Lehigh University
Lehigh Preserve
Theses and Dissertations
1999
Burning the master's house : feminist and colonial
agency in Jane Eyre
Erangee Kaushalya Kumarage
Lehigh University
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Kumarage, Erangee Kaushalya, "Burning the master's house : feminist and colonial agency in Jane Eyre" (1999). Theses and
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Kumarage, Erangee
Kaushalya
l3urning th.e
rvJ aster's. House:
F"eministand
Colonial·Agency
in Jane Eyre
January 2000
Burning the Master's House: F~minist and Colonial Agency
in Jane Eyre
by
Erangee Kaushalya Kumarage
A Thesis
Presented to the Graduate and Research Committee
of Lehigh University
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Master of Arts
in
English
.,.:-/
.,/;/
Lehigh University
May, 1999
v
.~_ ...J
Acknowledgements
This is dedicated to Doug Rawlings, Dan Gunn and Elizabeth
Cooke fo-r being inspiring teachers, mentors and friends.
I would like to thank Dr. Rosemary Mundhenk for investing her
time in this project and for her valuable advice.
and
Stephen doCarmo for supporting me through the various crises that
cropped up while writing this.
)
iii
Table of Contents
ABSTRACT
BURNING THE MASTER'S
HOUSE: FEMINIST COLONIAL
AGENCY IN JANE EYRE
NOTES
WORKS CITED
CURRICULUM VITAE
iv
1
2
28
31
33
Abstract
In this paper, I argue that Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason.Rochester undergo similar
experiences of incarceration - Jane in the Red Room and Bertha at Thornfield. The
degree of oppression that each undergoes differs considerably because Jane is only
oppressed by patriarchy while Bertha is a victim of both patriarchy and imperialism.
Although Jane appears to have the potential ofbecoming another Bertha, Jane's desire to
escape her marginal status as a woman caught between the working and the middle classes
makes her choose self-repression in the end. The fulfillment ofJane's wish for a bourgeois
life is underwritten by Bertha's agency in destroying the sexual and financial power of
Rochester and by money from the colonies. Bertha chooses a more radical and active
t>
path, which ultimately leads her to death, but also to liberation. The blatant imperialist
tendencies ofthe narrator of Jane Eyre prevents any solidarity between two women who
are, after all, occupants of different rooms ofthe same house of patriarchy.
1
The most genuinely heroic moment of feminist consciousness
consists in a woman's decision to' cast her lot with:an identity that
has not yet been spoken and that cannot as yet speak itself
--Linda Williams
(A Jury of Their Peers: Marleen Gorris's A
Question ofSilence)
Language in Jane Eyre works in mysterious ways. Little Jane, Bertha's kindred
spirit of passion, effectively speaks herself out ofrebellion and writes herself into
. conservatism. Bertha Mason, in contrast, refuses to use the language of her husband, a
language that has served the patriarchal and imperialistic purposes of"her master."
'Speech, which is initially represente~ as liberating in the novel, is suppressed in favor of
silence. But a refusal to speak, which can be seen as subversive in Bertha, is mere
quietism when used by Jane.
·Bertha Mason Rochester is brought to England ten years before Edward
Rochester meets Jane Eyre. Jane is nineteen when she meets, loves, and leaves Rochester,
and therefore nine or ten when Bertha begins her incarceration. Around the time Jane is
locked up in the Red Room, Bertha has undergone imprisonment for about a year. Jane
leaves Gateshead, the scene of inte~se suffering for her, when she is ten and Bertha,
significantly, jumps to her death from the roof of Thornfield after being locked up for ten
years there. Although the child Jane and the reader are unaware ofthe eXistence ofBertha
Mason at the time the Red Room incident occurs, Jane, the narrator is not. Significantly,
Bertha is not announced until the end ofthe second volume. Although Jane's experience
of oppression at Gateshead is similar in kind, though not degree, to that ofBertha's at
2
Thornfield, at no point in the novel does the narrator make an empathetic connection
between her own experience and Bertha's. Her inability to reveal this connection
represents a blindness to her solidarity with women who are neither British nor middle
class. By limiting her sympathy to the class she aspires to join, albeit on her own terms,
r
and to her nationality, she fails to acknowledge that her individual feminism is
underwritten by the agency of the "other" woman.
Both Jane and Bertha are locked in different rooms ofwhat is essentially the same
patriarchal house. In fact, most women in Jane Eyre are mere caretaker§ at best in the
houses they inhabit. They cannot enforce their own wish~s. They exist only to do the
bidding oftheir masters, both alive and dead. Mrs. Reed is "tied" metaphorically by the
promise she was forced to make to her husband at his deathbed that she would bring up
Jane in her household; Miss Temple has to exercise fi~rce self-repression in order to do the
bidding ofMr. Brocklehurst. In fact, it requires superhuman effort on her part to do so:
"her mouth closed as ifit would have required a sculptor's chisel to open it, and her brow
settled gradually into petrified severity" (66).6 Mrs. Fairfax, literally being the keeper of
Mr. Rochester's house, cannot be both Rochester's employee arid the companion Jane
craves for. Jane's initial disappointment at realizing that Fairfax, with whom she had
corresponded about her job, is not the mistress of Thornfield, but the housekeeper, might
have been due to an unconscious realization that Mrs. Fairfax is yet another woman
. maintaining the establishment ofyet another absentee patriarch. She, like Mrs. Reed and
Miss Temple, although they appear to have power of control over their establishments, are
shown later to have power only by proxy. All three women live in fear, contempt, or awe
3
of the men whose interests they serve. Working class women such as Bessie, •Abbot, and
Grace Poole are, in turn, paid and supervised by the male-sanctioned female figures to
guard the doors of other marginalized women like Jane and Bertha. 7
Despite these hierarchical barriers to solidarity, there are instances of rebellion and
genuine sympathy between women in the novel. Bessie grows to love her charge, and
Grace Poole, Bertha's goaler, assists Bertha by drinking, thereby liberating Bertha and
providing herself with an excuse to deflect the master's wrath at the same time. Miss
Temple defies Mr. Brocklehurst's order to feed the girls at Lowood with food bought
with her own money. Mrs. Fairfax ignores her loyalty to her employer to warn Jane ofthe
danger 'she might face by marrying Rochester. These instances of solidarity, however, are
few and far between.
