Chapter One
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
The novel opens with stasis.
During previous readings, I thought, what an amazing move. To begin a female buildings roman from a fixed position – what, who has fixed her there? Bronte, of course, & Jane, as the narrator, the author of her own story & text. And Mrs. Reed.
As the narrator, Jane introduces us to Mrs. Reed, the first m(other) figure of Jane’s story:
The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looking perfectly happy.
Mrs. Reed writes her own text of Jane: as a caviller [what the hell is a caviller? If I ever knew, I have forgotten. I looked it up - a disputant who quibbles; someone who raises annoying petty objections] or questioner. . .something forbidding. . .unpleasant, discontented, unhappy. . .unnatural.
From the beginning of the novel, Jane is cast as an outsider, by Bessie, for her supposed physical inferiority to the Reed darlings (who wouldn’t be unhappy with frozen fingers & toes?????), by Mrs. Reed, by Jane herself.
Mrs. Reed positions Jane – not only excluding her from the family tableau, but from language. She is to be seated somewhere. . .and remain silent until she can speak in a language, a manner, acceptable to Mrs. Reed’s definition of a more sociable and childlike disposition.
Stasis = silence.
Banished, Jane repositions herself in the window seat, with a book. Throughout this novel, I am intrigued by Jane’s (or Bronte’s) choice of texts. Much has been written about Bewick’s History of British Birds. The entire Brontė family was fond of the volume. Bronte even wrote a poem about Bewick. The volume is still widely quoted. It appears in other Bronte family novels.
Eyrephiles have suggested that Jane’s choice of Bewick indicates her sense of isolation – she looks at the pictures of non-British landscapes. I would argue that her fascination with places other than Gateshead and the Reeds was an indication of her desire to remove herself from her positioning, to reposition herself anyplace other than Gateshead.
Jane is less interested in the Bewick’s letter-press than the pictures. She chooses to position herself in the window seat, protected on one side by folds of scarlet drapery, separated from the dreary November day by clear panes of window glass.
It seems to me that things always happen within Jane when she looks out of a window. . .
Other Eyrephiles wax poetic on how the pictures Jane chooses to tell us about lay the groundwork for her artwork.
But the Bewick passage interests me for other reasons. All novels are self-reflective; all say something about the process of creating text, of telling a story. Throughout the novel, Jane is fascinated by narrative. Bewick’s illustrations interest her because Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings. . .(feeding the children’s) eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from the old fairy tales and older ballads; or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland.
Jane Eyre is no Pamela, whose story reads like the outline for a conduct book. Pamela’s most famous dictum is that she always knows her place as a servant. On the surface, at least, Jane continually resists the positioning dictated by others. As a child, she is continually told that she is less than a servant – servants earn their keep – she is a charity case (as if anything about Mrs. Reed is charitable!).
But I am getting ahead of myself.
Back to Chapter 1.
With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my own way. I feared nothing but interruption. . .
Jane’s alone time in the window seat, dreaming of places other than Gateshead, is interrupted – John Reed cannot find her alone. Finding the room apparently empty, he invents the story that she has gone out into the rain (silly goose, John Reed, Jane does not like to take walks in the damp cold . . .)
The rupture of Jane’s solace comes about because Eliza, the brightest of the Reed children, tells him where Jane is positioned. Betrayed by a female, Jane is repositioned once again. From sanctuary to violence. John Reed uses Bewick (a male text) to violate Jane., striking her on the head. She is cut, violated.
A really radical Jaki would argue that John Reed textually rapes Jane in order to assert his position of power over her. . .
Jane’s response to John’s violence, her assessment of his wickedness & cruelty, her attempt to defend herself against his attack as he lunges at her, is rewritten by the women of the house as fury and passion.
And then the hands of the female servants (Bessie & Abbot) restrain (stasis) Jane and Mrs. Reed repositions our heroine once again. Still restrained – four hands were immediately laid upon me - she is confined to the red room.
Chapter 1 opens with stasis and closes with what looks like movement, but is it just another repositioning of the resistant female (another form of stasis?).
