Jane Eyre 231though Jane rejects his proposal at least three times,
he refuses to take no for an answer. Partly to escape
St. John’s harassing and oppression and partly to
answer Rochester’s call, Jane furtively leaves Moor
House, the Rivers’s cottage.
While Mr. Brocklehurst oppresses Jane through
bodily privation and St. John through emotional
distress, Rochester oppresses her through mate-
rial objects. He buys her clothes and jewelry in a
symbolic attempt to “own” her, and he says to her, “I
mean shortly to claim you—your thoughts, conver-
sation and company—for life.” She detests the way
he treats her as if he were a sultan bestowing gifts
on a slave. She rebels against him, saying she will not
wear the dresses he has bought and will go on being
a governess and maintaining the habits of a govern-
ess before the marriage. However, the marriage plans
fall apart after Rochester reveals that he is already
married. Jane has to run away because she is afraid
he might claim her as a mistress. When she returns,
however, she is of an equal status with Rochester.
They are compatible physically for he is blind and
maimed and she is a woman (one has to bear in
mind this novel was written in the 1800s), but she
is also financially independent after receiving an
inheritance from a long-lost uncle. Their eventual
marriage is one between equals.
Jane Eyre is also a novel of women oppressing
women. As a child, Jane is abused by her aunt, Mrs.
Reed, for no apparent reason, except perhaps that
Mr. Reed appears to favor Jane. At Lowood, Mrs.
Scatcherd constantly picks on Helen Burns, Jane’s
friend, for being dirty even though it is impossible
to wash up in the freezing water and that Helen is
one of the more intelligent students. At Thornfield
Hall, Grace Poole is employed as the caretaker and
warden of Bertha, Rochester’s first wife; Grace keeps
Bertha under lock and key. One of the reasons that
Mrs. Fairfax disapproves of Jane and Rochester’s
marriage is because Jane is of a lower class than
Rochester. When Jane leaves Thornfield Hall to
avoid becoming Rochester’s mistress, she is refused
entry to the Moor House by the housekeeper, Han-
nah, even though she is on the brink of collapse from
hunger and fatigue. Hence, not only do the men
oppress women, women are oppressing each other.
Still, the main narrative revolves around the
oppression of Jane by men. In order to escape
from the oppression, she has to play by the rules in
Lowood under Mr. Brocklehurst’s reign; reject and
run away from St. John; and return to Rochester as
an equal. The fact that Rochester has to be both
blind and maimed for Jane to be treated as an equal
attests to the lowly status of Victorian women.
Aaron HolOve in Jane Eyre
Love is never simple in Jane Eyre. Despite knowing
that his wife dislikes Jane Eyre, Mr. Reed, Jane’s
uncle, on his deathbed, elicits a promise from Mrs.
Reed that she will treat Jane as one of her own
children. As a result of Mr. Reed’s love and kind
intentions, however, Jane grows up in an abusive
environment: The Reeds make Jane understand
perfectly that she is living on their charity. Perhaps
it is such a mentality—that love equates to suf-
fering—that Jane brings with her to Lowood, a
boarding school she is sent to after an altercation
with Mrs. Reed. At Lowood, she meets two persons
she will come to love: Helen Burns, a fellow student,
and Miss Temple, the headmistress who will turn
Jane into a schoolteacher. The association of love
with suffering is again prominent in a conversation
Jane has with Helen. Jane says, “To gain some real
affection from you, or Miss Temple, or an other
whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have
the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me,
or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its
hoof at my chest.”
Helen, however, disavows the great importance
Jane puts on secular love; she believes in a religious
love that acts as a philosophy for her immense tol-
erance. In school, Helen is constantly picked on by
Mrs. Scatcherd. Even when she is able to answer
questions her classmates cannot, Mrs. Scatcherd
does not praise her; instead, she flogs Helen for
being disagreeable and dirty. Helen’s love for a divine
being makes her believe that she has to put up with
her fate, for if God acknowledges her innocence, he
will separate the “spirit from [the] flesh to crown us
with a full reward” (59).
While Helen is moderate in her religious love,
St. John Rivers, Jane’s cousin, is a zealot. St. John