classism in jane eyre

Michael Spaulding Classism in Jane Eyre P a g e | 1

Head of the Class: Jane Eyre

On Friday 29 April 2011 at Westminster Abbey, Prince William married Catherine

Middleton. According to Google Trends, which records all search queries entered into their

engine, starting around the week before the actual wedding the popularity of the keywords “royal

wedding” surpassed queries to include: “God” and “Barack Obama” (Google Trends. Figure 1).

Printed by the Wall Street Journal, Nielsen Co. reports, “an average of 22.8 million total U.S.

viewers tuned in to watch the royal wedding live from 6 a.m. to 7:15 a.m. Eastern time Friday”

(Schuker). “That’s about as many people who watch a top-rated prime-time show, such as a

typical episode of “American Idol” (Schuker). But these aren’t prime-time hours—many people

would have to crawl out of bed or find a way to watch television on the way to work just to get a

glimpse of the live wedding. Perhaps the reason why so many people tuned into to watch the

royal wedding is related to our valuation of social classes. The prince isn’t anyone particularly

special after all—other than the fact that he has is rich and well… a prince. People often apply

these same interests to celebrities; the euphamism “Bradgelina” is another example of the wide

spread attraction to wealth and fame. I cannot remember the last time any of my relationships

were printed onto the front page of a national magazine or tabloid. In an era postdating the

introduction of The Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) and the Equal Rights Amendement

(1848-Present) it may seem strange to think that people still have a tickling interest in others

whose claim to fame stems from wealth and social class. One might argue that we are growing

away from these concerns as a society, but the royal wedding view count and the prolific

blabbering of tabloids at every checkout line across America tell a different story. When

confronted with a novel such as Jane Eyre, it shows us modern 21st centurians that we are still

dealing with many of the same social concerns and public interests as they did over a hundred


and fifty years ago. What is even more interesting is that it not only stretches across the

continuum that is time, but also space and culture. Jane Eyre’s setting is 19th

Century England,

which is far separated from 21st Century America. Through exploration of Brontë’s addressing of

classism and wealth in Jane Eyre we can begin to understand the archetypal concerns that

comprise a facet of human nature that encourages us to pursue and regulate an evolving desire of

segregation.

By “evolving desire of segregation” I mean that as the human race becomes more racially

and genderly tolerant, people must find different ways of segregating themselves and finding

news ways to create group mindsets. Many today do this through religion, sexuality, age, and

interest—these are the rifts, or gaps, that people place between themselves to help provide a

sense of belonging; through seperation, people grow together. Wealth, however, has the appeal

of something much older and virile; wealth has the anachronistic quality of having been

marriaged to individuals in the past that were conquerers, royalty, and emperors—I consider it

the ancient evil.

When we first meet Jane, she is living with her aunt, Mrs. Reed, at the residence

Gateshead Hall. At the very beginning of Chapter II she has found herself in trouble and is being

repremanded. Part of her verbal scolding is an insult of class reduction. Mrs. Reed tells Jane,

“No; you are less than a servant” (Brontë and Dunn 9). Then, when the hypothetical situation is

proposed by Bessie, one of the house servants, of whether or not Jane would go to her “poor, low

relations” (Brontë and Dunn 20) outside of Gateshead Hall, Jane reveals her own thoughts on the

matter: “poverty for me was synonymous with degradation” (Brontë and Dunn 20). What is

interesting about her belief is in the qualities she ascribes the the poor. She notes three quite

probable characteristics of the poor: “ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates,” but then


continues to add two that are unsubstantiated, subjective, and prejudice: “rude manners, and

debasing vices” (Brontë and Dunn 20). At this point in the novel (the beginning) we continually

see examples of classism performed by Mrs. Reed and her children and reinforced by the

obliging nature of the servants. This includes the notion that Jane was not worth of being seen by

a physician, but Mrs. Reed would employ Mr. Lloyd, “an apothcary, sometimes called in …

when the servants were ailing” (Brontë and Dunn 15). So, it is to be noted that Jane’s life is one

of ubiquitous judgment and prejudice toward not only herself but others, all eminating from the

