Deidre Ortiz

The depiction of disease in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre helps define Jane's social position and character. Tuberculosis and typhus fever are the prevalent diseases represented in the novel, that often symbolize Jane's social class. Typhus fever is strongly associated with the lower class because its transmitted through lice and mites, requiring unsanitary, filthy living conditions for the disease to manifest. Tuberculosis infected all social classes, associating this disease with the upper and lower classes. Tuberculosis is ambiguous in defining social class because it is spread through bacteria present in the air, making it inevitable for the rich to avoid exposure. The representation of disease displays Jane's ambiguous social status, associating her with the lower classes, but also separating her, because she does not contract these diseases.

Early in the novel Jane explains how she overheard servants tell about the death of her parents. They died of typhus fever, a poor man's sickness, and this means of death associates Jane with the lower classes:

My father had been a poor clergyman...my mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town where his curacy was situated, and where that disease was then prevalent; that my mother took the infection from him, and both died within a month of each other. (58; ch.3)

Jane's father was a curate in a working-class area, who contracted the disease by visiting his parishioners. A curate is a "clergyman who assists the principal priest in the performance of his parochial duties." Jane's father's position in the church was of low rank, working under the priest. Undoubtedly, Jane's father was sent by his boss to help these sick parishioners. Jane is quite similar to her father, both are willing to serve the sick, risking exposure to deadly diseases. This shared willingness to serve combined with her father's low rank associates Jane with the lower, working classes, but her position is more complex. She never contracts any disease which asserts that Jane is of a higher class because it identifies her as tough and resilient, despite her deprived diet and small size. Jane's association with the lower class through her father, is complicated by her mother's wealthy blood line. Jane's mother was from a wealthy family, but she was disinherited because she married a curate, much lower in rank than herself. However, this makes Jane's association with the wealthy as strong as her association with the lower class. But Jane was forced to become an orphan as a result of her parents deaths, and was taken in by her mother's brother, although he died when Jane was a baby. After his death, Jane was cared for by Mrs. Reed, her uncles wife, who treated Jane cruelly and helped strengthen Jane's identity with the lower classes.

Jane's caretaker for the first ten years of her life is her aunt, Mrs. Reed, who looks upon Jane as an ugly, ill-mannered little girl. Mrs. Reed dislikes Jane because she was jealous of Jane's mother, believing that Mr. Reed (Jane's uncle) paid too much attention to his sister and especially to Jane, while she was a baby. Mrs. Reed instills the ideas to Jane that her children are of a superior caste, although they share the same blood, Jane must conform and obey her cousins demands. Jane is beaten up by Mrs. Reed's son, John Reed, and eventually becomes unconscious from bleeding without anyone dressing the wound. As Jane awakens from this state, she recognizes her caretaker: "I knew him; it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing: for herself and the children she employed a physician" (51; ch. 3). Sickness has defined Jane's social position while living with the Reeds. She is portrayed as equal with the servants, only having an apothecary to tend to her as opposed to a medical doctor, by whom her aunt and cousins are treated. This displays the disparity of treatment between Jane, an orphan, and her upper-middle class cousins. Jane would be upper-middle class had her mother not been disinherited. The oppressive and brutal nature of Mrs. Reed has forced Jane into the lower class. The medical attention Jane receives displays the inequity endemic in life with the Reeds. Bronte displays how unfair the social conventions of the nineteenth-century are toward those without money or families, including children. Jane's mother was a Reed and a wealthy woman. However, due to her lower class marriage, she was rejected by her friends, and deprived of family money. Jane has wealthy blood, but her parents were poor and died of a poor man's illness, therefore Jane is treated as one of the lower classes. Jane's aunt chooses to see Jane as lowly, therefore sends her to an orphan charity school at the age of ten.

