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Voicing and Silencing Madness:

A Reading oflinne Elne

AKIKo I<AvciAsAKI

I

The phrase `the

madwoman in 1lane li!yfe' is usually associated with

Bertha Mason, the first Mrs. Rochester, confined in the attic of Thorn-field Hall.i Critics have paid little attention to the textual references

which also associate the adjective `mad'

with thc hefoine, Jane Eyre,especiaily with young Jane when she suffers a netvous fit in the red

room. In fact, C`Bad

animal!" (7), "a

picture of passion" (g), "she's

like a

mad cat" (g) are all phrases which are uttered not in reiation to Bertha,

but in relation to Jane.2 The common reading that Bertha is, significantly, the madwoman of

the text can be, of course, justified by textual details: Jllane fpre tells usthat a doctor has certified Bertha's insanity. But when we consider the

vague notions of madness widely current at the time, even in medical

practice, xxre may wonder whether it is really so straightforward that

Bertha is the only one who is mad.3 VCXhy should Jane also be associated

with extreme ernotions and reactions beyond the Iimits of conventional

behavior, which can appear to those around her, explicitly and implicitly,

as `mad'?

My intention here is not to pursue the question of madness from a

philosophical perspective, but I would rather like to fbcus directly on the

representation of madness in this novelistic text.4 In other wotds, since

i See. for cxample, Terry E2gleton (ig7s), Adrienne Rich (ig7g), Elaine Showalter

(ig77), Safidra M. Gilbert and Susan Gub2r (ig7g).

2 Charlotte Bronte,

.llane ij,re, Norton Critical Edition. All further citations are from

this edition,

3 For an account of the unstable history of madness, see Roy Porter, :Madness

and

Psychiatry Talking: A Historical Dialogue' in A .Sbclal H?stony ofMbdeess,

4 Shoshan2 Felman discusses the ambiguous notion of madness and philosophical

boundaries in llehitii{g and Iltiddeess, s7-

[87l




88 Akiko Kawasaki

everything in the novel is told by Jane, I would like to explQre how it isthat Jane narrates/writes madness and how it is that she hetself becomes,by narrating the story, exempt from the association with madness.

This is an aspect of the novel which has not been discussed in the

critical litefature, but it is one which I believe can be shown to give usnew insight into the text and its method of functioning. From a feminist

perspective, it can also provide a coherent and textually convincing way

of approaching the representation of women in 1inne [bira

My contention, then, is not only that Jane Eyre is associated with

extreme states of em.otions which couid wcll lcad readers to consider her

as `abnormaP

or `mad',

but that aspects of the narrativc technique of the

novel work to exemptJane from this association with madness. In wh2tfo11ows I should like to djscuss fout aspects of these techniques and

indicate how they lead to the'reader's endorsement ofJane's happiness at

the end, despite the catastrophic miser}T and subsequent death of Bertha.

II

Befbre discussing the narrative technique in detai1, it seems appropri-

zte to demonstrate the traits ofJane which can be associated with mad-

ness. In the scene in which Jane is imprisoned in the fed room, vtre read:

Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldlyround the dark room. At this rnoment a light gleamed on the wall. VC'as it, Iasked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind?No; moonlight

'was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the

ceiling and quivered over my hcad. I can now conjecture readily that this

streak of light was, in al1 likelihood, a gleam from a lantern, carried by some

one across the lawn: but then, preparcd as my mind was fbr horror, shaken as

my perves were by agitation, I thought the swift-darting beam was a herald of

some coming vis.ion from anothet world. My heart beat thick, my head grewhot; a sDund fi11ed my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings: something

seemed near me; I was opprcsscd, suffbcated: endurance broke down; Irushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort (i4),

The narrating-Jane confesses that this event "only

gave [hcrJ nerves a

shock, of which [shel feel[s] the reverberation to this day" (i6). Mr.

