简爱独立人格发展的分析

简爱独立人格发展的分析Analysis of Jane Eyre’s Independent Character

Development

Contents

Abstract (1)

Key words (1)

ⅠIntroduction (2)

Ⅱ Charlotte Bronte with Her Works (2)

ⅢVictorian Period Ideal of Woman (3)

ⅣAn alysis of Jane Eyre’s Independent Character Development.... .. (4)

4.1 At Gateshead, Jane Eyre Began to Realize the Importance of

Self-reliance (4)

4.2 At Lowood Institution, Jane Eyre Began to Form Her Independent

Character (6)

4.3 At Thornfield, Jane Eyre Gained Her Independence and Showed It

Fully (7)

4.4 At Moor House, Jane Eyre Enjoyed the Pleasure of Self-sufficiency (10)

ⅤConclusion (11)

References (13)

摘要：在19世纪的英国文学史上，夏洛蒂·勃朗特的自传体性质的小说《简爱》堪称一部经典传世之作，她成功地塑造了英国文学史上第一个对爱情、生活、社会以及宗教都采

取了独立自主的积极进取的态度和敢于斗争、敢于争取自由平等地位的女性形象。作者

生活在波动变化的维多利亚时代，那时候女性意识已有萌芽，女性独立反抗精神是《简

爱》中女主人公寻找自我的精神出发点，是她成长历程的基石。本文通过简爱从小到大

的成长经历，学会自尊自爱、自强不息、正义、追求平等、自由、真爱的独立性格，从

而阐述了《简爱》这样一个主题：人的价值=尊严+爱。本文主要对简爱进行独立性格不

同发展阶段的分析。

关键词：简爱；独立人格；自强不息；追求正义；女权思想

Abstract: In the history of English literature in the 19th century, C harlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre was called a successfull work. In that period, many women

were not satisfied with their social status and began to fight for their right of

independence, equality and freedom. In this novel, Charlotte Bronte creates a

heroine who defies the conventions of both fiction and society. The main line

of the story follows Jane’s quest for her real identity and liberty in five stages,

which correspond respectively to five houses: Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield,

Moor House, and Ferndean. Each stage is supervised by “a dominant male

figure and each home is experienced as an enclosed world from which Jane

must break out as the promise of protection gives way to the desire for growth

and liberty”.Jane Eyre struggled to acquire her self-respect, independence,

dignity and self-sufficiency at every stage of her life, both in struggling with

social pressure, maltreatment, discrimination and in resisting the temptation of

passion. This paper analyzes the different stages of Jane Eyre’s independent

character development.

Key Words: Jane Eyre; independent character; self-sufficiency; justice; feminism

I. Introduction

Many people must be well known with Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre has made a strong impression on most of the readers. Jane Eyre is not only Charlotte Bronte’s best l iterary work but also one of the best created characters in all literature of world. If we only think Jane Eyre is a love story, I think that is not correct. The author was a woman, and she lived in Victorian period of the 19th century. At that time, ideal woman had a new start—independent consciousness of woman. Just let us make an assumption, if the independence of Jane Eyre was early killed in her childhood; without her independence, she would marry with Mr. Rochester even though he had a wife; If she became mistress of Mr.Rochesrer, she would possess treasure and social status; without her pureness, we would not be affected by this story, and Jane Eyre could not became classical too. Therefore, we should think over why Jane Eyre made us so much affected, because of her independent character. The development of Jane Eyre’s character has been the major key to the novel. Through the analysis of the novel, we can see the miserable predicament of English women at that time and their strong desire of seeking for equal social position as men.

At the same time, Charlotte Bronte also criticized the hypocrisy of England charities. Just as Charlotte Bronte said, “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of thorns” (Charlotte Bronte, 2003: P2). In the 19th century, many women were not satisfied with their social status and began to fight for their right of independence, equality and freedom. Charlotte Bronte attacked the Victorian conventions and morals in this novel. The Independent Character of Jane Eyre became the famous woman’s role in society. This paper analyzes that Jane Eyre’s independent character development stages.

