Representations of Fear and the Construction of Text in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

Abstract

This thesis closely analyses the emotion of fear in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The hypothesis that underpins my study is that fear is fundamental to the shaping and orienting of the text. Specifically, I argue that Jane’s fear of sexual subjugation understood as bodily and sexual possession and subordination and her responses to this fear provide a thematic arc out of which Brontë develops the form and structure of the narrative. My study follows the trajectory of the thematic arc from the beginning of the narrative to the novel’s last pages. As a reading of Jane Eyre through the lens of fear my thesis offers new interpretations of key aspects of the novel. In particular, it explores Jane’s fear of sexual subjugation, analysing the ways Brontë channels this fear through the deployment of the much neglected tropes and motifs of ‘The Turk’ from the novel’s first pages. My third and fourth chapters engage in some detail with these Oriental tropes in which sexuality and female domination are implicit. Chapter Three establishes the centrality of the Turkish tropes to the red room set-piece in generating the thematic arc and the foregrounding of Jane’s fear of sexual subjugation. Chapter Four explores the ‘Oriental subtext’ that furnishes Brontë with a means of expressing the intense eroticism of Jane and Rochester’s relationship and Jane’s fear of sexual domination. In doing so, my thesis offers a reconsideration of Brontë’s ‘slavery’ metaphors and a re-engagement with the figure of Bertha Mason Rochester, both of which flow from this approach. The thesis provides strong historical and cultural evidence in support of my argument that the slavery of the novel refers to white, Ottoman slavery, rather than West Indian or Caribbean slavery. The final chapters of the thesis encapsulate Jane’s sojourn with the Rivers family at Morton and Moor House and pay particular attention to her relationship with St John Rivers as a catalyst to her overcoming fear. Jane’s ultimate return to Rochester at Ferndean, the dissolution of her fear and her happy marriage complete the trajectory of the thematic arc to the final pages of the novel. In my thesis Jane is figured as a timid, fearful child who, as a mature woman, overcomes fear and rebels against oppressive societal structures. This contrasts with depictions of Jane Eyre as a feisty, rebellious child who, as an adult, subsides into a patriarchal marriage. This alternative perspective provides a reading of the novel’s conclusion as more aesthetically satisfactory and unified than many previous scholars have proposed.