Syed Abbas Shah's Post: The Creole’s Crime

*note : submitted on time 12:13 a.m. Saturday
Jane Eyre is remarkable in the sense that it covers and encompasses all three geographical areas of import with regards to English society, namely the Continent, the Orient, and the realm of the Creole. The vilification of the Creole is a significant as well as interesting aspect that one should look at, as it links to larger societal concerns about morality, propriety and eventually conformity that are all in some way integral to National Domesticity. Just as the Continent is associated with loose morality, the Orient is surrounded with an aura of enigma and desire, the land of the Creole is circumscribed with bright red lines which scream danger and promise the death of the seemingly revered British conventions should said lines not be respected.

The first thing to note is that the Creole figure is considerably generalized in the novel. The aspersions cast towards Bertha Mason also apply to everyone in her family, including the feeble-minded brother she had who doted on Mr. Rochester who could be considered as the least unacceptable spawn of Erebus. The Creole figure is deceptive and will do anything to undermine the purity that the British need to preserve, and it did so in the novel when Mr. Rochester was ‘deceived’ by his wife’s family into marrying her. The Creole figure is one which lavishly indulges in excesses such as drinking, casually relegating virtuosity to a very unimportant position which is simply unacceptable. So strong and potent is the effect of the Creole that even its native land is fiery enough a tempest to drive the sanest and most upright man to the brink of committing the most unthinkable of acts. But the reason why this figure is especially problematic is because it shares the blood of the British, as a result of which it can subtly and inconspicuously creep in and decimate said society; Biology bolsters the threat in this case. This is why, to protect and preserve oneself, one’s property, one’s identity and one’s morality, one must literally keep this villain locked up behind veils of madness which cannot be breached.

The Creole’s Crime is that it poses an existential threat to the British society which in turn necessitates the usage of severe means in an attempt to rectify the problem. While the French figure is shown as relatively immoral as well as intellectually inferior to an average Brit in Jane Eyre, the Creole is downright pernicious to everything that England uses as a throne to comfortably sit on at the top of the world.