Ⅱ. Charlotte Bronte with Her Works

Charlotte Bronte was not pretty. She was plain and little, but her name was put in the first page of the history of English literature in the 19th century because of the success of Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte was born in Thornton, Yorkshire in 1816. She was Celtic blood. When she was young, she was sent to a school for clergymen’s daughters. Her sisters died there due to the poor and unhealthy conditions. This experience inspired the later portrayal of Lowood School in Jane Eyre. As she grew up, she worked either as a

teacher or a governess in some private families. “Charlotte Bronte’s book, the professor, based on her Brussels experiences, was refused by a publisher and was not published until after her death. Undiscouraged, she set to work on a new novel, Jane Eyre, which was published in August, 1847. This poetic, imaginative story of the love of a young governess for her married employer. It was an immediate success with both readers and most of the critics. For some years Charlotte Bronte has written her works, Shirler, (1849), Villette, (1853), but Jane Eyre was the most successful and popular one” (吴伟仁, 2004: P233 ). All Charlotte’s novels were successful, and she occasionally broke her Yorkshire seclusion for a visit to London, where she was something of a celebrity, once her real identity was known. Among the friendships she formed there was one with Thackeray, to whom she had abdicated Jane Eyre. She had several proposals of marrying her father’s curate, the Rev.Arthur Bell Niahols. Her health was already poor, and after a few months of marriage a cold which she caught during pregnancy brought about her death on March 31, 1855, at thirty-nine, the last of the Bronte children.

In fact, Charlotte Bronte made herself as a prototype in Jane Eyre. It was created successfully a new woman in 19th century. In this novel, Charlotte Bronte used the first person to describe the heroine’s inner feeling. Jane Eyre voice d the author’s radical opinions on religion, social class, and gender. Jane Eyre, who was plain but continually strives to become stronger, and has courage to fight continuously for freedom and equality in the male society. Their experiences are very similar. In this novel, Charlotte Bronte said: “I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself.” She modeled Lowood, and two of her sisters died of tuberculosis there, so does Helen Burns at Lowood. John Reed’s descent into gambling and alcoholism parallels the behavior of Jane Eyre’s beloved brother, Branwell, whose early promise had degenerated into drunkenness and sloth, died.

Ⅲ. Victorian Period Ideal of Woman

In the Victorian socia l and cultural context, woman was defined as ‘pure, dependent and the other.’In Martha Vicinus’s introduction to an anthology of essays on the Victorian woman, she points out that the Victorian “perfect lady” should conform to the following ideal model of femininity: Before marriage, a young girl was brought up to be perfectly innocent and sexually ignorant. Once married, the perfect lady did not work. Her social and intellectual growth was confined to the family and close friends. Her status was totally dependent upon the economic position of her father and then her husband. Throughout the Victorian period the ‘perfect lady’ as an ideal of femininity was tenacious and

all-pervasive. The married women, as Vicinus mentions, within the Victorian culture were confined to the domestic sphere. As to the duties of women, that woman had to sacrifice herself to serve her husband and children and to some extent she must be “enduringly, incorruptibly good, instinctively, infallibly wise—wise not for self-development, but for self-renunciation, wise not with the narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable… modesty of service”. She should be restricted to the domesticity to offer the modest service for her husband, and set up a good model to guide her children. Furthermore, she should be educated, but the purpose of it is to make her capable of appreciating the conversation of her husband, rather than share her own feelings with him.

A woman, in any rank of life, ought to know whatever her husband is likely to know, but to know it in a different way. To sum up, the Victorian women were submissive wives for their husbands and good mothers for their children. Jane Eyre, as a new image of woman, struggled to acquire her self-respect, independence, dignity and self-sufficiency at every stage of her life, both in struggling with social pressure, maltreatment, discrimination and in resisting the temptation of passion. This novel was whoop of Charlotte Bronte to the Victorian conventions and morals.