Jane arrives at Lowood, a charity school for orphans. Shortly after her arrival, the school is stricken with tuberculosis and typhus fever. Jane is again associated with the lower class by the unsanitary conditions at Lowood, which is not surprising, having been sent there as a result of her aunt's wishes. Clothes are scarce, food is inedible and in small portions, and the surrounding area has no ventilation a constant fog overhung the village. Jane tells us of the gross conditions at Lowood:

Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold: we had no boots the snow got into our shoes and melted there; our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet...The scanty supply of food was distressing: with the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. (92; ch. 7)

These conditions lead to the spread of disease within the school. Tuberculosis is contracted through tainted milk or water, and often the germ can be inhaled with pestilent air. Upper or middle class children would have been removed from the school by family once news of disease was known, but Jane, like most of these lower class girls at Lowood, are forced to remain within the walls of the sick. Jane attributes the spread of typhus fever to the lack of food and the negligent medical care at Lowood, "Semi-starvation and neglected cold had predisposed most of the girls to receive infection: forty-five out of eighty girls lay ill at one time" (108; ch. 9). Jane knows the tragic outcome of disease for the poor. Jane is identified with typhus through her parent's death, and now with the illness at Lowood. Her low social position inflicts a harsh reality that as long as she is amongst the poor, her life is threatened by disease and death. Jane acknowledges that the air in the area of Lowood is unsanitary and Lowood has become "the cradle of fog and fog-bred pestilence, which, quickening with quickening spring, crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathes typhus through its crowded school room and dormitory, and ere May arrived, transformed the seminary into an hospital" (108; ch. 9). Disease has infected almost all of the girls, yet Jane never contracts any of these diseases at Lowood. Jane is tough and resilient, despite her small size. She was a baby when her parents died, and did not contract it from them. At Lowood she's only ten and manages to avoid infection despite the disease-ridden atmosphere. This displays Jane's strength and ability to resist disease. Throughout the novel Jane is described as plain and irregularly small. Even her beloved describes her as a "childish and slender creature," constantly referring to her as "my little Jane" (340; ch. 28). With this belief instilled Jane asserts that she's "puny and insignificant" (288; ch. 24). Jane is a small woman, and despite her puniness she never contracts infection. The disease portrayed has defined Jane as tough, hardy, and above the lower classes because she always remains healthy. She has a strength of her own, despite her financial dependency on others. Jane's contact with disease displays her tough, hardy character and her ability to rise above this low-class rank.

Jane asserts her hardy and resilient character through her close contact with tuberculosis. While at Lowood, Jane comforts her best friend Helen, who is dying of consumption. Jane visits Helen the night of her death and cuddles with her as they both fall asleep. Their last evening together, Jane describes Helen's features, all marks of consumption: "I saw her face, pale wasted, but quite composed;...I got on to her crib and kissed her: her forehead was cold and thin, and so were her hand and wrist; but she smiled as of old" (112; ch. 9). Although Helen is dying she accepts her fate with quiet, calm, tranquillity. When she sees Jane, she still "smiles as of old," telling Jane "I am very happy Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve; there is nothing to grieve about...I believe; I have faith: I am going to God" (113; ch. 9). Helen is unafraid of death just as Jane is not afraid of disease. Both girls are high above their forced social rank, they are educated due to their own efforts and both are superior in intellect than an average low class girl. Jane and Helen are like the lower classes, only in being oppressed. Tuberculosis does not associate Helen with the lower classes because all the classes were exposed. It points to the oppression of Helen, her parents are dead so she is forced to live a charity life of the lower class. The role of disease in the novel is ambiguous and this class ambiguity associated with T.B. is personified through Helen. Helen's associated with the lower class because she's forced to live at Lowood, but her death by consumption asserts Helen's is of a higher rank. All the girls at Lowood lay sick with typhus, a poor man's disease, while Helen is the only one who dies of tuberculosis, the disease that doesn't respect rank. Bronte is making it a point to assert that Helen is not lowly, but in fact far higher in intellect and rank than any of the others. Bronte also rises Jane above the stigma of poverty and disease at Lowood by Jane's affectionate response to Helen's "pale wasted" face, stricken with disease. Despite Helen's disease, Jane is not afraid of her. She has no fear of exposure. Jane hears of Helen's poor condition and goes to her room, laying down next to her with her arms "clasped closer around Helen; saying, "she seemed dearer to me than ever; I felt as if I could not let her go; I lay with my face hidden on her neck" (113; ch. 9). Jane soon learned that the next morning Miss Temple found Jane with her head against Helen's shoulder, her arms around Helen's neck Jane was sleeping Helen was dead (114; ch. 9). Jane sees disease as a part of life and is unafraid to go near. Jane stays with Helen, identifying her with those who help the sick, asserting Jane is not one of low rank. Disease in the novel often associates Jane with the lower classes, but more significantly it shows her rise above low rank by assisting the sick therefore symbolizing her rank above them.

