Personification of Oppression in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

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Personification of Oppression in Jane Eyre

At first glance and under insufficient scrutiny, the persona of Jane Eyre reflects a slightly expanded Cinderella character. But Jane Eyre's personality and life delve much deeper than a superfluous "rags to riches" story. Her identity is as complex as literature can convey and her characteristics are manifested through several subtle parallels. These parallels relate to objects and nature, but mostly to one particular individual in the novel. A seemingly exact opposite of the persona's placid character, the maniacal Bertha Mason actually personifies an inner part of Jane, the part of her personality that longs to live free but goes crazy under the oppression of society, and especially that of Mr. Rochester. Jane's doppelgänger, or counterpart, truly doubles Miss Eyre's suffocated life.

Throughout her young life, Jane Eyre lives under some form of tyranny. Whether she passes her days as an abused and unwanted ward, a maltreated pupil, or a subdued schoolteacher or governess, she never feels truly free. Although she outwardly accepts her lot in life, she often wonders to herself why she must endure her pain and why the people in her life always oppress her. When locked in the red room, she asks herself why she is "always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned" (Brontë 46), and consequently answers herself that her treatment is unjust. This sudden realization "instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression" (47). Unfortunately, Jane can not escape oppression, but only alter its form by moving from place to place, always suffocated by the society surrounding her.

Bertha Mason's life epitomizes oppre...

... middle of paper ...

...this freedom, by fleeing Thornfield and returning at an equal plane with her beloved Rochester, the oppressed maniac inside of her dies, "dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were scattered" (453).

Charlotte Brontë successfully expresses Jane's uneasiness of mind and her hidden craziness due to oppression through Bertha, the lunatic upstairs. The doubles share a somewhat similar lot in life and represent each other's progression towards freedom. Brontë gives insight into this doppelgänger effect by her use of language, mirrors, and physical closeness. Clearly, Bertha is a vehicle with which Jane's inner conflicts are brought to life, but a larger question remains: whether Jane is that same sort of vehicle for Charlotte Brontë herself.

Works Cited

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1847. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.

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