Ⅳ. Analysis of Jane Eyre’s Independent Character Development

4.1 At Gateshead, Jane Eyre Began to Realize the Importance of Self-reliance

Jane Eyre was an orphan. Both her father and mother had died when Jane was a baby, and the little girl passed into the care of Mrs. Reed of Gateshead Hall. Mrs. Reed was her aunt. At Gateshead Hall Jane knew ten years of neglect and abuse. They looked down upon her. Because she was not pretty, she could never evoke the sympathy from others. Just because of these, she began to realize that she would to be independent, which was very important to her. So at first, she could not keep in silence when she was maltreated. She hit back. When John Reed scorned and beat her unreasonably, she did not retreat but strike him. This was her first rebellion. When the servant blamed Jane Eyre did not strike John Reed, because he was her young master. Jane Eyre retorted: “Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?”(Charlotte Bronte, 2003: P9). Mrs. Reed p unished her and Jane Eyre was closed in red-room where her uncle died. In red-room, she considered “All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference, and his entire mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in my dist urbed mind like a dark deposit in

a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favour? Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who, looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted, much less punished; though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory: he called his mother’ old girl,’ too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not infrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still ‘her own darling. ’I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfill every duty; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night. My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with general opprobrium. ‘Unjust!—unjust!’ said my reason, forced by the agonizing stimulus into precocious though transitory power: and resolve, equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression—as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die” (Charlotte Bronte, 2003: P13-14). When she suffered from the humiliation of being criticized by everyone. She dared to protect herself. She did not submit. Her behavior did commend to girl of ten year old. Because of this devastation, Jane Eyre rose in revolt. In Mrs. Reed’s eye, Jane is an uncongenial alien who permanently intruded on her own family group. For the Reeds, Jane is an unwelcome intruder. Therefore, Mrs. Reed told her children not to go near Jane Eyre, but Jane Eyre cried out and without at all deliberating on her words: “They are not fit to associate with me”! When Aunt Reed told Mr. Brocklehurst that Jane Eyre was a liar. Jane had a face to face conflict with her aunt. She told straight to her aunt’s face, “I am not deceitful: if I were , I should say I love you; but I declare I do not love you : I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed”;“I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again so long as I live, I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty”. “You think I have no feelings and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back---into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my

dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, ‘Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed! And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me----knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale. People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. You are deceitful” (Charlotte Bronte, 2003: P45- 46).This was the first time Jane uses self--narration to resist being misrepresented, and the first time Jane enjoyed the sense of freedom and triumph by exercising power over authority. Gateshead was a shelter for Jane Eyre, which taught her a lot of things. She hated Gateshead, hated everyone there. When she decided to be independent,self-reliance was in her mind. So she would like to be sent to a low budget orphan school called Lowood Institution by Aunt Reed.

Jane’s imprisonment in the red room is a punishment for her display of anger and passion. Therefore, the red room here symbolizes a jail used to imprison the rebellious girl, to separate her from the outer world, and to calm her down: When imprisoned in the red room, Jane is badly scared by the supposed ghost of her uncle and strongly desires that Mrs. Reed could release her. But Mrs. Reed doesn’t do it. It means that Mrs. Reed plays the role of the representative of the Victorian patriarchy to supervise Jane into the ideal girlhood— passive, innocent and silenced. The author not only scolded the interpersonal relationship and coldness of the England bourgeoisie upper class, but also reveals the pretence of the inflexible men. They appeared as the benefactor in their family, and they always think highly of themselves, looking down upon the women. They are always adding their will and behavior to female, never to consider the women's own thoughts and their views.

4.2 At Lowood Institution, Jane Eyre Began to Form Her Independent Character

Jane Eyre was a kind girl. She pursued justice. In Lowood, Mr. Brockehurst, the superintendent of the institute was such a rude and mean person and he had tried to wipe off the girls’ nature of loving beauty and almost ha d got rid of all the girls’ right. The poor girls were not allowed to get much food, and they were basically hungry. Jane didn’t submit to it. She gained her strength from her teacher and her fellow students to achieve her independence. When Mr. Brockehurst declared Jane Eyre was a liar to the students. She suffered the humiliation in spirit. She was very sad, but she did not give up her pursuit. Finally, she gained trust from Miss Temple and other people to achieve her independence. The poor environment had taught Jane Eyre that independence was a very important thing for her. And she also had learned that she could struggle for the independence by rebelling the prejudice, unjustness and maltreatment. This was a distinguished difference between