Wh~t
is memorable in the text is Jane's intense individuality and her
idyllic communion with Diana and Mary, women of herown class, education, and
upbringing, who, even more ideally, are revealed as members of her long-lost biological
and spiritual family. Jane does not fully identify with other women unless they conform to
her ideal sisterhood -- British, middle class, educated,· young and genteel. British women
such as Bessie, Abbot, Mrs. Fairfax, Grace Poole, Hannah, and European women like
Giacinta, Celine, Clara, Sophie as well as Adele somehow fall short ofthis idealwhich is
comprised along national, class, educational, as well as ageist, lines. Identification with
Bertha, in this light, is even more far-fetched because, being upper class and Creole, she is
at once both superior and inferior to Jane by Jane's own standards. s
Jane's need for such narrow and limiting identification with women of her own
class prevents her from recognizing fellow sufferers. Despite the inability ofthe older
4
Jane, who narrates, to make the connection between Bertha and herself, it is apparent that
Little Jane is a miniature ofBertha Mason. She is called a "fury" (12), "a picture of
passion" (12), a "mad cat" (12), a "bad animal" (9), or, as Jane states herself, "I was a
trifle beside myself; or rather out of myself' (12). We hear the same terms used by
Edward Rochester, but this time to describe Bertha to Jane. Yet, the language used to
describe an upper-class Creole woman from the colonies is stronger than the language
used to describe the potential individualist feminist heroine ofBritish literature. 4
After the thirty thousand pounds that Bertha brings with her is possessed, she
literally becomes the white man's burden. The sins ofthe father, however, come to haunt
the son with a vengeance. As Diedre David points out, "The "crime" is invasion into the
West Indian society by a greedy gentry class in search of profitable marriage; it is
committed by Rochester's father, his brother, and himself, and its victim is Bertha,
"incarnate" in her prowling counter-invasion into the life and domestic space ofthe
invader" (84) and "the metropolitan spaces of empire" (91).
The "fine woman," therefore, who is "tall, dark, and majestic" (321)
becomes a "filthy burden bound to" (325) Rochester, a "demon" (308), a "fearful hag"
(317), a "wild animal" (307), "a clothed hyena" (307) and a "bad, mad, and embruted
partner" (306).5 Bertha has "wolfish cries" (324), "giant propensities" (323), "tastes
obnoxious" (322) and a "nature wholly alien" (322) to Rochester's own. The novel turns.
imperialism on its head, as Susan Meyer points out, by not only showing that contact with
non-British, especially non-white races sullies and besIriirches the British, but also, as
Gayatri Spivak and Edward Said have theorized, discourse about the non-western "other"
5
not only differentiates the other from the colonialist, but also portrays them as inferior,
subhuman, childish, demonic, and animalistic.
Despite this differentiation and degradation ofBertha, Jane's position in the Reed
household is very much like that ofBertha's at Thornfield, because she, like Bertha, is an
outsider, and because she, again like Bertha, is different. The description ofLittle Jane's
condition could very well have been ofBertha's:
I was a discord at Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there: I had nothing in
harmony with Mrs. Reed and her children, or her chosen vassalage. Ifthey
did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them, They were not bound to
regard with affection a thing that could not sympathize with one among
them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in capacity,
in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding
to their pleasure, a noxioux thing, cherishing the germs ofindignation at
their treatment, ofcontempt of their judgement. (16, emphasis mine)
Jane maintains that Mrs. Reed viewed her as "an interloper not of her race" (17) and as an
"uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group" (17) because' she is
"bound by a hard-wrung pledge" (17). In the way she is regarded by the Reeds, Jane is no
different from Bertha, herself an outsider bound to Rochester's family by the pledge of
patriarchal law.
Fuithermore, Jane, like Bertha, lives in a house that does not belong to her:
'''Now, I'll teach you to rummage my book shelves; for they are 'mine; all the house
belongs to me, or will do in a few years'" (11), John Reed informs her. The pinnacle of
6
success for Jane occurs whm, at the end ofthe novel, she is able to tell Mr. Rochester that
she is '''Quite rich, sir. If you won't let me live with you, I can build a house of my own
close up to your door, and you may come and sit in my parlour when you want company
of an evening'" (458). Before Jane can goad Rochester with her newfound ability to build
her own house, though, Thornfield has to be brought do~. It is Bertharather than Jane
who brings down the house ofthe "master," both hers and Jane's. It is Bertha who
destroys the bastion of aristocratic patriarchy built by Rochester's forefathers. In the
process, the current patriarch is blinded and maimed and left at the mercy ofthe British
middle-class woman rrlde newly independent by the spoils of imperialism. The thirty
thousand pounds that Bertha Mason brought to England from the empire have ceased to
cushion the upper-class, patriarchal imperialism ofRochester.
Instead, money that
Jane inherits from her uncle in Madeira is equally divided between Jane, St John, Mary,
and Diana. Wealth from the colonies makes possible British individualist feminism and
ensures, as SusanMeyer points out, that the infidels inIndia are converted to the white
(J'
man's religion; that unbelievers at home are resigned to their lot, and that the navy is kept
in good working order for further expansion ofthe Empire. It is not insignificant that
Mary and Diana marry into the church and the navy. Among the four ofthem, British
~
middle class values are united with the missionary fervor of Christianity and the colonizing
fervor ofthe imperialistic project, for imperialism both supports them financially and is
supported by them intellectually, morally, physically, and culturally. AsEdward Said
points out,
7
Advanced writers and artists, the working class, and women--groups
marginal in the West--showed an imperialist fervor that increased in
intens~ty
and perfervid enthusiasm as competition among various European
and Amencan powers increased in brutality and senseless, even profitless,
control. Eurocentrism penetrated to the core ofthe workers' movement,
the women's movement, the avant-grade movements, -leaving no· one of
significance untouched. (222)
Jane, Mary, and Diana are all governesses by profession, which puts them in a precarious
position between the working and lower middle-classes that Said refers to. Jane's position
at Gateshead is considered even worse than a servant's since she doesn't earn her living
but lives at the mercy ofher aristocratic cousins. She is even reduced to begging when
she flees Thornfield. By dividing her money between her cousins, she re-invests it in
missionary work at home and abroad and in the British Navy, thereby participating in the
colonial project. Imperialism is questioned in the novel only to be more forcefully reaffirmed for the benefit of a narrow section ofBritish society. Jane's British individualist
feminism. must necessarily be unwritten by the spoils of the empire.
Although imperialism is only questioned superficially, 6 the discourse of oppression
pervades the novel. It is used, however, only as far asit helps shed light on Jane's
personal oppression. Because Ja,ne appropriates the language ofthe oppressed to describe
her state ofmind, the reader canget an inkling ofBertha's predicament by substituting
Jane's language for Bertha's. The voice that the author and the narrator deny Bertha, the
text allows: Jane's "brain was in a tumult" and her "heart in insurrection"; her "blood was
8
still warm, the mood ofthe revolted slave was still bracing [her] with its bitter vigor" (16).
Well might Bertha have asked herself, as Jane does, "Why was I always suffering, always
brow-beaten, always accused, forever condemned? Why could I never please?" (16).