Lloyd, the apothecary, advises that Jane should "have

changc of air and

scene", because "iber]

nerves [are] not in a good state" (2i). This is not the first or last representation ofJane in zn extreme psy-




Voicing and Silencing Madness: A Reading oflL;ne L!),re Sg

chic state.5 In her time at Lowood she appears, if not as a mad girl, at

least as a person who is punishcd by Brocklehurst for her otherness.

`My

dear children,' pursued the black marble clergyman, with pathos,, `this

is

a sad, a melancholy occasion; fot it becomes my duty to warn you, that this

girl, who might be one of God's own lambs, is a little castaway: not a

member of the true fiock, but evidently an interloper and an,alien' (s7).

As she grows up, Jane is shown to possess unusual qualities, beyondthose of rational discourse. She conceives the idea of becoming a gov-erness, for example, as if "a

kind fairy had surely dropped the required

suggestion on pae4 pillow" (7s). Her exemption from conventional limitsand constraints is shown when she believes that she can foresee futureevents, predicting John Reed's death and the destruction of ThornfieidH211 in her visionary dteams. The drawings she shows to Rochester arealso visionary, and reveal a Ievel of mental activity which allows her tosee beyond the superficial realities of erdinary life.6

Some special interest in the rrr()on is traditionally associated with mad-

ness (or `lunacy'). The moon is, in fact, extremely important to Jane. It

functions as her ally, mentor and even mother, playing the role of devel-oping the plot towards a happy-ending. Thus young Jane is

"not

at all

afraid of being out late when it is moonlight'7 (ioo). In the complicated

interior of Lowood, the moonlight guides her safely to Helen's chamber.

Just befbre she hears Richard Mason's scream, Jane is woken by brightmoonlight and, despite her surprise, is soon ready to carry out

Rochester's order to take care of the injured Richard Mason. The moon

even actually speaks to her, in her dream, after her failed 2ttempt to

marry Rochester:

I lifted up my head to look: the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim, the

gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I

watched her come -watched vLrith the strangest anticipation; as though

5 Rich, Gilbert and Gub2r discuss how, although Jane experiences extreme feelings

and a kind of madness in the red room, she in the fbllowing critical moments succeeds

in avoiding the temptation to escape into madness. I wish to emphasize the problems oftextuality and textuai represcntation, rather than simply to

`psychologize'

the characters,

6 According to Lillian Feder's wide range of prototypes of madness, this might be

categorized as madness of the ancient Greek: madness as a blessing, an inducement to

prophccy and the arts. See lhditess and L2teminre, 6,




90 Akiko Kaxxrasaki

sorne word of doom were to be written on the disk. She broke forth as never

moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable fold and waved

them away; then, not a moon, but a white hurnan fbrm shone in the azure,

inclining z glorious brow eartihward, It gazed and gazed and g2zed on me. It

spoke to rny spitit: immeasurably dist2nt was the tone, yet so near, it whis-

pered in my heart - `My

daughter, flee temptation!'

`pt{otlier,

I will'.

So I answered after I had "'aked from the trance-like dream (28i).

It is in a room full of moonlight that Jane receives and answets a cry,

something which goes beyond the limits of rationality, and which turns

out to be a telepathic mess2ge from Rochester, persuading her to avoid

the temptation of accepting St. John's proposal:

The one candle was dying out: the room was full of moonlight. My heart beat

fast znd thick: I heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible

feeling that thriUed it through, and passed at once to my head and extremi-

ties. The feeling was not like an electric shock; but it was quite as sharp, as

strange, as startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto

had been but torpot; from whi'ch they were now summoned, and fbrced to

wal<e. They rose expectant: eye and ear waited, while the flesh guiveted on

my bones.

`X)Uhat

have you heard?' VC'hat do you see? asked St. John. I saw nothing:

but I heard a voice somcwhere cry - Uane! Jane! Jane!' nothing more.

`Oh

God! what is itP' I gasped. . . . , And it was the voice of a human being - a known, loved, well-

remembered voice -

that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe wildly, eeti}y, urgently.

