Little Jane Eyre's not so little imagination and its implications for national domesticity

Jane Eyre, or at least the young Jane Eyre is an atypical protagonist,  relative to characters like Fanny Price and Elizabeth Bennet. Although she tends to disappoint later as the novel progresses and fits herself into the mould of the typical heroine of the English novel of that time, she does show a lot of promise at the very beginning of her character’s introduction. Like all young people, Miss Jane has potential. It simply does not limit itself to her being a rebel in lashing out against cruelty “you are a murderer, a slave-driver. You are worse than the Emperors of Rome” when inflicted by wannabe tyrants like John Reed. After being punished for stepping out of the clichéd role of “the grateful slave”, Jane seeks escape and redemption in the unfettered dimensions of her impressive imagination. She looks at exotic china plates, themselves symbols of orientalism and “the other” of England of that time. She then reads a travel novel, “Gulliver’s Travels” with its own fantastic characters like goblins and the like, very different from the run-of-the-mill wizards and elves. At face value, this seems very much like the harmless musings of a very odd child. A closer inspection betrays something far more nuanced and sophisticated.

            From the very outset, Jane is the scorned outsider. She is “deemed unfit” by Mrs. Reed to socialize with her ambitious and clearly bourgeoisie-to-be children. The heir apparent also treats her with clear disdain and has no issues with using force. She was in her words, “accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging”. Jane, however, refuses to be passive in the situation she is in. Having this uncanny knack of never staying down, she is the ideal candidate for being everything that is diametrically opposed to the framework set up by national domesticity. She never aspired to values like passivity, duty, gratefulness and the like, values that the English imagination duly consumed without a hiccup. Hence, it was natural that everything that Jane Eyre sought, “the beautiful elves and fairies”, had “fled England”. In the world she was living in or at least the world of urban aspirations and materialism, she was a clear outcast and her fate was relocation, to say the very least. England could not fathom the girl’s lack of domesticity and Jane’s desire to “take a long voyage and see the world with her own eyes” was more or less inevitable. However, Bronte’s compromise creeps in when she clearly sidelines and otherizes attempts to flee this framework, “all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer……” . The message is insidious yet clear; find your place within the framework at all costs. Bronte’s Eyre might let go of the domesticity and try and mould herself in some other cast but what is irrevocably true and unavoidable is the “nation”. That is something that cannot be let go of and that is exactly why characters like Eyre must try and secure a niche for themselves within the nation. In light of all this, its totally understandable why Eyre ”closed the book which she no longer dared peruse”. This is just supplemented when seen in combination with the “untasted tart”.