The Female Ego

“Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automation? – a machine without feelings?...Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you – and full as much heart!...I am not talking to you now through a medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; - it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal, - as we are!”

In Toward a Feminist Poetics, Showalter has traced the history of women’s literature, stating that it can be divided into three phases:
  1. Feminine (1840-1880)
 2. Feminist (1880-1920)
 3. Female (1920-1960)

According to Showalter, in the very first phase, all these writers are looking outside for female models; imitating male ways of looking at the world and imitating what is laid down by the male.

In the second phase, female authors revolt against this model.

In the last phase, you discover what it means to be a woman as they do not rely on external forces. There is no struggle against an external model. Instead, there is an authentic female self looking for something within.

Although Jane Eyre was written in Showalter’s ‘feminine’ phase (1847), I think Jane Eyre falls in the Female phase; the phase where the female ego is not defined by any external forces, but as an independent ‘I’. Although it does not all together fall in phase three, it can be partly placed in this category as an attempt by the author to represent the female as the ‘I’.

In the above stated quote by Jane Eyre, her ‘I’ can be seen as standing out as she separates her identity from that of Mr. Rochester and places herself on equal grounds with the patriarch. For Jane Eyre, the mind, body and spirit are of great importance; especially the spirit, which she needs to reconcile before anything else.

Furthermore, in this passage, we see the old Jane Eyre emerging, as she once did before the Mrs. Reed;

“I shall remember how you thrust me back – roughly and violently thrust me back…And that punishment you made me suffer…I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale. People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hardhearted. You are deceitful!”

We see the fiery self of Jane Eyre overpowering the head of the household Mrs. Reed, as she is breaking away from the family of the Reeds, and then later on the patriarch Mr. Rochester, as she breaks away from being a part of Mr. Rochester, and comes out as Jane Eyre alone;

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you”.

Hence it is interesting to note how both the 'Feminine' and 'Female' element are present in the novel, with the author somehow going beyond her time, as she tries to bring out the female 'I' of Jane Eyre in parts of the novel, but retreats back to the 'Feminine Phase.'