`I

am coming!' I cried. `VUait

fbr me! Oh, I will come!' I flew to the door,

and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out into the garden: it was void.

`VVhere

are you?' I exclaimed (36g).

A belief that one heats voices which communicate secret messages is, ofcourse, one of the basic symptoms of schizophrenia and related Mnesses.

Jane's narrative allows her to insist that this obviously impossible com-rnunication of mental impulses has actually taken place.' 7lane 1!)ire is a text, then, in which terms relating to madness are circu-

lated widely, and in which there is a wide range of behaviour that trans-

gresses social limits. One of the distinctive features of the novel is a

textual system which allows such circulation ofterms, but finally pushes




Voicing and Silencing Madness: A Reading ofldne .byre 9i

all their harmfu1 and unpleasant connotations onto one character: Bertha.

Vae may note, as feminist criticism has widely discussed, that there are

striking analogies between Jane and Bertha.7 To begin with, both of them

are considered as `mad'

by those who have power over them. They are

therefore both considered as deserving of punishment, such as

confinement and binding. Next, not only are their existences ignored by

others, but they are both considered, at one time, as virtually dead. Justas Mrs. Rochester is considered dead in Thornfield, Aunt Reed replies to

the inquiry by UncleJohn aboutJane to the effect that Jane Eyre is dead.Moreover, both characters are closely linked, or simpiy juxtaposed to-

gether, via their connection with Rochester: they are loved by hirm and

given the sarne rank, that of Mrs. Rochester. None of these links with

Bertha could of course directly suggest that Jane is mad, and there is no

doubt that she has a profound}y different role in the novel from Bertha;

but they nonetheless provide a disturbing and suggestive undercurrent inthe novel. Instead of the usual critical approach "Thich simply points out

such parallels, it may therefbre be valuable to ask ziLb" the idea of madness

in the novel converges so easily upon Bertha at the end, and not upon

Jane. It is striking that whenJane succeeds in marrying Rochester at the end

of her story, she offers no word of condoience or sympathy fbr the poordead foreign woman. Most readcrs are, however, happy enough to investtheir feelings and belief in Jane. But .1lane Zl)ire has been read as a mile-

stone in English literature in the context of feminism, and if we may

think that feminism has a sense of human rights and equality at its base,how can we possibly interpret this striking contrast between Bertha'smisery and Jane's happy-ending?

It is not my intention to say that Bertha has been neglected by femi-nist criticism. Particularly since the imaginative act of identification per-formed by Jean Rhys in uade .S}irgdisso .Slea (ig66), Bertha's plight hasattracted much sympathy. I would contend, however, that in isolating

Bettha, critics have tended to neglect ot disregard what happens in thetext, namelyJane's triumph over Bertha. A full reading needs not only to

show sympathy for Bertha, but to have insight into how Jane's triurnph

is represented in the text.

7 See, my ft)otnote is,




92 Akiko Kawasaki

III-i

One explanation of why the process of fbrgetting Bertha takes place in

7kne ]lii;tre is simply that the nove] is consttucted as a fictional `Autobiog--

taphy', as the subtitie suggests. I wish to point out first of all that tihis isa narrative in which the narrator overtly conttols what is said and how.

Jane does not hesitate to show evidence of the act of editing. On the

conttary she seems to emphasize that this is done solely for the reader'ssake; Jane is, as it were, reading the readet who is reading the text.

Jane's strong concern fbr her listeners/readcrs is famously demon-strated by her freguent intrusions into the text. She intrudes into the text

forty-seven times in total. In thitty out of these intrusions, she refers to

or talks to the reader directly.g As VUayne C. Booth pointed out in 7JbeRhelore'c offi?ction, an author's frequent intrusions and direct addresses

produce on the readcr "the

pleasure of collaboration" (3o2). By sharing

Jane's secrets, readers thus gtow intimate with her. She tells about her

perception of telepathy, for example, only to "the

reader" and hides itfrom Rochester. ･

Modern readers do not, of course, mistake the narratingJane for theauthot Currer Bell, or Charlotte Bronte; and similarly we may not, or

perhaps cannot, easily identify with the addressed "reader"

of a nine-

teenth century novel. But with so many intrusions, the narratingJane and"the

teader" mentioned within the text could almost be considered as

characters in the novel. Thus, we can identify with "the

reader" or the

narratingJane as we often do with real characters in a fiction.