Reed family. Unfotunately, this is similar to modern society as well. Each child must live in their

parents’ house and often succumb to, and inherit, their parents’ beliefs—both good and bad. This

way of raising children forces often worthless beliefs down the throats of children and ensures

the sustainment of such infections in society, e.g., that value of character can be derived from

wealth and status. If anyone thinks a class divide doesn’t exist as much today as it did a hundred

and fifty years ago, they can visit www.Classism.org, a website with links to “Classism in the

News” with over sixty links to news articles, many of which have been written by or contributed

to by PhDs, JDs, and TED speakers. Although at this point in the novel, iterated by Jane’s

independent thinking and rebellious and righteous nature, the reader hopes that Jane is going to

grow above and away from such persecutional thinking, this belief is short lived as we will see

toward the end of the novel. Jane never fully overcomes her prejudices, but she become more

aware of them. But now, Jane goes to school.

It is at Lowood Institution that we see the next dramatic instance of classism. This is

personified by the hypocritic nature of Mr. Brocklehurst, the school’s false philanthropist. Due to

the neglect of Mr. Brocklehurst, “[s]emi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of

the pupils to receive infection” (Brontë 65). This is supposed to be a man who personified


christian values and selflessness, but when he arrives during a visit to the institution his wife and

two daughters have accompanied him. The wife and daughters are elevated, “conducted to seats

of honour at the top of the room” (Brontë 55) and dressed in “fashion” (Brontë 55). The picture

of his relatives juxtaposed against an act anguishing to read, Mr. Brocklehurst demands that all

the girls in the school must have their hair “cut off” (Brontë 54) to ensure they “clothe

themselves with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel” (Brontë

54). The incredulity of this request constrasted against the flamboyent attire and mien of his

family only emphasize the despotic and counterfeit nature of Mr. Brocklehurst. In the 21st

Century we have seen many examples of similar hypocrisy. Examples include Bono, who

“transferred his mustic catalogue to a tax-free jurisdiction in the Netherlands to avoid paying

taxes” and is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, yet is considered the “face of the worldwide

campaign against greed” and “endlessly lobb[ies] [for] Western governments to give their tax

dollars to the Third World” (Bilzerian). Or, for example, our current presidential candidate Mitt

Romney. He began his campaign by joking “he was out of work when speaking with

unemployed people in Florida (TheYoungTurks), saying “maybe I should also tell my story, I am

also unemployed” (Romney); this is ironic because he profited a whopping adjusted gross

income of 21.6 million dollars (Montgomery, Yang, and Rucker). And the list goes on to include

the bank and housing scandals that led to our recent economic crisis, Bernie Madoff, and dozens

more. Wealth and greed and temptation pervade modern culture—this is what generates

movements like “Occupy Wallstreet.” When you get wealth focused into the top one percent of

the nation’s population, the spawning of classism is inevitable.

Jane graduates then teaches for a short while at Lowood. After desiring change in her life

because she isn’t quite satisfied with her current position and accumulating experiences, she sets


off for a new career at Thornfield Hall where she meets Mr. Rochester. This series of events is a

process by which Jane is escalating in class and wealth through the novel. Her pay doubles to

“thirty pounds per annum” (Brontë 75) and she attains the rank of governness instead of that of

instructor at a shabby school for oprhans. She even hopes to work in a house of “English

repsecability” (Brontë 75)—classism! As we can see, Jane still unconsciously emulates the same

prejudices she so consciously acts like she doesn’t agree with. After some trouble with her

marriage to Rochester, Jane escapes into the country and winds up nearly starving to death

before she reaches the humble home of St. John and his two sisters, all of which conveniently

end up being her cousins. However, when she first arrives at the house, she is ragged and worn

down by her situation. The housemaid meets her at the door and shuts her out to die, claiming

she is a homeless beggar (Brontë 286, 290). St. John rescues her from sure demise and upon

regaining her strength after a few days of bedrest she meets Hannah again, the same servant that

turned her away as a begger a few nights before. During this meeting Jane becomes contentious

and sententiously lectures Hannah on her “incivility to call [Jane] a beggar” (Brontë 291);

