speculation and suspicion by other characters and has nothing to offer about herself except her laughter. And that remains her single characteristic which stays with the reader till the very end.