As readers, we sensc the narr2tingJane's strong will to communicate

and we are drawn towards her. Since we are fbllowing her narrative it isdiflicult for us not to respond to her will. Continuing to read is, in effect,continuing to sympathize with the narrator. And in syrnpathizing with

the will of the narrating-Jane we are almost bound to accept her story

and rejoice in het ttiumphant report of "Reader,

I married him" (3gs).Locked into such compllcity, it becomes difllcult for us to see the narra-

tor as a `mad'

person telling an irrational story. VC"e have, in general, a

S Ong points out that the ninetccnth-century novelist's tecurrent

`dear reader' results

from the memory of an orul culture bcfbre printinba was invented (i4g). In this study Iwould rather focus attention on Jane's strong wilI to ta]lc to the reader.




Voicing afld Silencing Madness: A Reading ofldne IEI]r,re 93

propensity to regard such communicative narrators in fiction as sane.

Even in E. A. Poe's famous experiment with a mad first-person narrator

in `The Tell-Tale Heart', we start off by fo11owing him and only suspect

his madness as the story develops.

There are, moreover, effects of distance which lead us to consider the

narrator of 1inne Eyve as reliable and sane. The narratingJane's voice

implies the subsequent sutvival ofJane the character from the start,

however dreadfu1 her mental sutlierings may have been in the narrative

recorded. The frequent intrusions of the narratingJane and her appear-afice in the text further emphasize a temporal distance between these two

Janes, as well as implying the narratingJane's final mastery of the nar-

tatedJane. Young Jane is first distanced from the grown-up Jane by the

blank eight years of Lowood, then the grown-up Jane is further differen-tiated from the narratingJane. Jane's

`madness' in the ted room episode,

the most remarkable passage of those which suggest Jane's `madness',

can consequently fade into a past episode when the novel comes to the

description of Thornfield. Distance can therefore be said to function asa reassurance to readers ofJane's final sanity.

III-2

A second narrative device employed by the narratingJane to normal-

ize her `madness' is that of a mixture of realistic and romantic tones.9

The start of the novel deals witb a natural (and `real') phenomenon: the

impossibility of going for a walk due to the weather. Befbre long, how-

ever, readers see Jane's extreme fear of a mystetious light. Gothic ele-ments become explicit in the red room episodeiO, but they are not elabo-

rated by any furthet events. The story soon resumes in a realistic tone

with the visit of the apothecary Mr. Lloyd, a man of science and reason.

Once Jane is out of Lowood, the narratinglane explicitly narrates Janeas if she were the heroine ofa novel rather than an autobiography:

"A

new chRpter in a noveHs something like a new scene in a play: and when

I dra"r up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a room in

9 Here, one of the five Ievels of vrtiisenehlance defined byJonathan Culler is usefu1: the

"aisemhlance of a Iiterar}T genre (i4s-i48). I use the term `real'

for a tone which seunds

acceptable for a text of the genre, autobiography.

iO Robert Heilman definesullane [lbJre as

"new Gothic", See 7)be U7bnkings off'}'ction, 4i-

54･




94 Akiko Kawasaki

the `George

Inn"' (8i). At Thornfield, the G()thic tone of the red room

episode revives: we are confronted by the sublime appearance of the

mansion; the romantic encounter of the master and a young governess;the strange dreams of babies; the enigmatic Grace Pooie; the secret

violencc on the third storey; the mysterious fire; the gypsy fottruneteller.ii

These Gothic elements, arc, however, rendered acceptable, and placedwithin the frame of the autobiography, as mysteries come to be solved ina rational dimension: the gypsy foftuneteller turns out to be Rochester;the mysterious events in the attic turn out to be caused by Bertha.Explanations of such a kind are in fact typical of some Gothic novels

(for example those ofAnn Radcliffe) and in such cases are often taken to

detract from theix excitement or interest. VUhat is striking in lLine Eyre isthat it achieves such a convincing mixture of Gothicism and down-to-earth realism.