Jane's refusal to "sit still" (12) elicits a threat of being "tied down" (12) by Miss
Abbott's garter belt, a scene later echoed when Rochester first ties Bertha's hands with
rope, then ties her to a chair. Although "this preparation for bonds, and the additional
ignominy it inferred, [takes] a little ofthe excitement out of" Jane (12), it by no means
lessens the fury ofBertha. Jane is only beginning to be initiated into a life of oppression,
while Bertha is almost at the end of one. Like Bertha, Jane is viewed as one "who always
looked as if she were watching everybody and scheming plots underhand," (26) and is
"credited for being a sort of infantile Guy Fawkes" (26). Bertha is described as being
"both cunning and malignant; she has never failed to take advantage of her guardian's
temporary lapses" (326), and she proves to be a more active Guy Fawkes who takes every
opportunity not just to burn the one who masters her, and the husband, patriarch, and
imperialist in him, but also to burn down what "houses" him (18).
Significantly, Bertha steadily becomes mad only after her marriage. She too
cannot "rummage through bookshelves" because a language that constantly misinterprets
her and serves the interests of her enemy cannot be her own. Her madness, in a sense, can
be seen as a refusal to talk or participate in a discourse that does not accurately represent
her. She needs only laughter to indicate her cynicism. She growls and screams to vent her
anger and rage. What Adrienne Rich calls "Jane's Feminist Manifesto" is followed by
Bertha's "same low, same hal hal" (115). One wonders whether it denoted sympathy or
9
'cymclsm. Bertha's form of expression consists of"eccentric murmurs; stranger than her
laugh. There were days when she was quite silent, but there were others when [Jane]
could not account for the sounds she made" (115).
Bertha's form of communication is what Linda Williams calls "a silence that
questions all language, a laughter that subverts all authority, a judgement that never gets
pronounced" (438). In its own way, it revises the "patriarchal myth ofthe irrationality of
women" (438), resists "all male paradigms by which female deviance has been
understood" (439), and insists "on the$ildness ofwomen's cultural experience" (439) not
only under patriarchy, as Williams discusses, but also under imperialism. Williams
compares Marleen Gorris's film to the final play of Aeschylus's Oresteia:
A female chorus of "Furies" is sold out in the first court of law by a male identified
goddess who is always for the male. Sweet-talked by Athena, the Furies go quietly to ,
their new home beneath the earth, making way for the progress ofthe city-state and its
new codes ofjustice. Repressed and re-named, the "Eumenides" now mask the ancient
, war between the sexes symbolized by Clytemnestra and Agamemnon's cycle or revenge.
Gorris's film returns to this war and to the original matriarchal power
repressed by this myth. Where the male myth gets rid ofthe unsightly,
raucous Furies by stage-managing a quiet exit, Gorris re-stages this descent
into the bowels ofthe earth in a feminist re-vision that transforms her
Furies' original rage into subversive laughter. (438-9)
Lv
Jane, the narrator, stage-manages a not-so-quiet exit for Bertha, making way for what
Meyer calls a "cleaned down" version of middle-class British feminist utopia.? Because
10
the utopia is underwritten by the spoils of an empire, though, at the cost of another
.
.
woman's life and the silencing of Jane's own rage, its victory is precarious at best.
Bertha refuses to participate in the discourse of her oppressors and
frequently endeavors to bum down her master's house instead of aspiring to build another
just like it as Jane does. 8Although they reach different conclusions, both Jane and Bertha
begin with similar emotions to similar experiences. They both, however, begin with rage.
A closer reading ofJane's behavior after the incident in the Red Room shows that her
initial reaction to'oppression, like Bertha's is one of rage. She claims, "my tongue
pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance; something spoke out of
me dver which I hand no control" (26). Mrs. Reed does not know whether Jane is a
"child or fiend" (26), and while she maintains that Jane is "not worthy ofnotice" (28), she
cannot hide her fear of Jane's wild propensities and her "passionate" (39) nature. Jane
admits to being constantly "roused by the same sentiment of deep· ire and desperate revolt"
because, as she states, "passion of resentment fermented now within me" (28).
But it does not take her long to channel her rage into language: 9 "Speak I must I
had been trodden on severely and must tum: but how? What strength had I to dart
retaliation at my antagonist? I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt
sentence" (37). This act of expression frees her: "Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with
ungovernable excitement," she continues to rail against her oppressors. She finds that
finally venting her anger is liberating: "my soul began to expand, to'exult, with the
strangest sense of freedom, oftriumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had
burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty" (38). When she tells .Mrs.
11
Reed that the dead "know how you shut me up all day long, and how you wish me dead"
(28), she could be unconsciously speaking for Bertha as well. 10
Jane, the narrator, admits that as a child, she "felt indeed only bad feelings surging
~
in [her] breast" (29). Like Bertha later, Jane cries "out in a high, savage veice" (39). The
"wild, involuntary cry" (18), "the dreadful noise" (18) she utters in the Red Room, which
"went right through me" (18), as Abbot admits, is increasingly channeled into speech.
When she realized that she cannot get the love and security she craves, however, she
represses her rage. behind an exterior of calmness and chooses to become silent. 11 In fact,
she does what Mrs. Reed wants her to do: '''Jane, I don't like cavillers and questioners:
besides, there is something truly forbidding about a child taking up her elders in that
manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent'" (8).
She stops "taking.up" authority and hides her rage behind pleasant talk and submissive
silence. She begins to find standing up to oppression rather taxing, answering Bessie's
admonition that she "should be bolder" (40) with "what! to get more knocks?" (41). She
cannot, understandably, sustain her rage at the oppression she undergoes:
A ridge oflighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of
my mind when I accused Mrs. Reed. The same ridge, black and blasted after the flames
are dead, would have represented as meetly my sUbsequent condition, when half an hour's
silence and reflection had shown me the madness ofmy conduct; and the dreariness ofmy
hated and hatingposition. Something ofvengeance 1 had tastedfor the first time; as
aromatic wine it seemed on swallowing, warm and racy: its after flavour, metallic and
corroding, gave me a sensation as if! had been poisoned. Willingly would lnow have
12
gone.and asked Mrs. Reed's pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from
instinct, that it was the way
to make her repulse me with double-scorn, thereby re-
exciting every turbulent impulse in my nature.
