critique on jane eyre

Presented by: Saiqa Manzoor Course instructor :Dr. Usman Ghani

A post colonial critique on Jane

Eyre by Charlotte Bronte with the

help of its prequel Wide Sargasso Sea

by Jean Rhys

Colonialism, imperialism and Hegemony

Imperialism – policy of extending the rule of a nation or empire over other nationsColonialism – political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended period of timeColonialism is the building and maintaining of colonies in one territory by people from another territory.Sovereignty over the colony is claimed by the metropolis.Social structure, government and economics within the territory of the colony are changed by the colonistsReasons for colonialismSearch for wealth, trade Need to settle excess populationEvangelical zealTheoretical framework Ideological legitimization Eurocentric racism ( Rudyard Kipling 1899)http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden

WH

ITE M

AN

’S B

UR

DEN

Take up the White Man’s burden— —Send forth the best ye breed—

Your new-caught sullen peoples, —Half devil and half child.

COUNTER BACK TO COLONIALISM

Frantz Fanon (1967)He was influential in the field of post-colonial studies and was perhaps the pre-eminent thinker of the 20th century on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of

colonization.

Edward SaidOrientalism (1978) the theory's founding workEdward Said analyzed the works of Balzac, Baudelaire and Lautréamont, exploring how they were both influenced by and helped to shape a societal fantasy of European racial superiority.

Post colonial

Theorists

• Charlotte Bronte (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) a British novelist, the eldest out of the three famous Brontë sisters whose novels have become standards of English literature ( isogloss of Eurocentrism )

• Jane Eyre a retrospect novel, tells the story of a plain governess (Jane) who is an orphen , after early life difficulties, falls in love with her employer, Mr. Rochester. They marry, but only after Rochester's insane first wife, Bertha Mason (of whom Jane initially had no knowledge) dies in a dramatic house fire.

Novelist and Novel

Charlotte through her protagonist Jane by following the technique of ‘Bildungsroman’ over generalize the elements of ‘Englishness’ as was the tendency of that age along with other English canonsJane Eyre , an autobiographical novel deals with matter of Identity ( Creole-Bertha vs Englishness-Jane)Identity is whatever makes an entity recognizable. In psychology and sociology, identity is a person’s conception and expression of his individuality or group affiliations. In post colonial studies identity refers to identity of subaltern ;the fact of being who or what they are.Creoles are culturally alienated people, Europeans born or living in West Indies, educated to conceive of England as ‘Home’ they were also excluded as colonials inferiors.

Ideological grounds…

• The character of Bertha Mason is of crucial importance to the whole plot of the novel in maintaining the ‘colonial hegemony’ and “ cultural oppression” of the colonizers on the colonized without taking into account the feelings of the later.

• Unnaturally exaggerated character of her where horror and pity is predominant.

• Highly hostile representation by authoress.

• A continuous threat

Character of Bertha Mason

We become first aware of her existence on the page 108 when Jane hears a “ curious, distinct,formal mirthless laugh”. Then for several weeks she heard that thrilling laugh and “ eccentric murmurs” which constitutes ‘ sound only’ but NOT speech. What a ‘ dehumanized’ status is given to a woman of flesh and blood is nothing but penned through a highly colonial mind.

Character of Bertha Mason contd..

Soon it was presumed that the unknown source of sounds are of

some devil “There was a demoniac laugh, low, suppressed and deeply

uttered…” Jane Eyre p.150 “ A satan in his subordinates form p.212. It was strongly assumed that voices are not

produced by a human at all “ This door was open , a light shone out of

the room from within: I heard thence a snarling snatching sound, almost like

a dog quarreling p.211, “ a canine noise p.213

Character of Bertha Mason contd..

• This representation of Bertha Mason as a savage, beast like , a blood sucking vampire brought to a climax by the writer when Bertha Mason attacks and injures her own brother_Mr. Mason by biting him viciously. Mr Rochester’s warning to her brother in the words as if she is unearthly spirit “I warned you,” was his friend’s answer; “I said—be on your guard when you go near her”

• By the time Bridges intervenes the wedding ceremony of Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester , it was well established that the mysterious figure , hardly human , imprisoned in the Thornfield’s secret chamber is dangerous for other people’s lives and should be barred in isolation. Bronte is at great pains to describe that such treatment on the part of Rochester is not only justified but indispensible as well

Character of Bertha Mason contd..