The plain outward appearance ofJane contributes, certainly to some

extent, to the sense of `the

real' in this fiction. The mutual love between

the m2ster of such a grand house and a young governess could be de-scribed in a romaAtic vLTay, but Jane's emphasis on her plain appearancepushes these chapters at Thornfield away from sensational writing to-

wards realism. In the Thornfield sections of the novel, where the associa-

tion of mystery converges exclusively upon `somebody'

in the attic, fewreaders perhaps retain the image ofJane as a

`mad'

child anymore. Nowthat Bertha is given the role of absorbing the mysteries of Thotnfield,romantic or unbelievable traits in Jane are moderated and are turned intosomething

`realistic'

and safe. Thus, at Thornfield, the narratedJane her-

self may seem to become a realistic figure, now put in rather a romantic

setting.

Romantic and realistic elements continue frequently to be mixed in thenovel. Jane's wanderings in WJhitcfoss appear adventurous, but not nec-

essarily unrealistic, because of the realistic descriptions of the village

people's reaction to Jane's begging. Wc might point out that the inhefit-ance ofa large fbrtune by a poor girl, which takes place later, links the

ii After Bronte's first novel, 7]be jPrvfassoag was rejected for publication because it was

too realistic, she cteatedyTlane dyre with the publisher's dcmand fbr more ernotional

excitcment in mind; see Andrew and Judith Hook's introduction to .S)binlp, PenguinClassics, i4, In the ptesent study I would like to consider jane Eyre and Currer Bell asthe producer of the autol)iography so wM not deal with Bronte's own biographical facts.




Voicing and Silencing Madness: A Reading offane 2IllL're 95

text to folk or faity tales, rather than to believably realistic narratives, and

yet the train of coincidences does hold together without any magic links.

In Ferndean, Jane herself is the producer of a mystery and surprise:

Mary, Rochestet's servant, is startled at Jane's unexpected appearance as

if she has "seen a ghost" (38o). But to the reader who knows what Jane

has been doing during. her absence, she remains, not mysterious or

ghostlike, but a realistic figure.

The ending of the novel, with its dramatic fire, rediscovery of lost

people, maiming and wounding, fo11owed by mysterious recovery, agaln

fbllows magical romantic narrative pattems. But because of the realistic

tone prevailing from Ferndean to the end,Jane's account, even of Roch-ester regaining the eyesight of his blind eye after about two years, doesnot sound cornpletely incredible.

Thus, if the novel bears a romantic and Gothic coloring, this does not

transcend the boundary of possibie reference to a real world. In theframe of a text which sounds realistic enough as an autobiography, Janecan present herself as a real and reasonable person. The final victory of

realism in the text is one which ends up stressing the victory of the

reason and reasonableness of the narrator, Jane. It is thus also, I would

atgue, a str2tegy to control and eliminate Jane's `madness'

finally fromthe text

III-3

VUe have seen two ways in which yldne Ilyre deals with madness. Afurther way is by manipulating narrated accounts of events and direct

prescntation of dramatic scenes.i2 As Bertha's appearance is depicted inan indirect way in the text, in the refiection ofJane's mirror, so her voiceis also set within the frame of someone else's nartation. Unlike Janc, she

is not allowed to explain herself When Bertha's scream and RichardMason's cry are heard in the Hall, Rochester explains to Jane and his

guests that a servant has h2d a nightmare, then Rich2rd Mason explains

to Rochester about Bertha's attack on him. It is, strictly speaking, impos-

i2 Direct representation can be defined as

`mimetic' and indirect presentati6n as

`diegetic', see Getard Genette, Ararrative Discourse, i62-i64 and David Lodge, 4fter