Later in the novel Jane becomes seriously ill. She was to marry her employer, Mr. Rochester but at the alter Jane is informed that Rochester has been married for several years. She sneaks away in the middle of the night, afraid Rochester might persuade her to remain as his mistress. Jane has no money and is forced to sleep outdoors and beg for food. Days pass with little to eat and Jane knows that without rescue, she will soon perish. Inexorable hunger and extreme exhaustion are quickly consuming her. She sees the light of a cottage and forces herself onward to seek shelter. The servant is suspicious of her and gives her only a penny then proceeds to shut the door. Jane thinks she is near her end:

Alas, this isolation--this banishment from my kind! Not only the anchor of hope, but the footing of fortitude was gone--at least for a moment; but the last I soon endeavored to regain. 'I can but die,' I said, 'and I believe in God. Let me try to wait His will in silence.' (361; ch. 28)

Jane's words spoken in desperation echo the dying words of Helen Burns. They both turn to God as their savior. Helen states, "I believe God is good; I can resign my immortal part to Him without any misgiving" (113; ch. 9). Both girls seek God as their afterlife, but there is a desperation and sorrow in Jane's words that are not evident in Helen's. Helen calmly awaits death to be with God, while Jane groans, and cries while stating, "I can but die." Jane is unwilling to let go of life as easily. Of course, Jane recovers, it is a part of her nature to survive.

Jane is taken in by the people of the little cottage. The man of the house is a clergyman, St. John, living with his two sister and their servant. Diana and Hannah are intelligent, well-read young ladies who are very much like Jane. The evening Jane seeks help at their cottage, she peers through the window at these women who are reading and discussing the literature. Jane is then rejected by the servant, and she cries out "this banishment from my kind" (361; ch. 28) Jane denies her association with the lower classes by identifying herself with these intelligent, educated women. Jane knows that the low rank she's endured was oppressive and unjust. She's at pains to deny her association with the poor and uneducated. These women nurse Jane to health and St. John asserts that Jane's illness "was a result of reaction from excessive and protracted fatigue...every nerve had been overstrained in some way, and the whole system must sleep torpid a while" (365; ch. 29) Jane's illness was self inflicted. She goes out of her way to state, "There was no disease" (365; ch. 29). Jane denies infection as a means to deny her associations with the lower classes. She's been a beggar at this point, unable to convince others that she's not a vagrant. She must assert her independence form poverty and she does this through her strength to survive and resist disease.

Jane's illness is a symbol for her rebirth as an independent, self-providing woman. She attains a job as a school teacher where she is her own master. She recovers from her sickness to find a new life, free of dependency. Hitherto she depended on the Reeds, then Lowood, followed by servitude to Mr. Rochester, but now she's her own boss. However, Jane emotionally struggles over teaching poor peasant children. Jane explains her emotional conflicts caused by teaching the lower class:

I felt desolate to a degree. I felt--yes, idiot that I am--I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw around me. (385; ch. 31)

Jane realizes she's wrong for condemning this position over the impoverished, it does give her independence, but also identifies her as above the lower classes. She's dismayed at the children's ignorance, displaying her own necessity to be around educated, intelligent people. She has difficulty relating to the uneducated minds of the poor, leaving her lonely and isolated. However, she learns to adjust and begins to see improvement in the young girls, but she soon resigns. Jane inherits money from an uncle she never met which makes her a wealthy woman. Jane now has the wealthy blood line and complete independence. She has no financial struggles to associate her with the lower classes. The oppression Jane endured that reduced her below her "natural" rank, is now lifted.

Disease is represented throughout Jane Eyre as a force attacking the less fortunate. It decries Jane's position within the lower class but also elevates her to hero-status by never herself contracting these diseases. Bronte asserts the ambiguities associated with disease are parallel to the ambiguity of Jane's social class. Jane is associated with the lower, although the novel asserts oppression to have forced this stigma, and is not Jane's natural rank. Jane distinguishes herself from the lower class through strength, courage and independence. She eventually becomes an independent wealthy woman, free of illness and disease. Her resilient and hardy character had to endure many hardships before she attained her "natural" social class.