Dawn Newlin
 
 

In the novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte uses Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds to allow the reader to obtain some insight on the main character, Jane Eyre. Bronte uses Bewick's book to give Jane a way to express her feelings as a child, and later in the novel this book influences Jane by allowing her to express some of the same feelings she has in her own art. The illustrations and text in Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds have a lasting impact on Jane Eyre's life.
 
 

The title History of British Birds can be very misleading for the readers of Jane Eyre. With Jane as a child at the beginning of the novel, her main focus in Bewick is in the pictures. However, Jane's interest is not within the pictures of the birds, Jane's interest lies within the pictures of the non-English landscapes. Jane wants her readers to know that these are pictures that caught her interest right away. She explains that "child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank" (40; ch. 1). Then Jane goes into the description of the first picture that caught her eye in Bewick:
 
 

They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of the solitary rocks and promontories by them only inhabited; of the cost of Norway, studded with isles from its Southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape-- Where the Northern Ocean in Vast whirls, Boils round the naked, melancholy isles of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides. (40; ch. 1)
 
 

The "haunts of sea-fowl" have great resemblance to Jane. Jane can be seen as the sea-fowl that has many haunts throughout her life. While at Gateshead, one of Jane's most fearful haunts is John Reed, and constantly fears contact with him. Jane informs us that "every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh on my bones shrank when he came near" (42; ch. 1). Like a lonely sea-fowl at sea, Jane is a lonely, isolated young girl. While at Gateshead, Jane also feels haunted when she is locked in the red room. She tells Bessie that she saw a light, and thought a ghost was coming (49; ch. 2). Jane's life at Gateshead is filled with different types of haunts. The "haunts of sea-fowl" that is talked about in Bewick could also be foreshadowing the haunts that Jane receives from Bertha while she stays at Thornfield.
 
 

Immediately following the description of the bleak and lonely atmosphere of the first illustration she looks at in Bewick, Jane goes on to explain another illustration that she could not pass unnoticed:
 
 

The bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nora Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with "the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space - that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winter, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surrounded the pole, and concentre the multiple rigours of extreme cold." Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own. (40; ch. 1)
 
 

This picture in Bewick shows the feelings of loneliness and isolation Jane holds within her. The description of "the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone and those forlorn regions of dreary space - that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights" makes a similar parallel to the description of Gateshead. From Jane's point of view Gateshead is a miserable, lonely, dreary place to live. Jane tells us that "I was a discord in Gateshead Hall; I was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children; or her chosen vassalage" (47; ch. 2) Even though Jane lives at Gateshead for the first portion of her life, she still was "like nobody there." Jane wants us to understand that Gateshead was not a pleasant place for her as a child. The reservoir of frost and snow, the fields of ice, and the accumulation of winters that surround the pole describe the actual surroundings of Gateshead, and they also describe Jane's feelings while living inside Gateshead. Jane tells us in the first paragraph of the novel that "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day . . . the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds of sombre, and rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was out of the question" (39; ch. 1). The picture that Jane looks upon in Bewick describes the nature that surrounds Gateshead. Jane wants us to know that Gateshead is dark, gloomy and cold; a place that the sun does not find too often. The picture also expresses Jane's feelings. The bitter cold that surround the pole in the picture is the same bitter coldness that surrounds Jane while living with Mrs. Reed at Gateshead. Even though some of the people in Mrs. Reed's house are Jane's relatives, she feels as if she has no family. Jane tells us that "If they did not love me, in fact, as little as did I love them" (47; ch. 2). Jane believes that "had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child --though equally dependent and friendless--Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence more complacently" (47; ch. 2). Jane is told that she is "less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep" (44; ch. 2). While at Gateshead Jane is surrounded by bitter cold personalities. She is raised to believe that she is below everyone around her. There is no one who provides Jane with the love and affection she needs and deserves as an innocent child. L. Duin Kelly informs us that "When Jane is recalling the pictures and the text of Bewick, the phrases Jane uses are very close to the wording in the introductory pages to the History of British Birds " (231). Throughout the neglected, unwanted, isolated feelings Jane has experienced it is apparent that the pictures Jane chooses to recall are those which are extremely similar to her own state of being. This could be the reason why Jane recalls the text so precisely. She is too young to express her feelings in words, so Jane uses Bewick's History of British Birds to reveal her true feelings.