Bakhtin, 28-44. I think that in diegetic scenes readers easily identify with the narrator,

whercas in mimetic scencs wc tcnd to invcst our feelings directly jnto the character who

is speaking.




g6 Akiko Kawasaki

sible here for the narratingJane to show us attacks which she has not

witnessed. VCie should notc, however, that the torn veil episode, which

Jane has rcally witnessed, is also not shown directly to the rcader butdepicted only in the frame ofJane's narration of the incident to Roches-

ter a day later. The catastrophic fire in Thornfield is set in thc frame ofa most mundane situation: the gossip of a hotel-keeper and his guest,Jane, Thus even the most calamitous event {)f the text js reduced to

something safe, nafrated frorn a safe narrative distance, by the indirect-ness of the narration and by temporal remoteness.

There is, howevef, one directly dramatized scene with Bertha in thetext: Rochester brings the people present at his wedding to the attic of

the Hall to show them his `mad' wife. This becomes powerfu1 evidence

of her `madness' because they and the reader are fbrced to see Bertha at

her worst, bellowing and groveljng on all fours like a beast.

VCJe should note that while the scene witih Bertha ends up teconfirming

her helpless state and justifying her confinement, Jane's representation of

Rochester functions here defensively for him. The narratingJane repre-

sents for the reader Rochester's long selfexplanations about Adele,Celine Varens and Bertha, letting us hear his voice directly. Bertha, ofcourse, does not give her side of the story.

The narratingJane is thus controlling the volume of all the characters'

voices and tuning in and out of them. Bertha is confirmed as a mad-

woman both by the narrative in which she is represented, wherc only

Jane's voice is audible to the reader, and by the one dtamatized scenewhich provides us with powerfu1 evidence ofher

`madness' and in which

she can only function as the object of the natrator's (and the reader's)gaze.

III-4

XXre have seen, then, how Jane's intrusions, the narrative play betweenGothic and realist detail, and the manipulation of narrative and scene all

contribute to the final exclusion of any problem overJane's mental states

from the text of this novel. VG'e come next to what is perhaps the rnost

significant of the techniques of natrating and writing madness in the text:the representadon of Bertha throughout the text, and her final absorp-

tion of the ideas of madness within the text

In one sense it is obvious that, since Jane narrates the text, the idea ofBertha)s madness must ultimately come from her. But, as we have seen,




Voicing and Silencing Madness: A Reading oflL;ne JEIhrre 97

there are representations of extreme, socially unacceptable and irrationalmental states and acts circulating through the text with reference to Jane.How is it that all this can be removed from Jane and the definitive imageof madness be pushed onto Bertha?

I wish to argue again that it is the narratinglane's control of the

volume of voices in the text that is the key factor, and that may be said

to lead to the reduction of Bertha's figutre and the pushing onto her of all

the mad elements in the text

As far as Jane's voice concerning Bertha is concerned, in the whole

text the characterJane directly states her opinion about Bertha only once.

After the revelation of Bertha's confinement, Jane interrupts Rochester's

proposal to shut up Thornfield Hal1 znd leave Bertha there under Grace

Pooie's observation. She says:

`[Y]ou

are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her witih hate -

with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel - she cannot help being mad' (26s),

If this short passage sounds like a dcfense of Bertha, it should benoted that, showing some underst2nding towatds Bertha's situation on

the one hand, Jane does not doubt Bertha's madness. Bertha's `madness'

is, whatevet the cause was, taken for granted in Jane's narration.