obviously Jane has taken much offense to being mistakenly reduced in class. And then Jane, after

accepting a humble job procured by St. John (which she should have been extremely grateful

for), has the gall to complain to herself about it. She notes that her students are mostly “ignorant”

and after some difficult instruction she predicts that her students may transform her feelings for

them from “disgust” to “gratification” (Brontë 306). Her concern for the strata of social statuses

is most apparent in her complaint: “I felt degrated. I doubted I had taken a step which sank

instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the

poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me” (Brontë 306). But, finally she has an

epiphany—none too late considering we are approximately eighty percent through the novel—


and recognizes her feelings “to be wrong” (306). This is an important transition for Jane because

it armors her against the upcoming temptations that arise when she inherits twenty-thousand

(Brontë 326). Many are not so resilient to corruption, and this may be Jane’s best quality

throughout the novel. It isn’t that she makes too much progress forward in her thinking, but at

least she doesn’t really slide backwards in it. An paralleling example of Jane being accused of

beggardom presented itself in the form of the 2009 arrest of Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, professor

at Harvard University, who was apprehended for breaking into his own house by Cambridge

police department because he was an African American and the neighborhood he lives in is

wealthy and in the upper social echelon (Jan). Gates apparently handled the situation with

restraint and was even invited to dinner with Barack Obama after the incident. Note that when I

performed a real estate search for Cambridge, Massachusetts around Gates’s address on Ware

St., the average price of any home in Mid-Cambridge was $454,378 and the average price of

Single-Family Homes located on Ware St. were $1,420,242 (Trulia). These examples just scratch

the surface of the relationship between wealth and classism, of which there undeniably is.

Finally, the end of the novel is upon us. First, note that Jane in her benevolence has still

kept enough money for herself to be potentially accepted into the upper class. The rest of the

money immediately went to buying a respectable family—Rivers. Jane learned from

Rosamond’s father, Mr. Oliver, of the Rivers family’s importance. Mr. Oliver had “great

respect” for the “very old name,” Rivers (Brontë 315). Mr. Oliver believes that a “valuable”

name like Rivers—as valuable as a “fortune”—should be used in a way that secures privilege. To

think that someone as intelligent and observent as Jane would not have considered such words

doesn’t give her much credit. Jane has always been concerned with status, so it should come as

no surprise that she has spent fifteen thousand pounds securing one. And so the novel practically


climaxes when Jane returns to her disfigured darling. She struts in with the confidence of a new

family and five thousand pounds and lovingly deceives her pitiful one-armed cyclops. She even

tells him that she is an “independent” woman now (Brontë 370). And then Rochester’s

observation reinforces what Jane had known when she walked in: “as you are rich, Jane, you

have now, no doubt, friends who will look after you” (Brontë 370). This was her backup plan

just in case she couldn’t snag the man she loved and the family name he bore. Not that this or

any of it was wrong, only that note of such behavior should be known (Brontë 329). And so,

after Mr. Rochester agrees to marry Ms. Eyre, she has claimed three names—Eyre, Rivers, and

Rochester. Earlier in the novel, St. John and Jane are talking and she says, “I am not ambitious”

(Brontë 303)—yeah right, actions speak louder than words Jane and you have ambition in your

movements. Jane now resembles something like The American Dream: the freedom to work your

way up in life by the sweat of your own brow. So at the end of the story, we can now begin to

see the threads connecting all people (i.e., wanting to succeed) to classism. A rather famous

display of classism that many young Americans may not have been aware of prior to the release

of this 1997 blockbuster film was seen in the movie Titanic.Four different classes were

represented in the scope of the main plot of the story. First, there was Rose Dawson Calvert’s

family (Kate Winslet) who had a family name but no wealth; this family dynamic is synonimous

with the plight of the Rivers. Second, there is Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is the

character that succumbs to romance, is willing to sleep wherever he can, and doesn’t have

anything but a great personality to work with; this character parallels Jane Eyre. Third, there is

the new-money character Margaret “Molly” Brown who has no family name, but is able to buy

her way into the upper class through her wealth; this character, who is a supporting role in

