Austen, Brontë, Eliot

Debate Questions

Jane Eyre

• Which statement would you support?
• The novel portrays Jane as a victim of forces beyond her control.
• The novel portrays Jane as a master of her own fate.

• In their feminist critique of Jane Eyre, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (in their book Madwoman in the Attic) argue that Bertha Mason is “Jane’s truest and darkest double: she is the angry aspect of the orphan child, the ferocious secret self Jane has been trying to repress ever since her days at Gateshead.” Gilbert and Gubar go on to argue that Bertha represents Jane’s repressed anger toward and resentment of Rochester, and that all of Bertha’s destructive actions and attacks on Rochester are acts that Jane herself secretly wishes to perform. Do you find this argument convincing? If so, please find moments in the text that might support this argument. If not, how might you construct a counterargument to Gilbert and Gubar?

• From the 17 th to the early 19th century, there were many British-owned cocoa, sugar, and coffee plantations in Jamaica (formerly British-owned) that employed slave labour. Post-colonial critics have argued that Brontë’s portrayal of Bertha Mason – a Jamaican Creole – is racist, and that the contrast between Bertha and Jane (and Bertha and Rochester) is meant to emphasize the distinction between a member of the refined British middle-class and a member of a less-evolved, mentally inferior race. Do you find this racial argument convincing? Why or why not?

• It is arguable that, despite the value Jane places on spiritual equality, she rejects St. John as a husband precisely because he is too much her equal in spirit and moral temperament. Which argument would you support:

  a. Jane rejects St. John’s marriage proposal and cannot truly love St. John because he is too much her equal. Her rejection reinforces the necessity of a power imbalance and essential difference of character at the basis of true love relations.

  b. Jane rejects St. John because they have fundamentally different personalities and values, and she could not consent to a relationship where she would have to adopt his values as her own.

• In an 1848 review of Jane Eyre, a widely respected, female critic wrote the following critique of Jane’s decision to leave Rochester: “[She] exerts great moral strength, but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law unto itself. … Jane Eyre is proud, and therefore she is ungrateful too. It pleased God to make her an orphan, friendless, and penniless – yet she thanks nobody, and least of all Him, for the good and raiment, the friends, companions, and instructors of her helpless youth. … The doctrine of humility is not more foreign to her mind than it is repudiated by her heart. It is by her own talents, virtues, and courage that she is made to attain the summit of human happiness, and, as far as Jane Eyre’s own statement is concerned, no one would think that she owed anything either to God above or to man below.” Do you agree with this assessment of Jane’s character? Do the faults that this critic cites make Jane less heroic? Can you compose a defense of Jane’s heroism and morality against these accusations of her pride, ingratitude, and ungodliness?

• Which argument would you support:

  a. Jane’s decision to stay with Rochester at the end of the novel testifies to the power of love in overcoming any social, economic, or moral considerations. By the end of the novel, Jane is no longer concerned with questions of inferiority / superiority.

  b. Jane’s decision to stay with the blind and maimed Rochester emphasizes her need to maintain a power imbalance between them. Rochester’s blindness and the loss of his right hand guarantee his subordination and dependency on her (as well as her independence from him), therefore allowing Jane to feel safe in committing herself to him.

• It has been argued that the image of woman as man’s moral redeemer (“the angel of the house”) is dangerous because it vindicates and in some instances even deems heroic man’s “wild” and “ungovernable” nature. Which side would you argue:
• Jane represents the “angel of the house” and Brontë’s novel endorses the image of the wild, ungovernable male hero.
• Jane refutes the image of the “angel in the house” and the novel reproves the image of the wild, ungovernable male hero.