It is, however, Bertha's silence, the absence of her voice, which allows

Rochester and the narratingJane to reduce her to a wnilzahde figure forthem. Bertha is no mcnacc to Rochcster as long as she is `shut

up' and

silent in his story. Although Richard Mason reports, C`she

[Bertha] said

she'd drain my heart" (i87, my empha$is), we do not know if it isRochester who, instead of reporting Bertha's speech accurately, has re-duced her speech to somcthing meaningless:

"Come,

be silent, R3chard,

and never mind her gibberish: don't repeat it" (i87). VCJe do not knoweither if it is the narratingJane, with the whole narration at her disposal,who has further reduced Bertha to total silence. It is an effect of mad-

ness that once someone is labeled as mad, he/she is often excluded fromthe world of k{gos and her/his words tend to be taken as nonsense: this is

achieved here through Jane's narration.i3

In the attic of Thornfield, Bertha is shut up doubly, confined and

i3 Porter discusses how the words of the mad tcnd to be reduccd to terms such as

"`chattering',

`jabbering' and

`ranting',

communicating no more meaning than the

sounds of wild beasts" (s2)･




98 Akiko Kaw2saki

silenced; she is fbrced to remain still without any words and/so without

any action. As the phrase `speech

act' suggests, the absence of Bertha's

voice leads ultimately to the usurpation of any opportunity for her totake action. Thus, the attic becomes a dead space without any word and/

of action, whose blanks can be made subject to any stoty freely writtenby the narrated characters, by the narratingJane or even by later readersof the text such as Jean Rhys.i4 This condition of Bertha under which she is shut up and silenced

shows that she is, like the youngJane, effectively the subject ofa taboo,

forbidden not only to talk but also to be talked about. Rochester hesi-

tates to talk about his reason for having shut up the Hall: "`I

abhorred

the vefy thought of it; shunned it like a great plague-housel How I dosti11 abhor -' He ground his teeth and was silent" (i2s). Strictly speaking, what is tabooed in the story is not simply Bertha butthc rank of

`Mrs. Rochester'. Hearing about Rochester's proposal to

Jane, Mts. Fairfax becomes mute, not because she thinks Jane inappro-priate for his wife, but because no woman is appropri2te for an alreadyoccupied position. The wedding veil torn by Bertha makes Jane dimlyaware of this. Jane is jn an unexplainable perplcxity, seeing the name and

address cafds nailed on her honeymoon-baggage: "Mrs.

Rochester! Shedid not exist: she would not be born till to-morrow, some time after

eight o'clock a.m.; and I would wait to be assured she had come into theworld ative before I assigned to her all that property" (242). An interesting dynamic is seen in this process of tabooing the

`mad'

Mrs. Rochester: if someone tries to break the taboo, the person is labeledas mad. In an attempt te reveal the secret of the mysterious fire fromwhich she has saved Rochester, Jane asks Grace Poole some questions,but she says that Jane must have been dreaming. VVhen Jane tells Roch-ester of the stofy of the torn veil, he declares that it was onlyJane's

illusion: "This

is h}rpochondria, Jane. You have been overexcited, or

over-fatigued" (246); "little

nervous subject!" (248); "nerves

like yourswere not made fbr rough handling" (2so). But Jane is not convinced bythese explanations:

i4

A similar effbct is achieved later in wrletie where Lucv is left alone in the school

with "the

cretin". Lucy suffers intense mental disturbance, 'but

she is relieved by beingable to speak in thc confession. No such avenue is open to

"the cretin",



The EnglishSociety ofJapan

Voicing and Silencing Madness: A Reading ofllane dyme gg

`Mental

terrors, sir! I wish I could believe them to be only su ¢ h: I wish itmote now than ever; since even you cannot expiain to me the mystery of thatawfu1 visitant.'

`And

since I cannot do it, Jane, it must have been unreal.'

`But,

sir, when I said so to myself on rising this morning, and when I

lookcd round the room to gather courage and comfort from the cheerfu1

aspect of each familiar object in full daylight, there - on the carpet - I sawwhat gave the distinct lie to my hypothesis, - the veil, torn from top to

bottom, in two halves!' (2so).

