Theresa Babcock
 

I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle blackness, burning! No human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better then I was loved; and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and idol. (311; ch. 27)

Jane Eyre’s inner struggle over leaving an already married Rochester is the epitome of the new "lovemad" woman in nineteenth-century literature. Jane Eyre is the story of a lovemad woman who has two parts to her personality (herself and Bertha Mason) to accommodate this madness. Charlotte Bronte takes the already used character of the lovemad woman and uses her to be an outlet for the confinement that comes from being in a male-dominated society. Jane has to control this madness, whereas the other part of her personality, her counterpart, Bertha Mason, is able to express her rage at being caged up. As what it means to be insane was changing during Bronte’s time, Bronte changed insanity in literature so that it is made not to be a weakness but rather a form of rebellion. Jane ultimately is able to overcome her lovemadness through sheer force of her will.

As a proponent of the lovemad woman Charlotte Bronte can be looked at closely and be seen as almost lovemad herself. Bronte did not have the love of her mother, who died at an early age. Though she had her sisters, brother and father, Charlotte seemed to lacking love. Through her "affair" with Monsieur Heger, Charlotte seems to be able to fit the definition of the lovemad woman. While away at school Charlotte developed an attachment to one of her teachers which sources vary as whether or not this lead to an attachment. As an already married man, Charlotte’s attachment to Heger was immoral. When Heger decided to ignore Charlotte, Charlotte saw this as desertion and this was seen in many of her writings (Winnifirth 65). Through her "tryst" with Heger, Charlotte could certainly identify with the emotions of a lovemad woman. She was rejected by her "lover" and can be seen as almost mad because of the emotions that she projects into her writings due to this "affair." Charlotte also was well read on the psychology of the time. She attended medical lectures and would have discussed such with her father Patrick Bronte (Small 155). Charlotte eventually settled for her father’s curate, Mr. Nicholls, as her husband, though initially she did not love him (Winnifirth 111).

Through the events of Charlotte’s life it is easy to see parts of her in the characters of Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason. Charlotte uses Bertha as a rebellious outlet for not only Jane but for herself as well. The feminist critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar clearly summarize this phenomenon when they state "By projecting their rebellious impulses not into their heroines but into mad or monstrous women, female authors dramatize their own self-division." (Gilbert and Gubar 78). In other words Charlotte has Bertha as a sort of scapegoat that she can express her true rebellious feelings without demeaning herself or her heroine. Charlotte makes Jane different from Bertha in the end because Jane uses her will to overcome her madness and ultimately gets the happy ending that neither Bertha nor Charlotte herself, it seems, were able to obtain.

Jane begins her fall into being a rebellious lovemad woman in the Reed household. She has an almost complete lack of love. She has the abandonment of both her parents through their deaths and then the desertion through death also of her Uncle Reed, who seems to be the only member of the Reed family who could have been sympathetic to her plight. Jane already may be looked at as mad because of her inability to control her passion, her rage. When she flies at John like a "mad cat" (24; ch. 24), she is led to her imprisonment in the red room. This is parallel to the real-life treatment of women who became hysterical and then were treated through confinement. The fact that Jane is described in animal terms such as mad cat is very important. She is seen as bestial in her inability to control her emotions. Those who are insane are considered to be weak-willed, like animals that only do things for their own pleasure. She must therefore be punished for these feelings.

Jane’s confinement in the red room is just the beginning of her journey as a lovemad woman. Evidence of Jane’s temporary madness can be seen in her thoughts during her imprisonment in the room. She thinks "unjust!--unjust! . . . instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression. . . . What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought!" ( 27; ch. 2). Jane has a consternation of soul, she is in tumult, in insurrection from the insupportable oppression. These words--"consternation, tumult and insurrection"--all denote a kind of madness in Jane. Jane as a woman should be controlling these emotions, not being driven to an almost hysterical by them. Here Bronte is using this temporary madness to give Jane an outlet for her anger at being oppressed. She has this mental battle in order to free herself from the society into which she is confined, not only the red room of course, but her position in the Reed family, her position in society as a female who wants to show her anger and is without a device to do so except for anger. This is one of the few examples where Jane allows herself to have this mental tumult whereas later on in the book Bertha Mason is used for this purpose.