• This is what justified by Rudyard Kipling as ‘WHITE MAN’S BURDEN’ the lines of his poems goes like this

Take up the White Man’s burden— —Send forth the best ye breed—

Your new-caught sullen peoples, —Half devil and half child

The same philosophy “civilize the uncivilized ones” is what professed by many colonial minds like Max Boot in his book “ The Savage Wars for Peace” insists that Kipling was right, that

“colonialists everywhere, usually received scant thanks afterward.”

To name but few Ronny Heaslop by E.M Forster and Kurtz by Christopher Marlow

Aligning with colonial tradition…

A C

LEA

R M

AR

K O

F C

OLO

NIA

LIT

Y…

No objection/ sympathetic word for Bertha’s fate

It is thus justified by the writer: “since the medical men had pronounced her mad, she had of course been shut up”

Science+society+religion+Rochester+Jane… all professed the ideology of “ extermination of brutes”

OTHERS VS WE OR CENTRE VS PERIPHERY

Jane holds the ‘centre’ seeks to establish herself on the expense of ‘periphery’ that is Bertha, Mrs. Reeds, Georgiana, Eliza and Miss Branche Ingram. Her own words goes like this “Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling...her mind was poor and heart barren”

beast, tigress, a clothed hyena, lunatic, seeming paradox to the ‘freshness’ presented through Jane

Through Bertha’s savage state of being Jane realizes that her ‘self’ is civilized, through her physical obliteration(erasure) she finds her happiness. It was more than important for Charlotte to present a silent figure, denied a voice and is unable to speak

Jane Eyre Bertha Mason

By a Dominican writer Jean Rhye as a prequel to Jane Eyre.. A prequel is unlike a sequel, a text whose narrative takes place before the primary text. ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ tries to tell the story of Bertha , the daughter of a Creole mother from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage and ‘Displacement’ in England.

Wide Sargasso Sea

She reinvents that sense of ‘ alterity ’ and came about with an attempt to dig for us ‘the lost identity’ of Mr. Rochester’s mad

wife, Bertha Mason as Rhys felt that with the Eurocentric prejudice Charlotte has totally misrepresented a Creole woman and the

West Indies.“why should she think that Creole women are lunatics and that? What a shame to make Rochester’s wife, Bertha an awful

madwoman and I immediately thought I’d write story as it might really have been.’

(Jean Rhys: The West Indies Novels, p.144)so Rhye’s text is an answer to the

Essentialism and subvert assumptions of Victorian text.

Wide Sargasso Sea

• The opening of the novel WSS is set in 1833 a British owned Jamaica where the protagonist Antoinette conveys the story of her life from childhood to arranged marriage with an unnamed Englishman (implied as Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre) as the novel progresses, Antoinette whom he renames Bertha , descends into madness.

• The novel is split into three parts:

• Part one takes place in Martinique, Jamaica is narrated by Antoinette which includes the facts of her life including her mother’s madness.

• Part two is from the point of view of her husband following their marriage in Dominica. One of the likely catalysts for Antoinette’s downfall (an increased sense of paranoia tinged with disappointment) is the suspicion created between husband and wife by Daniel Cosway_a relative of Antoinette.

• The third and the shortest part is again from the persective of Antoinette, now known as Bertha, living in Rochester’s mansion called her ‘Great House’. At the end of the novel decides to take her own life but it’s not suggested how much did she succeeds in her attempt

Wide Sargasso Sea plot overview

• The novel WSS ends with house on fire (set by Antoinette) and then we have the following concluding paragraph: “ Grace Poole was sitting on table but she had heard the scream too, for she said ,”What was that?” She got up, came over and looked at me. I lay still , breathing evenly with my eyes shut. “I must have been dreaming” she said. Then she went back, not to the table but her bed. I waited a long time after I heard her snore , then I got up, took the keys and unlocked the door. I was outside holding my candle. Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do. There must have been a draught for the flame flickered and I thought it was out. But I shielded it with my hand and it burned up again to light me along the dark passage”.

Wide Sargasso Sea

• As Creoles are culturally alienated people, Europeans born or living in West Indies, educated to conceive of England as ‘Home’ they were also excluded as colonials inferiors. As the same time they were racially privileged to Africans who existed as bound labor. In Rhys’ novel Antoinette’s mental breakdown is attributed to a large part to her inability to adapt to the life and culture of England as acute ‘Alienation’ she feels. To Rochester she is simply another aspect of ‘West Indies’_Otherness that he cannot connect with: “ She never blinks at all it seems to me. Long, dark, alien eyes. Creole of a pure English descent she may be, but they are not English or European either’ (WSS,p.40)

Rhye’s justification…

.