Novels about courtship and sexuality are not only insightful
in terms of defining the superficiality of relationship and marking the
political and sexual territories of males and females respectively, but they
talk about something bigger. Nancy Armstrong,
in her work, Desire and Domestic Fiction says
‘ writing about the domestic woman afforded a
means of contesting the dominant notion of sexuality that understood desirability
in terms of a woman’s claims to fortune and family name.’
Thus, novels such as Jane Eyre opened up this niche of individualizing
women in the domestic sphere where they have the authority as well as identity.
The psychological motives behind what they do and what they do not also come
into play, resulting in strengthening of this individuality. Virtue also plays
a very important role here as we see Jane elevating herself from the status of
a maid to the wife of Mr. Rochester and this marriage does not come as a result
of some claim to fortune or class transcendence. It only comes about as a
result of Jane’s very own willingness and reasons that were more honorable than
material.
We also see the overlapping of emotional/political realm and
neither is associated with either female or a male. By the end of Jane Eyre,
Mr. Rochester gives up his aristocratic and political lineage and starts
operating in the emotional realm which is overseen by a female Jane who has authority
over him as well as the domestic sphere. Jane Eyre is indeed a woman of a lot
of substance!
Also Charlotte Bronte is, in my opinion, being careful to relate her notion of individuality. She uses the character of Jane Eyre to illustrate the kind of individuality she sees fit and uses the character of Eliza to show the kind of individuality she does not agree with. This can be seen when Eliza scolds Georgiana:
ReplyDelete"Instead of living for, in and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength.......Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own?"
The author, while unhappy with both Georgiana and Eliza, represents Eliza's sternness to be the greater evil of the two ("Feeling without judgment is a washy drought indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition."), and hence we can infer that she has reserves about the kind of individuality perpetrated by Eliza.