The Seminar!!!

The Victorian era is the age of grand expansion, rapid industrialization that saw the growth of
Empire in all ways. The growth of social awareness and literacy led to the creation of a
number of literary works of art where some new particular issues come to surface as a new
solution to unanswered questions concerning heritage, or characters not conforming to the set
of repressed, moral standards of this era. The growth of Empire opened way to the coinage of
stories including a place across the sea where a new life could be initiated, standard plots are
usually interrupted by an extravagant twist such as sudden inheritances or hidden identities.
Concerns about class and gender end in a definition of a male hero, a female character that is
supposed to get married. The domestic matters of the Victorian novel presuppose an
appropriate subject followed by realistic situations with the interaction of characters with a
healthy set of values.
During this course weve read novels that gave us insight into the social standards of
Victorian age where a little portion of attention is given to the irregularities of everyday
life, ones madness or better said a womans madness remains a cloudy concept; an
inheritance is only known to exist, with no clarification of its origin. On the other hand,
advantage is given to patriarchal attitudes where a woman calls her beloved future husband
sir instead of his name: Than, sir, I will marry you. And marriage is a sign of her
realization.
In a Victorian novel such as Jane Eyre, a woman if not a widow- should get married or
should die.
Everything that is proper and acceptable has nothing to do with flesh and body, but with mind
and character:
To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have
neither souls nor hearts-when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps
imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper; but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul
made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break- at once supple and stable,
tractable and consistent- I am ever tender and true. (J.Eyre: 259:12)
As an opposite of Janes independent stability of character, there is the mad woman locked
behind the heavy door; a crazy Creole woman who is animal-like, who does not speak nor
walk normally:
He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door: this, too, he opened. In a
room without a window, there burnt a fire, guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp
suspended from the ceiling by a chain () What it was, whether beast or human being, one
could not, at first sight tell: it groveled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like
some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled
hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.(J.Eyre:291:3)
We can not even guess the background of Berthas attitude and understand the anger towards
Mr. Rochester:
Ah! Sir, she sees you! - exclaimed Grace-youd better not stay () Take care, then, sir! -
for Gods sake, take care!(J.Eyre:291:18)
Mr. Rocherster flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously,
and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled. She was a big woman, instature almost
equaling her husband, and corpulent besides: she showed virile force in contest At last he
mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he pinioned them behind her: with more
rope, which was at hand, he bound her to a chair.(J.Eyre:291:31)
When Edward Rochester compares the two women- Jane, whom he wants to be his wife and
Bertha, who is threatening their happiness, he says:
Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder- this face with that mask- this form with
that bulk; then judge me( J.Eyre:292:9)
So, in Bronts Jane Eyre , Bertha Mason is presented as a wild animal, witch-like figure,
almost supernatural creature to be feared. She is capable of stting the house on fire, killing her
own husband. The reader is tempted to believe that her nature is like that, that she is a
lunatic. Rochester is easily felt sorry for; he says:
Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three
generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!- as I found out
after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a
dutiful child, copied her parent in both points.(J.Eyre 290:9)
The fact that Bertha Mason is an unfortunate Creole- she could be interpreted as a colonized
item that must be sacrificed for the colonizer to achieve the role that belongs to him/her, to
enable the marriage between Jane and Edward.
She must play out her role, act out the transformation of her self into that fictive Other,
set fire to the house and kill herself, so that J. Eyre can become the feminist individualist
heroine of British fiction. I must read this as an allegory of the general colonial subject for the
glorification of the social mission of the colonizer. ( Spivak, 1985:250-1)( Situated readers:
151)
In Rhyss revision of Jane Eyre, in Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette is breaking the image of
Bertha, showing the why and the how She became the mad woman and the torturer.

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The Victorian era is the age of grand expansion, rapid industrialization that saw the growth of

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