The fact that Jane will have a double who will be able to act out Jane’s mental tumult is foreshadowed in the passage when she is looking into the looking glass (Gilbert 340). As she gazes at herself in the mirror Jane says:

Though Jane is still confined at Lowood she doesn’t demonstrate the passionate madness that came from her confinement in the Reed household. Jane still talks of rebellion but she herself is very quiet. She goes about her business of being a good student and later on a good teacher. She still lacks the love of a family, so the lovemadness is bound to come back at her. Eventually she decides she needs a change and a slight insanity comes from that. Once again this insanity can be seen in her thoughts: "I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer . . . 'Then,' I cried, half desperate, 'Grant me at least a new servitude!'" (93; ch. 10). Jane gasped and uttered, much like in the red room where she felt suffocated. She is gasping as if she can’t breathe, like a type of claustaphobia where she can breathe in confinement. Jane is half desperate with the passion of needing to be unconfined. Her passion is on the border of the insanity seen in the red room.

Finally Jane comes to Thornfield where her insanity is allotted to her double, Bertha Mason. The existence of this "psychological double" is talked about in The Mad Woman in the Attic by Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert. Though Helen Small, who researched the lovemad woman, does not believe that such a double exists in the book, her description of the lovemad woman is a clear combination of Bertha and Jane. By combining some of the views of these feminists critics a more clear understanding of Jane Eyre can be seen. From the very beginning of her stay at Thornfield, Jane and Bertha are parallel. When Jane goes for a nighttime walk on the roof her contemplations are almost echoed by Bertha’s laughter (Gilbert 360). "A tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life fire, feeling that I desired and had not in my actual existence" (116; ch. 12). Jane quickens with feeling; she is once again gasping as she was in the red room for freedom to do what she is unable to do, for rebellion. Jane goes on to say, "Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel" (116; ch. 12). This is of course the exact kind of language that would have gotten her committed in a Victorian society (Gilbert 338). That women can feel as men do is insane; the passion Jane feels inside would have been considered mad. Jane uses words like "restraint, stagnation, suffering" to describe the plight of women in general. Though Jane herself does not fall into hysterics here, Bertha’s laughter is a reminder of the madness that is caused by this constraint. Bertha’s laughter is the call for rebellion that Jane doesn’t allow herself to completely follow through with.

Even Rochester recognizes Jane’s imprisonment. In one of his discussions with her he says, " I see . . . a bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud high" (111; ch. 14). Jane is caged in close-set bars of society, but what is ironic is that Rochester is a part of this society that does not let the vivid, restless, and passionate Janebird out.

As the story progresses Bertha continues to act as an outline for the emotion that Jane does not allow herself to express. After finding out after Rochester’s immoral past, Jane says that she still respects him. That night Bertha, Jane’s double, tries to set fire to Rochester (Gilbert 361). This is an insane reaction to the emotion that Jane must be repressing about her true feeling towards Rochester’s actions. During this scene Jane gets a glimpse of Bertha and describes her as "goblin like" and the "devil." This is interesting since it is later discovered that Bertha’s lovemadness comes from the fact that she has a moral madness (Small 165). Victorians of course saw immoral, passionate women as monsters and that is how Jane sees Bertha. It is also slightly reminiscent of the fact that Jane had once saw herself as a supernatural being in the mirror in the red room. After Rochester fools Jane in the guise of a gypsy Bertha once again is about to lash out for Jane (Gilbert 361). Bertha attacks Mason that night and is described in terms such as "a tigress," and Mason compares her to a vampire, saying "she sucked the blood; she said she’d drain my heart" (214; ch. 20). Bertha is once again reduced to Medusa-like terms. She is the immoral woman who has become a monster. The name "tigress" is much like Jane being called a "mad cat" at the beginning of the book. Bertha is acting out in the bestial way that Jane used to allow herself to act out in. Bertha, like a tigress to a mad cat, is a larger version of Jane’s bestial nature.