I wouldfain exercise some betterfaculty than that offierce
speaking; fain find nourishmentfor some lessfiendish feeling than that of
sombre indignation. I took a book--some Arabian Tales. I sat down and
endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own
thoughts swam always between me and the page I usuallyfound so
fascinating. (39-40, emphasis mine)
Here is a ten year-old Jane Eyre, on the brink of becoming a Bertha Mason. Both are in a
"hated and hating position." Both experience the heady feeling ofvengeance and the
"fiendish feeling" of"sombre indignation." Yet, as Politi points out, Jane has learned the
lesson ofventing her rage through speech. Sheclaims that before leaving Gateshead: "I
was going to say something about what passed bet~een me and Mrs. Reed; but on second
thought I considered it better to remain silent on that head" (41). Although she reads the
Arabian Tales, she fails to make the connection between female oppression abroad that is
described in her book and her own oppression in England9 . She owns she "could not
make sense ofthe subject" because her "own thoughts swam always between [her] and the
page." She can appropriate the language of oppression to serve her own ends but can
only calmly re-instate that. oppression or ignore it once her interests are satisfied. 12
It is this refusal to make a connection between her position and that ofthe'women
whom she reads about that enables her to accept. as a matter ofcourse what Spivak calls
13
Bertha's self-immolation for the sake ofBritish feminist individuality. In the passage
where Jane equates Rochester with a Turkish sultan, she not only refuses to see herself as
the equivalent of a harem inmate, but professes a sup~riority over them in claiming to be
the one who "would preach liberty to them who are ens~aved" (282). Any sorority with
the harem inmates implied in this statement is undercut by her superiority over them: "I
will not exchange this one little English girl for the grand Turk's whole seraglio; gazelle
eyes, houri forms and all"(282).13 "The eastern allusion bit me again," she claims and she
vehemently declares:
.
"I'll not stand you an inch in the stead of a seraglio...so don't consider me
an equivalent for one; ifyou have a fancy for anything in that line, away·
with you, sir, to the bazaars of Stamboul without delay; and lay you in
extensive purchases some ofthat spare cash you seem at a loss to spend
satisfactorily here."
"And what will you do, Janet, while. I'm bargainin~ for so many
tons of flesh and such an assortment of black eyes?"
"I'll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach liberty
to them that are enslaved--your Harem inmates among the rest. I'll get
admitted there, and stir up a mutiny; and you, three-tailed bashaw as you
are, sir, shall in a trice find yourself fettered amongst our hands; nor will I,
for one, consent to cut your bonds tm you have signed a charter, the most
liberal that despot ever yet conferred."
"I would consent to be at your mercy, Jane."
14
"I would have no mercy, Mr. Rochester, ifyou supplicated for it
with an eye like that. While you looked so, I should be certain that
whatever charter you might grant under coercion, your first act, when
released, would be to violate its conditions." (282)
The irony ofthis passage is that Jane is soon about to find out that Rochester already had
bargained for "so many tons offlesh and such an assortment of black eyes," in the guise of
Bertha whose physical size and black visage are described quite prominently. He has not
bargained with his money as much as with his name, birth, and connections. In fact, while
he has been buying a bride, he" has also been selling himself in marriage for thirty thousand
pounds. As Edward Said has explained, colonialism was not a one-way street but an
endeavor in which both the colonizers and the colonized were complicit, so much so that
Rochester later realizes that he cannot leave the "hell" (324) and the "refulgent. ..tropics"
(325) to follow the "wind fresh from Europe" (325) without the "filthy burden..bound to"
(325) him. The marriage he has made with the empire proves to be more than he can
handle.
While Rochester is trying to break free from an alliance of his own
making, Jane refuses to acknowledge one that already exists between herself and Bertha.
Jane speaks of having Rochester fettered when it is he who has one of Jane's own sex
fettered upstairs in the house Jane and Bertha share. She gives him leave to make
extensive slave purchases with the "spare cash" he has been using to buy presents for her,
as long as he doesn't presume to use his money to treat her like a harem-inmate, thereby
".
separating herself as different and superior to other women. As Joyce Zonana has" argued,
15
/
by couching British patriarchy in Orientalist discourse, and labeling as Eastern any
objectionable aspect ofthe European treatment ofwomen, British feminism was able to
portray getting rid of patriarchy as the "West ridding itself of its oriental ways, becoming
as a consequence more Western--that is, more rational, enlightened, reasonable" (602).
Zonana maintains, "'the English husband' who lords it in his little harem" (167) is guiltier
than his Eastern counterpart, for the despotism in the harem is not natural to Europe.
Unlike the "Turk," the English husband goes against the grain of his race and culture, as
does any Western woman who accepts such '''Eastern' treatment of her" (601).14
Thus, Jime's initial response to Rochester's declaration that "hiring a mistress is
the next worst thing to buying a slave" (328) is a self-preservatoryrealization that "he
would one day regard [her] with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their
memory" (329). She, therefore, decides not "to become the successor ofthese poor girls"
and to use the lesson "to serve her in the time oftrial" (329). Although we might be
tempted to read this statement as an example of her sympathy for Celine, Giacinta, and
Clara, the text prevents us from doing so, because, as with the women ofthe harem, Jane
is differentiated from them. Jane, the reader is made to infer, is the "intellectual, faithful,
loving woman" (329) whom Rochester has despaired of ever finding. She is to be an
improvement over not only Celine, who is described as mercenary, superficial, and
duplicitous, bqt also Giancinta, who is "unprincipled and violent" (328), Clara, who is
"heavy, mindless, unimpressable" (329) and, of course,Bertha, who receives the cruellest
description of all, being called "coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile" (322), "at once
intemperate and unchaste" (323) with a "pigmy intellect" (323), and as having "giant
16
propensities" (324). These descriptions ofBertha occur even before she is discovered to
be mad by Rochester. A text that allows identification only between British middle-class
women at the expense of all other women, both non-British and non-middle class,
necessarily prevents a different reading ofwhat could otherwise be seen as Jane's rare
, moments of sympathy with them. In this light, it is understandable that Elizabeth Rigby
should wonder why a woman who has been at Lowood "for eight years with 110 girls and
eight teachers" (Rigby 139) should not have any friends. Jane cannot sympathize with
both Rochester and Bertha or, for that matter, with any of his past mistresses. His
treatment ofthem, ranging from indifference and contempt to hatred, necessarily dictates
that Jane either side with them or support Rochester.
Jane begins by sympathizing with Bertha and his past mistresses: '''you are
inexorable for that unfortunate lady; you speak of her With hate--with vindictive antipathy.
It is cruel--she cannot help being mad, '" (317). Yet by the end of his narrative, he
succeeds in getting her to pity him. Bertha, Celine, Giacinta, and Clara are silenced by the
author, the narrator; and the text. The reader only seesthem through the subjectivity of
Rochester. The author's decision to give a voice to Rochester at the expense of"other" .
women is problematic. In light of how language is misused by Rochester to give distorted
representations of women, however, one is led to wonder whether it might be better to
eschew language altogether,as Bertha does, than allow it to beguile and sway one's
judgeme~t,
as Jane allows it to. As Jane admits about her experience of reading the
Arabian Nights, "my own thoughts always swam between me and the page I usually found
so fascinating" (40). Her self-obsession dictates not only what she gives her eyes and. ears
17
to but also even whether she'sees or listens at all. She cannot make the connection
between the oppre~sion in the book and the oppression in her own' life just as she cannot
make the necessary leap of imagination to hear what is not being said by Bertha as well as
Rochester. Her "own thoughts"--that is, her individualist feminism--get in the way.
