| dc.description.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. | en_US |