Jane Eyre and her fellow Helen Burns. Helen Burns was Jane Eyre’s good friend. Because of Brocklehurst used religion to gain power and to control others’ ideal and action. Helen Burns did not dare to fight. When Helen was be flogged and punished in the middle of a room in front of people. Jane thought that Helen Burns should turn against others when she was bullied; she said, “And if I were in your place I should dislike her; I should resist her. If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose”(Charlotte Bronte, 2003: P73). “A great deal: you are good to those who are good to you. It is all ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse, when we are struck at without a reason, we should strike against very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again”(Charlotte Bronte, 2003: P76). We can believe that if she was right and reasonable, she would do it without any hesitation. On the other hand, Jane learned self-control from Helen Burns. It was not violence that best overcomes hatred, nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury. Helen Burns told Jane Eyre, “Yet it would be your duty to be ar it, if you could not avoid it; it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear”(Charlotte Bronte,2003: P73). Jane gained the friendship with Miss Temple. From Maria Temple, Jane learned that independence was a very important thing for everyone. Miss Temple was supported as the ideal teacher by Jane Eyre. Both Jane Eyre and Helen Burns idolize her. She becomes Jane Eyre’s mentor when she became a teacher. The dull school life didn’t stop her pursuing progress, indep endence and freedom. She became stronger than before in her heart. Lowood was the most important place that offers Jane the way to become a self-controlled and good woman. In the institution the rebellious Jane Eyre learned from Miss Temple and Helen Burns and became a good woman.

People who can resist of outside pressure may be able to not win herself. Who can resist of herself and outdo herself that is true winner. Jane Eyre not only dares to resist unequal from society of nobility in the capitalist class, and resist unreasonable hierarchical social structure, but also dares to outdo herself. This is a decided difference between her and others, and is valuable of spirit too.

4.3 At Thornfield, Jane Eyre Gained Her Independence and Showed It Fully

At Thornfield, Jane Eyre developed her independence totally. She completely earned money by her own hand. She worked as a governess at Thornfield. When Mr. Rochester, the master of Thornfield came back, Jane Eyre’s life was changed into a new situation.

Facing Mr. Rochester’s stern, mood and rude attitude, she did not show any humbleness and Cowardice. As we all know, during the Victorian governesses, who tutored children in etiquette as well as academics, were expected to possess the “culture” of the aristocracy. Yet, as paid employees, they were more or less treated as servants. Jane Eyre was not pretty, but she had a thinking brain. In her opinion, everyone was equal whoever man or woman in the world. When Jane Eyre found that she fall in love with her master, she declared that she was equal to Rochester. When she heard that Rochester would be engaged with Ingram, she was desperate and felt that she had something to say. She dared to express her own emotion, and she said:“Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am automation? —A machine without feelings? And can bear to have my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! –I have as mush soul as you, --and full as much heart! And if god had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.

I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; --it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal, --as we are!” (Charlotte Bronte, 2003: P373). This is Jane’s real declaration of human right. As to charact er and speaking, she is not inferior to her master. She dares to resist her master severely to defend her own rights.

Jane Eyre always keeped her clear brain and purpose, and control herself. After Mr. Rochester expressed his feeling to Jane Eyre. One day he proceeded to accompany himself an enthusiasm love-song to Jane Eyre. When he finished the song, he rose and came towards her, his face all kindled, and his full falcon-eye flashing, and tenderness and passion in every lineament. He reached Jane Eyre, and he was exciting, “any other woman would have been melted to marrow at hearing such stanzas crooned in her praise”(Charlotte Bronte, 2003: P404). But Jane Eyre kept her head, although she deeply loves him. So Mr. Rochester said Jane Eyre was “hard little thing”. However, Mr. Rochester had high esteem to Jane Eyre.

When Mr. Rochester did act the character of a gipsy to tell them their fortunes, young ladies were listened with dismay from the gipsy what he said. When the gipsy asked her, “Why don’t you tremble?” “I am not cold.”“Why don’t you turn pale?”“I am not sick.”“Why don’t you consult my art?”“I am not silly.” Jane Eyre’s specifically character was expressed clearly in three directs and calmest answers. She was wise, calm, confirm and brave. The reason why Mr. Rochester was absolute trusts her at Thornfield.

Miss Ingram was a very beautiful lady; she was majestic, accomplished and sprightly,