Titanic, parallels the supporting roles of Jane’s cousins Diana and Mary Rivers and also


represents a future that Jane could have if she wished. Finally, there is the charismatic, but

sinister male character who has the family name and the wealth—Caledon Nathan Hockley

(Billy Zane); he parallels Rochester, but not because Rochester gets the girl; Mr. Hockley does

not get the girl. The reason they are similar is due to their social rank and why they’re there,

although they both get a punishment of sorts (Hockley’s suicide and Rochester’s flaming

maiming). Titanic won eleven Academy Awards and was the first movie to ever gross over a

billion dollars (it reached over two billion). Sure it had great actors and actresses, excellent

writing, and a surefire plot—but it also had the appeal of class segregation, conflict, and

distinction; this is what drives a lot of the conflict in Jane Eyre as well, and it influences us today

in our very lives.

The take away lesson may be that the human race is sadly obsessed with classism and

there is no escaping it (that’s bleak). In the Introduction to The Crucible, Christopher Bigsby

might have said it best when discussing the paralleling prejudices of the Salem Witch Trials of

1692 and the McCarthy Communist Hunts of the 1950s: community prejudice “is a sense of

participating in a ritual, of conformity to a ruling orthodoxy and hence a hostility to those who

threaten it. The purty of one’s religious principles is confirmed by collaborating, at least by

proxy, in the punishment of those who reject them. Racial identity is reinfored by eliminating

those who might “contaminate” it, as one’s Americanness is understored by identifying those

who could be said to be un-American” (Bigsby). This is exactly what happens in classism. It is a

self-segregating system where the participants all try to protect themselves from everyone else.

Charlotte Brontë understood what made her era tick. It is the same for all generations. We can

trace back the stories of wealth and power to before the Romans, and Science Fiction stories

have often projected them into the future as well. The only way to fix this problem is to change


the way everyone perceives their own position with society. And if you don’t agree, you’re

probably a bad person.


Key:

Blue: “Royal Wedding”

Red: “God”

Yellow: “Barack Obama”

Figure 1. Google Trends.


Works Cited

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. Intro. Bigsby, Christopher. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin

Classics, 2003

Bilzerian, Adam. Hypocrisy in Philanthrophy. The Bilzerian Report. 8 Feb. 2012. Web. 19 July

2012. <http://thebilzerianreport.com/?p=578>.

Brontë, Charlotte, and Richard J. Dunn. Jane Eyre, An Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism.

3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2001. Print.

Google Trends. Figure 1. Google. Web. 19 July 2012.

<http://www.google.com/trends/?q=royal+wedding,+God,+Barack+Obama&ctab=0&ge

o=all&date=2011-4&sort=0>.

Jan, Tracy. Harvard Professor Gates arrested at Cambridge home. The Boston Globe. 20 Jul.

2009. Web. 19 July 2012.

<http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/harvard.html>.

Montgomery, Lori, Yang, Jia Lynn, and Rucker, Philip. Mitt Romney’s 2010 tax return. The

Washington Post. 24 Jan. 2012. Web. 19 July 2012.

Romney, Mitt. Romney Says He’s Unemployed. YouTube. 16 Jun. 2011. Web. 19 July 2012.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRTbt2J8Kxs>.

Roth, Christine. Victorian England: An Introduction. University of Washington. Web. 19 July

2012. <http://www.english.uwosh.edu/roth/VictorianEngland.htm>.


Schuker, Lauren. Wedding Ratings: Perchance to Dream. Wall Street Journal. Royal Wedding

Gets 22.8 Million Viewers in U.S. 2 May 2011. Web. 19 July 2012.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703703304576297334268253192.htm

l>.

The Young Turks. Romney Says He’s Unemployed. YouTube. 16 Jun. 2011. Web. 19 July 2012.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRTbt2J8Kxs>.

Trulia. 29 Ware Street, Cambridge MA. Trulia, Inc. Web. 19 July 2012.

<http://www.trulia.com/homes/Massachusetts/Cambridge/sold/21902630-29-Ware-St-

Cambridge-MA-02138>.

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