Jane's inability to see possible connections beyond herself makes her move from
being a potential Bertha Mason to Bertha's antithesis. Rochester makes this
metamorphosis clear when he states, "That is my wife," showing Bertha, and claiming,
"and this is what I wished to have, this young girl,. who stands so grave and quiet at the
mouth qf hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon. I wanted her just as a
change after this fierce ragout" (308). Jane's grave, quiet, and collected exterior, as the
reader very well knows, is only a facade for the "gambols of a demon" that lie suppressed
beneath. Her repressed anger, this "indignation" and "rage" (73) pervades the novel and
erupts in occasional bouts that made Virginia Woolf claim that Charlotte Bronte "was at
war with her lot" and therefore could not help but "die young, cramped and thwarted"
(73).
It is Bertha, however, who is manifestly at "war with her lot" and who dies
"young, cramped and thwarted" while Jane lives in relative peace with her lot. Female
rage and rebellion, which characterize Jane's childhood, are superceded by class interests
and imperialist ideology by the end ofthe novel. Jane Eyre, who has been a "little roving,
solitary thing" (40) all her life--the one who has been marginalized from the Reed /
Brocklehurst / Ingram / Eshton family groups because of her lack of wealth and position-is finally allowed her place among them on her own terms, thanks to the wealth from the
18
colonies. The child Jane, who used the language of the oppressed to describe her situation
at Gateshead, emphatically ends her narrative with the words of St. John Rivers, who
equates imperialism with the will of God.
It is this "cleaning down," as Susan Meyer calls it--this white-washing ofthe text
to leave only British middle-class, feminist, individualist, heterosexuality --that prevents
Jane Eyre from seeing beyond the "black and scarlet visage" (327), beyond the
"discoloured," "savage" Bertha with 'the fearful blackened inflation ofthe ligaments"
(297), to one who is not only a fellow sufferer but the one who ultimately provides Jane's
salvation. Without the Empire, there would be no money to allow Jane to become
. Rochester's economic equal. Without Bertha, there would be no destruction ofthe upperclass and no "taming" ofmale social, economic, and sexual power. In fact, British
feminism would consist ofteaching "heavy looking gaping rustics'; (385) and endeavoring
to resign herselfto her lot while repressing one's sexuality and rage and thanking God's
"providence in ius guidance" all the while (379).15
Jane's repression of rage, however, is not so much a cowardly action on her part
as a response to her marginal existence since childhood. Her experiences at Gateshead
have shown her that rebellion doesn't bring her the love that she yearns for, but neither
does good behavior. She is made to suffer by virtue ofthe fact that she is solitary,
unconnected, and poor. She asks herself, "Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned? Why could I~ever please? Why was it
useless to try to win anyone'sfavour? .. .I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfill every
duty; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen.an,d sneaking, from morning to noon,
19
and from noon to night" (15). What prevents her from becoming Bertha is her eight years
at Lowood, where she is educated into repressing her indignation through the influence of
Helen Bums and Miss Temple. As Helen preaches, "'it is far b'etter to endure patiently a
smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil
consequences will extend to all connected with you--and, besides, the Bible bids us to
return good for evil' "(58). She ends her homily with what is essentially an order to
internalize one's suffering: "it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is
weak and silly to say that you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear" (58).
Helen's fatalism coupled with Miss Temple's example of "serenity in her air, of state in her
mien, of refined propriety in her language, which precluded deviation into the ardent, the
excited, the eager" (76), becomes a facade that keeps the lid on stronger emotions, a code
of conduct that is not natural but painstakingly cultivated.
It is the conditioning that she receives at Lowood, together with her natural fear of
the monsters that her oppressed situation will give rise to, that encourages her to cultivate
this code of patiently bearing what she, in her fledgling feminist individualism, holds to be
something which affects only her. There is a presentiment of Jane's fear of unchecked
emotions and'her future repression ofthem in the Red Room scene:
As I sat looking at the white bed and· over-shadowed walls--occasionally
also turning a fascinating eye at the dimly gleaming mirror--I began to
.'
recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled. in their graves by the
violation oftheir last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the pe~ured and
avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit, harassed by the
20 '
.I
wrongs of his sister's, might quite his abode--whether in the church vault
Of in the unknown world ofthe departed--and rise before me in this
chamber. I wiped my tears and hush~d my sobs; fearful lest any sign of
violent griefmight waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit
from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me in strange pity. This
idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realized: with all my
might, I endeavoured to stifle it--I endeavoured to be fine. (17)
Jane chooses to hush her sobs and wipe her tears because she is more afraid ofwhat is
needed to eliminate the causes of her oppression. She would rather stifle her pain and
endeavor to be firm than let loose her rage and sorrow. Thus, we see her dealing with the
knowledge of her rival, Blanche Ingram, with great-resoluteness and firmness: "Order! No
snivell--no sentiment! --no regret! I will endure only sense and resolution," and "ere long
I had reason to congratulate myself on the course ofwholesome discipline to which I had
thus forced myself to submit" (170). The knowledge ofthe existence ofRochester's first
wife produces firmness equal to her sorrow:
A voice in me averred thatJ could do it: and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with
my own resolution: I wanted to be weak so that I might avoid the awful passage of further
suffering I saw laid out before me; and conscience,. turned tyrant, held passion by the
throat, told her, tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore
that with that arm of iron, he would thrust her down to the unsounded depths of agony.
(314)
21
It is no wonder that Rochester is surprised that Jane, for being so passionate,
shows no vehemence, but "sits quietly where [he has] placed [her] regarding [him] with a
weary passive look" (314). Ever since leaving the Red Room, Jane has gradually
endeavoured to stifle, repress, and deny her passions of rage, sorrow, fear, and
loneliness 16 . Bertha herself has to com~down from the "other" world to punish the
pe~ured
Rochester and avenge the oppressed Jane. As Jane both hoped and feared in the
Red Room, her own grief does elicit "from the gloom some hallowed face that bends over
her in strange pity" (17), not despite her endeavouring to stifle her grief but because of it.
Jane is forced to face her rage in the guise ofa "spectre" or a "Vampyre": "she thrust up
her candle close to my face, and extinguished it under my eyes. I was aware her lurid
visage flamed over mine, and I lost consciolIsness; for the second time in my life--only the
second time in life--I became insensible from terror" (297).
Jane loses consciousness, as in the Red Room, when made to face intense rage.
