Classics, Culture, Christianity

****DISCLAIMER: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS, AND ALSO MAKES VERY LITTLE SENSE IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK****

Now that we’ve got that out of the way… If you have met me, you probably know that I am obsessed with Jane Eyre. It has everything you could want in a book: a compelling and complex main character, a nice Gothic atmosphere, a secret arsonist wife locked away in someone’s attic…

That’s right!  One of my favorite parts of this novel is the fact that there is a pyromaniac hiding up in the attic of the love interest’s estate.  And that said love interest somehow forgets to alert the main character to the existence of this individual (who also happens to be his actual wife!) until their wedding day, despite the fact that she has already tried to set the house on fire AND attacked a houseguest.  As implausible and weird as this is, though, I think that Bertha is one of the most important symbols in all of English literature. 

Bertha is generally understood in most scholarly circles to represent a facet of Jane’s inner turmoil- the dark and impulsive side of her that is locked away.  In today’s emotionally-oriented, feminism-focused society, Bertha is typically thought of as a symbol of female rage; a woman who finally snaps after being forced to feign gentleness and purity for so long by society.  Some scholars even suggest that she represents a part of Jane that is repressed, and that the only way for Jane to be “set free” is to give into her passions and defy “societal expectations.”

However, considering that mistresses were hardly unheard of among the Victorian upper class, the principal conflict is not truly between Jane’s heart and society(not that that element isn’t there), but between her heart and her values.  In a way, the life she would have had with her disgraced fiancé Edward Rochester if she had become his mistress would have been a different sort of trap.  She’d be living against her principles, which would be enslavement to sin.  It is through her Christian beliefs, not through giving into her passions, that Jane ultimately escapes imprisonment.  As she refuses to live in sin with Rochester, we see her internal conflict on page 369 (of my copy, which I will provide an Amazon link to here). One side of her says “Oh, comply!… Think of his misery… who will be injured by what you do?” She continues to elaborate on how every bit of her heart wants to stay with him- out of both pity and love. The other side replies “I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man.  I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad- as I am now.” Jane is not really “mad” in the same sense that Bertha is, but her love for Rochester is impeding her ability to think rationally, and it is only by the faith that she holds to that she is able to avoid succumbing to this “madness” within her, setting her and Bertha up as foils.

Even so, Bertha’s madness and imprisonment could represent some kind of discontentment within Jane that is stored up inside and not brought to light and dealt with.  Even before the mad wife in the attic is revealed, Jane is all but stated to not be truly contented with her new life: Rochester wants to make her a fashionable lady of society, which she is clearly not comfortable with. She even says on page 299 of the clothes he tries to put on her that she “shall not be [his] Jane Eyre anymore, but an ape in a harlequin’s jacket- a jay in borrowed plumes.”  In retrospect, this is the first sign that something is not right about this engagement- that there is some kind of inauthenticity involved.  Bertha is only a physical manifestation of the mismatch of values that has been present between Jane and Rochester all along- him impersonating a fortune-teller to get her to confess her love for him, him using another woman to make her jealous, him flattering her and trying to get her to conform to the ways of upper-class society.  He does truly love her, and does mean well, but his inability to communicate directly and the poor alignment of values between the two at this point in the story cannot be ignored.

On the flip side, Bertha’s death clearly coincides with Jane’s refusal to enter a loveless marriage to her relative St. John, perhaps representing the death of Jane’s attempts to live in an inauthentic manner.  St. John is going away as a missionary, and marrying him would make Jane appear to be a better Christian. However, at this point, Jane is not concerned with appearances, and refuses to enter a marriage that neither party truly wants to be in- knowing that St. John is in love with someone else, and that he is only seeking to marry Jane for appearances’ sake, as he sees her as a more societally suitable missionary’s wife. In this way, her heart and her values manage to align, and she is able to honor her emotions in a healthy and virtuous manner. Even so, she is not letting her desires run totally rampant- she does go to visit Rochester, but only to check and make sure that he is alright, not to try to live with him as his mistress.  They do not marry until Jane finds out that Bertha is dead, and that Rochester is a changed man.  Just because she rejects a marriage without emotion does not mean she will enter a relationship without morality.

Bertha’s death is a net positive for the story, as it frees Jane and Rochester to marry.  In the fire that Bertha starts, causing her own death, Rochester is also severely disabled, which humbles him significantly. It also inspires within him a new reverence for the Lord’s mercy and grace, his last words (page 516) prior to the conclusion being “I thank my Maker that, in the midst of judgment, I have remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto.”  This kind of humility and reverence for the Lord is not characteristic of Rochester, showing that he has had a significant change of heart since Jane left him- note that her last words to him before leaving were entreating him to turn to the Lord for strength. It seems that he has finally come to faith in the time since, meaning that Bertha’s death coincides with the Lord’s apparent work within his heart.

In this way, Bertha, whom Rochester married for all the wrong reasons, could more realistically represent an evil part of Rochester- his pride, his deceit, and the decadence of his former life.  Her death frees Rochester to marry his true love, but she could have kept in check much better before her death, and matters would certainly have been less complicated if Rochester hadn’t lied to Jane and to the public about her existence!  Perhaps, in some sense, she represents the sinful pride and licentiousness within Rochester that he tried for so long to hide within himself rather than bringing to the light.

Obviously, Charlotte Brontë is long gone, so we can’t ask her what Bertha truly represents.  However, I personally think that it is important that we give her a long look, from many perspectives, rather than simply slapping the label “feminist rage icon” onto her and moving on.  Like Daisy Buchanan, Bertha is a character that can be studied from almost infinite angles.  Since this is a blog dedicated to analyzing literature through the lens of Christianity and Christian perspectives, and because Jane herself is a devout Christian in the novel, I have chosen to focus mostly on the idea that Bertha represents secret sin that is allowed to fester inside of a person.  I could easily be wrong here, but I think it’s an interesting thing to contemplate.

And that’s it for this month (or two), folks.  I will try to update this blog more regularly, but right now the tentative plan is to update every couple of months. Until then, farewell, and thank you for reading my literary ramblings!