While Jane seems to no longer have the problem of lovemadness when she is engaged to Rochester, this is just a façade. Jane’s lovemadness occurs from her inability to be who she wants to be in society, to express all her emotions out loud. Jane still needs Bertha to act as her double in this matter. Jane cannot recognize herself as Rochester tries to dress her up. When she looks at the fancy veil she knows that it is just another kind of confinement. Rochester is trying to get Jane to conform so that she looks and acts like the Victorian ideal of a woman. As Jane Rochester she will still have to be a person she is not meant to be. The fact that Jane’s lovemadness is not gone is also seen in her dreams. In them she is carrying a child, which can be seen as her double self that she still needs to carry with her. Bertha is able to rip up Jane’s veil, and in effect she is ripping up the illusion of Jane Rochester.

When Jane is finally confronted by Bertha it would seem as though they are polar opposites. Bertha is described as "a big woman: she showed virile force in the contest" (290; ch. 26), whereas Jane is described as "this young girl who stands so grave and quie" (290; ch. 26). These differences only complete the picture of Jane and Bertha as one. Bertha is strong and big and able to overcome Rochester, while Jane is small and incapable of doing that. Bertha is able to shout and fight and show her anger at confinement, while Jane is quietly resolved to deal with it (Gilbert 361). Jane comes close to the insanity she experienced in the red room once again when she decides she must leave Rochester. Staying as Rochester’s mistress would make her along the lines of Bertha. Jane believes if she stays with Rochester she will fall into a moral madness:

Jane’s stay with her cousins at Moor house basically just shows her force of will. Jane once again goes back to the confinement of the monotony of life that she felt at Lowood. She lives in her lovemad state for lack of Rochester but she doesn’t believe that she does not deserve love because otherwise she would have married St. John. The fact that she does not marry St. John is proof that Jane is the "new" lovemad woman. Though she feels the desertion of her over (through his immorality) she does not let complete madness overcome her. Jane continues her independent, rebellious thoughts and is able to stand up to the patriarch cal society she lives in though her ability to remain without a man in her life.

Jane is finally purged of her lovemad state with the purging of Bertha through her suicide. In her dreams Jane dreams herself of dropping the child she had to carry. Jane is essentially dropping the madness that she had to carry (Gilbert 360). With one last act Bertha is able to do something Jane could not, she destroys Thornfield, which is a symbol of conefinement for both women. With Bertha out of the way and Jane independent due to her inheritance, she is finally able to find true love. She finds Rochester in his mutilated state and confirms her status when she tells Rochester "no, sir; I am an independent woman now" (434; ch. 37). With this statement Jane affirms that she is in control of her will and it is her decision to be with him. With Bertha dead, Jane’s love for Rochester can no longer be seen as madness for Jane is now in control of the love (Showalter 121). Jane, by being independent, is not controlled by a patriarchal society and the lovemad woman has served her purpose of breaking the binds of which she was confined under.

Jane Eyre is definitely an example of the new love mad woman. Bronte is able to use her and Bertha as a voice to express her feelings toward the society that she lived in. Jane Eyre was able to overcome the lovemad repression of a male-dominated society. This is what Bronte was able to do: she took the old character of the lovemad woman, who can be seen as the prototype for the weak, dependent female, and made her to be an object of rebellion. She used this madness to show that women have feelings worth showing, and that if they do show their true emotions, they too can have the happy ending.
 
 

Works Cited

Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.

Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976.

Shuttleworth, Sally. Charlotte Bronte and Victorian Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Small, Helen. Love’s Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity. New York: Oxford UP, 1996.

Winnifrith, Tom. A New Life of Charlotte Bronte. Hampshire: Macmillan,1988.