Both the Red Room and the "Vampyre" connote blood, anger, and sexuality. As she
mistook the light of a lantern for a ghost the first time, she identifies Bertha with danger
when it is the veil, or what it symbolizes, that she should try to avert. As in the Red
Room, she mis-identifies the source of her danger. Bertha "gazed long" at the veil, tore it
in two and trampled upon it, not because she harkened back to her bridal days as
Rochester arrogantly assumes but because rending it seems a way ofwarning Jane of
impending doom, or "her 'veiled' existence" (612), as Joyce Zonana terms it. At no time
does she harm Jane, although she could easily have, because Jane, we are told,is not in the
habit oflocking her door. In contrast, Bertha attempts to bum Rochester in his bed,
22
thereby reversing the act of sati, where the living wife ritually sacrifices herself by
throwing herself on the pYre of her husband. There is no passive self-immolation ofthe
colonial subject here that Spivak refers to (804). Bertha's "white and s~raight" apparel
cannotbe identified as "gown or sheet or shroud" (297), signifying, perhaps, that
femininity and female sexuality are interchangeable with death for those imprisoned by
patriarchal power. Bertha, like the "vampyre" she is mistaken for, demands blood,
stabbing and biting her brother, who, together with her father, was responsible for selling
her into marriage.
Bertha's death should not be seen as victimization but as positive agency. She
refuses to be "saved" by Rochester, jumping to her death before he can reach her. She
contrasts blatantly with Jane, who claims, "if! had but a prospect of one day bringing Mr.
Rochester an accession of fortune, I could better endure to be kept by him now" (281-2).
The fire that Bertha creates has tangible consequences for Rochester -- "one eye was
knocked out" and "one hand was so crushed" that it had to be amputated directly (452).
Jane's admonition to herself that "you shall, yourself, pluck out your right eye; yourself
cut offyour right hand" (314) comes true, quite ominously, yet it is not· Jane who does it,
but Bertha who also ensures that "the house was burnt to the ground" (451).
Bertha's agency has visible and tangible results. Her subversion and rebellion
cannot be viewed asthe actions of Jane's "mad double" or "surrogate" as Sandra Gilbert
and Susan Gubar maintain. Bertha is more than "the female "avatar" in whom "Jane's
covert rebellion and sexuality" is isolated. l ? To see her as su~h is to view her existence
only in terms ofJane. Such a reading perpetuates the Eurocentric myth that the non23
western world, which Bertha personifies, does not exist unless it is narrated into being by
Jane Eyre or-Charlotte Bronte. Bertha's silence does not denote a lack of existence, but a
refusal to·fo1l9w the script ofwhat the narrator and the author deem as "normal." On the
other side ofthe spectrum, critics such as Spivak and Suvendrini Perera, who see Bertha
only as a victim, as a "self-immolating subject," deny her the agency that governs her
actions. It is possible to interpret Bertha as a figure offeminist anti-colonial opposition as
much as a victim of patriarchal and imperialistic oppression.
Either way, it is better to see her than to gloss over her agency completely. Jina
Politi states that "Jane runs away so that the workings of Divine Providence may bring
about her rise in social status and save her marriage to Rochester from becoming a social
offence" (89, emphasis mine). Mary Poovey also maintains that Jane's anger is displaced
from her character to other characters and the text, as does Eagleton:
Jane's repressed indignation at a dominative society, prudently swallowed back
throughout the book, is finally released--not by Jane herself, but by the novelist;· and the
victim is the symbol of that social order, Rochester. Rochester is the novel's sacrificial
offering to the social conventions, to Jane's,.unconscious antagonism and, indeed, to her
own puritan guilt. By satisfying all three simultaneously, it allows her to· adopt a properly
submissive place in society while experiencing a fulfilling love and taste for power. The
outcast bourgeois achieves more than a humble place at the fireside: she also achieves
independence vis-a-vis the upper class, and the right to engage in the process of"taming"
it. The worldly Rochester has alreadybeen tamed by fire: it is now for Jane to
"rehumanize" him. (Eagleton 59)
24
Eagleton, like Gilbert and Gubar, is gUilty ofwhat Donaldson calls the "Miranda
Complex." Like Miranda, who cannot see that she is as oppressed as a woman as Caliban .
is oppressed as a colonial subject, both Jane and critics of Jane Eyre fail to see Bertha at
all, attributing what she achieves at the cost of her life as something procured by the
novelist or the text. Laura Donaldson and Joyce Zonana, on the other hand, have viewed
Jane's freedom as being indebted to Bertha's "self-destructive rebellion" (612). Donaldson
.
.
.
argues that Gilbert and Gubar's placement ofBertha within that genre ofwoman's
fantasies "in which maddened doubles functioned as asocial surrogates for docile selves"
irrevocably alienates her from culture--a denial of autonomy and subjectivity which they
deplore when it oppresses Anglo-European women. Gilbert and Gubar's regret about
')ust how much women's history has beenlost·or misunderstood" ironically underscores
the limitations oftheir own methodology, since their own "distinctly female" tapestry
bleaches women of color into an asocial invisibility. (70)
Zonana argues for a more positive reading ofBertha's death:
-
Defying the master who enslaved her, she asserts her freedom only to find
Death as its inevitable price. As long as the despotic system is in place, no
"-
woman can truly be free, yet the suicide of a rebellious woman serves as a
powerful condernnation--and potential transformation ofthat system. (612)
Bertha destroys a bastion of male power when she burns down Thornfield·Hall. Ferndean
Manor, although "quite a desolate spot" (454), and another house ofRochester's,
.remains. ·This house, however, lacks the haughty and aristocratic trappings of Thornfield
Hall, which suits J~ne's newly acquired bourgeois sensibilities. Instead of building her
25
own house up next to her master's; Jane decides to live at Femdean Manor. She, after all,
never desired to bring down the master's house, only to bring the house and its master
down to her level. Patriarchy has not been destroyed; it has only been trimmed, like
Rochester's "thick and long uncut locks" (459). Jane, in the ~ole ofDelilah, has willingly
"undertake[ri] to re-humanize" (459) Rochester's Samson once his power has been
reduced to a more manageable level.
It is Bertha who fulfills Jane's credo for her:
You are good to those people who are good to you. It is all I desire to be.
If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust,
the wicked people would have it all their way: they would never feel afraid,
and so they would never' alter, but grow worse and worse. When we are
struckwithout a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure
we should --so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it
again. (60)
The actualization ofthis credo by Bertha makes her Queen Vashti, the first wife ofKing .
Ahasuerus, whom Rochester is compared to by Jane (274). Queen Vashti is banished by
the king, who vows to "give her royal estate unto another who is better than she is" for
her refusal to be commanded by him. When the counselors point out that her recalcitrance
might "come abroad unto all women," King Ahasuerus passes a law that "every man
should bear rule in his own house" (Zonana 609). While it is true that Jane refuses to be
.
.
