Of kachi mitti, infections and the cast of minds

     The English Novel and Urdu Drama as we have studied in this course thus far is a commentary on the notion of domesticity and the manner in which it is shaped by the patriarchy. In Mansfield Fanny was literally taught how to think by Edmund. Similarily in Humsafar, Ashar under his dying fathers guidance seeks to shape the kachi mitti that is Khirad’s character. Jane Eyre, stands in sharp contrast to this narrative where Rochester himself clams that:

     “I know what kind of mind I have placed in communication with my own: I know it is one not liable to take infection from: it is a peculiar mind: it is a unique one. Happily,I do not mean to harm it: but if I did it would not take harm from me.”

     While it may be understood from this that as Jane belonged to a lower class, her circumstances made it unlikely for her to indulge in the vices that the aristocrats enjoyed. However, Rochester till then had been the only man Jane had been in proximity with in her adult life and thus the only man who could be able to mould her into his version of English domesticity. However he himself acknowledges that Jane’s mind is “peculiar”, and despite the fact that it has been deprived of worldly experience he states that he would not be able to “infect” as mind such as hers, rather he may be “refreshed” by her.  

     We can understand this as a testament to Jane’s character rather than Rochester’s general acknowledgement of the femininity and sensibility of women. While he never seeks to mould Jane, his “mad” “lunatic” immoral wife is not granted the same courtesy. Of Bertha Mason, Rochester exclaims at one point that:

     “even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow and singularly incapable of being led of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger”.

      Rochester here claims that the tragic flaw in Bertha was her immoral and crude “cast of mind” such that it could not be shaped, which is very different in relation to how he felt about Jane’s character. While he never sought to change Jane, he longed to raise Bertha to “anything higher”. Rochester was thus left to bear the “filthy burden” of his mad diseased wife despite the fact that she was incapable of being reformed, while, on the other hand the morally grounded domestic Jane was put on a pedestal by him and was capable of “refreshing” his sense of morality as well. Therefore while Bertha serves as a cautionary tale of the lack of domesticity and morality, the English society through Rochester commends domesticity and morality in Jane.