Later in the novel Jane displays how Bewick's History of British Birds had an impact on her adult life. As stated before, Bewick's History of British Birds allowed Jane to express the way she feels. As a child the pictures she chose to look at told us of her inner feelings, and as an adult, Bewick's pictures became a way for Jane to express similar feelings in her own art. Even though the paintings that Rochester looks at were painted at Lowood, they still express the way she felt at Gateshead and Thornfield. The bleak atmosphere that Jane describes in Bewick's text is projected into the atmosphere of destruction and isolation in Jane's first painting that Rochester examines:
 
 

The first represents clouds low and livid, rolling over a swollen sea: all the distance was an eclipse; so, too, was the foreground; of rather, the nearest billows, for there was no land. One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and large, with wings flecked with foam; its beak held a gold bracelet, set with gems . . . Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corpse glanced through the green water; a fair arm was the only limb clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or torn. (157; ch. 13)
 
 

The central image of Jane's first painting is the dark, large cormorant that sat on a half-submerged mast. This finds a parallel with Bewick's picture of a "black horned thing, seated aloof on a rock" (40; ch. 1). Jane can be associated with the cormorant, because she too sits alone and isolated from what goes on around her. The lonely and unhopeful atmosphere that is evoked in Jane's painting, and that is recalled in Bewick's History of British Birds is seen through Jane's feelings while she is at Gateshead when:
 
 

mounted into the window-seat; gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement. Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November Day. (39; ch. 1)

It is here that we see Jane allowing herself to be isolated from everything and everyone else. It is rather ironic that Rochester demands to look at Jane's painting because the isolation imagery that is expressed in the paintings and in Bewick is also seen through Jane's feelings at Thornfield. Jane tries to isolate herself again while she is at Thornfield. This is apparent when Rochester demands that Jane accompany Adele in meeting the visitors at Thornfield. Even though it is Rochester's requirement that Jane accompany Adele, she does not feel comfortable in doing so. When finding a way to isolate herself Jane proclaims:
 
 

Fortunately, there was another entrance to the drawing-room than that through the saloon where they were all seated at dinner. The crimson curtain hung before the arch: slight was the separation this drapery formed from the party in the adjoining saloon . . . I retired to a window-seat, and taking a book from a table near, endeavoured to read. Adele brought her stool to my feet; ere long she touched my knee. ( 199-200; ch. 17)
 
 

It is ironic that some of Jane's isolation at Gateshead and some of her isolation at Thornfield occur in the same type of manner. Both scenes include a window-seat with a curtain that separates Jane from everyone else. It seems as though Jane feels a bit more at ease at Thornfield. At Gateshead Jane uses her window seat to hide her from everyone else. She makes sure to pull her feet up, and she uses the curtain to shut in her view to the right side of her body. Jane is more at ease at Thornfield, because she uses her seat by the window to stay unnoticed and out of the way. She feels she does not have to hide from anyone. The fact that there are no parallels in Bewick to the corpse or the gold bracelet in Jane's first painting suggest that she has drawn on other elements of her experience for the symbols in her picture.
 
 

Another of Jane's paintings that is reminiscent of the History of British Birds is her picture of the colossal head resting against an iceberg. The paintings shows:

the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter sky; a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close series, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in the foreground, a head - a colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg, and resting against it. (157; ch. 13).
 
 

Jane's third painting makes a parallel with Bewick's description of "the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone and those forlorn regions of dreary space." The imagery of the coldness in both pictures resembles all of the cold and bitter people in Jane's life thus far. It is ironic that this imagery of cold appears in all of the places in which Jane stays. First, there was Mrs. Reed at Gateshead, then, there was Mr. Brocklehurst at Lowood, and in the beginning stages at Thornfield, Mr. Rochester appears to be rather cold and bitter. What is ironic is that Jane looked at coldness through Bewick at Gateshead, then she painted images of coldness at Lowood and now Rochester examines the images of coldness at Thornfield.