Esther, the King's replacement for Vashti, it is not Jane's refusal that "signals an
26
·
.
engagement in...the reform of her master" (Zonana 609) as much as Bertha's burning of .
the house so that the master could have no house to rule. 18
Ultimately, the novel eradicates the anger that characterizes its beginning. Jane,
who showed promise as becoming the British feminist individualist ofEnglish literature,
gives up the struggle halfway, and Bertha, her upper- class, foreign counterpart, sees the.
struggle to theend--her end, anyway. Had Jane known that her British middle-class
heterosexual life, with rage suppressed, would be interpreted as being indebted to Bertha's
agency and that it is Bertha who ultimately "strikes back very hard.....so hard as to teach
the person who struck.. never to do it again" (60), she would not have been happy. Little
Jane, when "loaded with general opprobrium" against "farther irrational violence" (15)
reports,
Unjust! --unjust! said my reason, forced by the agonizing stimulus into
precocious though transitory power; and Resolve, equally wrought up,
instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable
oppression--as running away, or, ifthat could not be effected, ... letting
myselfdie. (16, emphasis mine)
These are Jane's words, but Bertha's actions.
27
Notes
1. On Miss Temple's and Helen Burns's roles in subduing Jane's character, see JinaPoliti
who discusses how silence in Jane Eyre leads towards" a tidying, a consolidating of class
positions" (1990).
2. For an excellent analysis of Jane's fear ofjoining the ranks of the working class, see
Jina Politi (1975). Also see Terry Eagleton (1975) and Susan Meyer (1990) for
discussions on class.
3. According to Susan Meyer, "By associating the qualities of darkness. and
imperiousness, Bronte suggests that imperialism brings out both these undesirable qualities
in the imperialist, that the British aristocracy in particular, has been sullied, darkened, and
made imperious and oppressive by the workings of empire" (1990, 109). Meyer argues
that darkness is associated with aristocrats stch as John Reed, Mrs. Reed, Mr.
Brocklehurst, Blanche and Rochester as well as Bertha who is upper class although not of
a 'good race'. I would addthat Jane's paleness and St John's fair countenance are
emphasized to denote their purity and oppression as a class.
4. This was a term coined by Gayatri Spivak (1985).·
5. See Elsie Mitchie's interpretation ofthe figure ofRochester. She claims that
Rochester, who is "not quite/not white," to use a phrase coined by Homi Bhabha,
"exercise(s) brutal mastery over a Jamaican wife who differs little from himself in term of
skin color" (1996, 586). I would further argue that both Bertha and Rochester have
become whatHomi Bhabha calls hybri~s as a result ofthe colonial encounter. Diedre
David argues that Rochester, although initially" 'ignorant, raw, and inexperienced" (that
is to say, sexually naive), ... goes out to Jamaica and marries a woman who initially
proves to be sexually exciting" (1995, 107-108). Rochester's initial complicity with and
subsequent abhorrence ofthe marriage with the empire proves that, as Elsie Mitchie
states, "the position ofthe colonizers is not unitary or monolithic but multivalent: In
particular, as ... HomiBhabha suggests, colonists both desire and feat colonial mastery,
an ambivalence" (1996, 584) that Rochester personifies.
6. Imperialism is only criticized, as Susan Meyer argues, in terms of how contact with
foreign races "besmirches" the British (1990). Diedre David elaborates further onlIUs
theme by arguing that it is Jane's d~ty to reform Rochester who has been corrupted by his
contact with Bertha and therefore has to be saved by the love of a pure woman such as
Jane (1995). Jina Politi argues along the same lines, although she restricts the foreign
women under discussion to Europeans: "Jane, from being governess to a child, becomes
governess to a man and governess to a nation" (1975, 89).
28
'
7. Susan Meyer states "The symbolic revolution is initiated by the dark woman who has
been imported from the colonies to signify both the oppressed and the oppressor. Bertha
institutes the great act of cleaning in the novel, which bums away Rochester's oppressive
colonial wealth and diminishes the power ofhis gender, but then she herself is cleaned
~way" (1990, 121).
8. Terry Eagleton points out that Bronte's heroines "negotiate passionate self-fulfillment
on terms which preserve the social and moral conventions intact" by adopting social roles
which had oppressed them before (1975,4, 16)
9. For an analysis ofJane's use of speech for purposes of liberation, see Janet Freeman
(1984) and Jina Politi (1975).
10. Karen Stein explores how "the term 'madness' is applied to the behavior of an 'outsider,' 'an objectified other,' and how "shifting the focus to the subjectivity ofthe person
behaving in an abnormal way" grants us a sympathetic awareness ofthe individual's inner
realities" (1983,125). I argue that by substituting Jane's speech for Bertha's, one can get
an inkling ofBertha's subjectivity.
11. See Terry Eagleton (1975) for analysis ofthe relationship between silence and
middle-class femininity. Also, Jina Politi who claims that Jane "merely confirms Mr.
Brocklehurst's de-sexualising ideology which splits the female image according to class
into that of Quaker sobriety" (1975, 89)
12. Parama Roy argues that "while Jane and her creator castigate patriarchalism at home
- as embodied in the world ofthe house and in sundry patriarchs - they most heartily
applaud patriarchalism abroad, in the shape ofreligiouS" and political empire -building.
Further, Jane, who is chary of being patronized by her wealthy lover is perfectly content to
accept a fortune originating in the West Indies - a colony whose economy was based on
slave labor" (1989,723). Jane does not accept patriarchy, but she not only accepts, but·
also supports imperialism asher valorization of St John suggests; .
13. Mary Ellis Gibson argues that Jane identifies "herselfwith the harem slave and the
suttee" (1987, 7). I agree with Joyce Zonana (1991)and Diedre David (1995) that she
poses herself as superior to the harem slave.
14. Joyce Zonana is analyzing here the implicationsofMary Wollstonecraft's use of
Orientalist discourse. Zonana's analysis applies to Bronte's use of Orientalist discourse
as well.
29
15. See Claire Kahane for a discussion ofthe difference between rage,. which is
"powerful, but not political" and outrage, which "fastens ori to an object and
cannot let go until it has achieved its aim; transformation ofthe object" (1991, 20).
I attribute rage to Jane, but outrage to Bertha.
16. Jerome Beaty observes that "the novel that began with Jane ends with 8t John;
the novel that began with rebellion end s with martyrdom. ~ven the story ofthe
proud, saucy, self-reliant orphan Jane Eyre ends with the chastened, religious,
privileged, and satisfied wife and mother Jane Rochester" (1996, 213).
17.Tamar Heller (1993,54).
18.Cynthia Carlton-Ford argues that Jane is no "Joan of Are, offering herself, in
an echo ofthe suttee passage, to be 'grilled alive in Calcutta'. Neither passion nor
piety can tempt Jane to self-sacrifice." I find it hard to agree with her that Jane is
both "Vestia, the goddess of hearth and home, and Prometheus, the rebel." It is
Bertha that I see as being Prometheus, "bringing fire to her sisters and thus
empowering them" (1988, 384-85).
30
Works Cited
Beaty, Jerome. Decentering the Author: Charlotte Bronteis Misreading of Jane Eyre.
Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1996.
Carlton - Ford, Cynthia. "Intimacy Without Iinmolation; Fire in Jane Eyre." Women's
Studies 15 (1988): 375-386.
David, Diedre. "The Governess ofEmpire: Jane Eyre Takes Care ofIndia and Jamaica."
Rule Britannia: Women, Empire and Victorian Writing. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995.
Donaldson, Laura E. "The Miranda Complex." Decolonising Feminisms:
Race, Gender, and Empire Building. London: Routledge and University
ofNorth Carolina Press, 1993 .
. Eagleton, Terry. Myths ofPower: a Marxist Study ofthe Brontes. London: Macmillan,.
1975.
Freeman, Janet H. "Speech and Silence in Jane Eyre." SEL 24 (1984): 683-700.
Gibson, Mary Ellis. liThe Seraglio or Suttee; Bronte's Jane Eyre." Postscript 14
(1987): 1-8.
Gilbert, Sandra M and Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic: The
Woman Writer and the Nineteenth- Century Literary Imagination. New
Haven: Yale UP, 1979.
Heller, Tamar. "Jane Eyre, Bertha and the Female Gothic." Approaches to Teaching
Jane Eyre. Hoeveler, Diane Long (ed.); Lan, beth (ed.) New York: MLA of
America, 1993.
Kahane, Claire. "The Aesthetic Politics ofRage:" LIT 3.1 (1991): 19-31.
Meyer, Susan. "Colonialism and the Figurative Strategy of Jane Eyre.
Victorian Studies 33:2 (Winter 1990): 247-68.
--Mitchi~,
11
Elsie. "White Chimpanzees and Oriental Despots: Racial Stereotyping and
.Edward Rochester." Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Jane Eyre.
. Newman, Beth (ed.) Boston: Bedford/St Martins, 1996. 584-597.
,31
Perera, Suvendrini. Reaches ofEmpire: The English Novel from Edgeworth to Dickens
New York: Colombia University Press, 1991
Politi, Jina. "Jane Eyre Class-ified." Literature and History 1 (1975).
Poovey, Mary. liThe Anathematised Race: The Governess and Jane Eyre"
Uneven Developments: the Ideological Wark of Gender in MidVictorian England. London: ,1989. 126-48.
Rich, Adrienne. "Jane Eyre: the Temptations ofa Motherless Woman." On
Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978. NewVork: W.W.
Norton, 1979. 889-106.
Rigby, Elizabeth. "Review of Jane Eyre: An Autoboigraphy." Critical Essays on
Charlotte Bronte. Gates, Barbara Tim (ed.). Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1990.
139-142.
Roy, Parama. "Unaccommodated Woma~ and the Poetics ofProperty in Jane Eyre."
SEL 29 (1989): 714-727.
Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1993.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Three Woman's Texts and a Critique of
Imperialism." Critical Inquiry 12 (1985). 243-61.
Stein, Karen F. "Monsters and Madwomen: Changing Female Gothic." Female Gothic.
Fleener, Juliane (ed.). Montreal: Eden, 1983.
Williams, Lind~l. "A Jury of Their Peers: Marlene Gorris's A Question of
Silence." Postmodernism and Its Discontents. Verso, 1988.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1929.
Zonana, Joyce. liThe Sultan and·the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of
Jane Eyre. Signs: Journal ofWomen in Culture and Society 18:3 (1991).
592-617.
11
32
\
ERANGEE K. KUMARAGE
420B East Third street,
Bethlehem, PA 18015
610 694 8632 (home)~
610 758 5934 (office)
[email protected]
OBJECTIVE
Currently, to remain a funded graduate student with a
teachLng appointment. In the near future, to obtain a PhD
and a position: in the fields of Victorian and World
Anglophone literature and feminist theory.
PLACE AND DATE OF BIRTH
Colombo, Sri Lanka; March·S th 1974.
NAME OF· PARENTS
Mr. K.D.C. Kumarage and Mrs. Amara Rathnayake
EDUCATION
Lehigh University - Masters Program in English (1997-99).
University of Maine at Farmington - BA in English and
History with a minor in philosophy, cum laude (1993-97).
Colombo International School, Sri Lanka - British Advanced
Level in English, history, and economics (1991-93).
(1979-90)
Sri Lankan Ordinary Level Exams - eight subjects
British Ordinary Level Exams - six subjects
Bishop's College, Sri Lanka -
TEACHING, EMPLOYMENT, AND OTHER PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE
Fall and Spring 1997-2000
Teaching Assistant for Freshman Composition I and II
at Lehigh University.
Summer 1997
Teaching Assistant and Resident Advisor for Summer
Experience Progr~m at the University of Maine.
Fall and Spring 1994-97
Writing Tutor at the University of Maine.
Summer 1998
33
Employed privately as an English-SAT and TOEFL prep
tutor.
Summer 1996
Journalist for national .newspaper in Sri Lanka;
contributed articles on women's issues.
Summer 1995
Editor of newsletter in a NGO in Sri Lanka for Human Rights and Development."
~Lawyers
ACADEMIC AWARDS, PUBLICATIONS AND LEADERSHIP POSITIONS
SUMMER 1999
Wrote the introduction to a Sinhalese translation of R.K.
Narayan's novel, The Guide.
Lehigh University
Participant in panel that presented a paper at the
Medieval Forum, Plymouth st. College, NH(4/99).
University of Maine:
Honors Scholar- class of 1997.
Honor Thesis on Jane Austen - 1997.
Contributed articles on the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka,
on Gawain and the Green Knight, and a piece of creative
non-fiction to three university publications.
Recipient of Honors Pin and Honors Certificate.
Tuition scholarship 1993-1997.
Member of Honors Program 1994-1997.
Student Representative in Honors Council - 1997.
Deans List -' 1993-1996.
Vice President and President of the International Club 1994-5.
'Colombo International School:
Two pieces of creative non-fiction published in a school
publication.
English Prize - 1992
Social Service Society
Classical Music Society
Bishop's College, Sri Lanka:
English Prize 1986 -1990.
Social Science Prize~
President of the Social Sci~nce Club - 1990.
34
Tennis Team
Swimming Team - 1983 -1990.
LANGUAGES
Fluent in speaking, writing, and reading Sinhalese and
English. Basic reading ability in Spanish.
REFERENCES
Daniel P. Gunn, Professor of English, University of Maine
at Farmington.
Doug Rawlings, Director of the Honors Program, University
of Maine at Farmington.
Elizabeth Cooke, Assistant Professor of English,
University of Maine at Farmington.
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