The passage reveals how the metaphor of madness is at Rochester'sdisposal. He does not hesitate to apply it even to Jane. He is prepared toimpose sanctions on someone who tries to break the taboo: he says

when Jane tries to leave him after the ruined wedding, `Jane,

you mustbe reasonable; or in ttuth I shall again become frantic" (267). HereRochester abuses the idez of madness in two ways at once: he is con-

demning Jane's decision as "unreasonable"

and threatening her with the

suggestion that he himself will be made "frantic"

if she leaves him.Rochester is thus allowed contradictorv statements about madness:

"`it is

"

not because she is madIhate her. If you "ane] were rriad, do you thinkI should hate youP"' (26s)･ The idea of madness is allowed to circuiate in the text, but it can only

rest conclusively on the one character who has no voice. In short, oniy

Bertha can be fu11y acknowledged in this text as a mad person; ot oniy

Bertha's madness can be considered as dangerous, harmfu1, permanent,and hateful.

IV

In what Ihave argued so far,Ihave focused on the textuai system of

the novel and its implications. I should like to add one further pointconcerning madness as disease in 1izne llyre, and the way it can be pro-jected onto Bertha, while remaining a threat in tihe text. Sander Gilmanhas pointed out that we often overcome our fear of disease by localizingit first, then distancing and isolating it (Gilman i). In 7bne .El)ptre, feat ofmadness is overcome by establishing and placing the idea of madness inrelation to Bertha first, thcn by confining her in the attic and, at the

textual level, in Jane's frame of tepresentation. Consequently, Jane's asso-

ciations with madness can finally become, in comparison with Bertha'shereditary and unavoidable madness, something manageable, if still rep-




IOO Akiko Kawzsaki

resenting some potential threat.

It should be noted that not only the idea of madness but also that of '

disease in the text is Iocated in Bertha. She is treated as an invalid

(Rochester calls her i`Mrs.

Poole's patient" and Thornfield a "plague

house") and ultimately as a dead person. Rochester says to Richard Ma-son,

"VCihen you get back to Spanish Town, you may think of het as dead

and buried - or rather, >Jou need not think of her at all" (i87). If Roch-ester seems here to believe that he could realize her physical death by thespatial distance of England from Spanish Town, his postponing the ex-

planation fbr Bertha's condition to Jane even after revelation of Bertha's

existence seems to suggest that he believes he can make Bertha virtuallydead by a verbal distance (silence of and about heD.

The illnesses and accidents associated with Jane and Rochester in the

text become light, extrinsic, accidental events, recoverable in some way,

even developing the plot towards a better direction for them. Jane'snctvous fit in the red room, for example, leads to her escape fromGateshead; Jane's exhaustcd body after wandering on the moor bringsher to warm friendship with the R-ivers family. Rochester is iniured oftenin the text, but ncvertheless his injuri.es are reduced to something tempo-

rary, and become an impetus to develop the plot towards a happy-end-ing. Hc sprains his ankle, but this gives him the oppottunity of an ex-

change of words with Jane. His comparison of thc mistakes he has madein his life, his many romances with mistresses and his marriage to Bettha,

to wounds, suggests that he thinks all the mistakes he makes can be`remedied'

somehoixr. He does become blind, but then he recovers the

sight of one of his eyes later. His Iost arm is certainly irrecoverable, buteven this loss and deformity are not described by the nartating- and

narratedJane as in any way loathsome - as Bertha's problcms quiteobviously are.

Bettha as a madwoman and an invatid thus becomes the final locus forthe objectification of thc disturbing znd threatening ideas in this text.

Bertha seems to play the role of a scapegoat in Thornfield and in thewhole text, hindering the happy wedding ofJane and Rochester. IfJane

was "the

scapegoat of the nursery" (i3) at Lowood, that role has beentaken over by Bertha at the end.

At a mote abstract ievel, pethaps, we might argue, however, that ulri-

mately the idea of madness itself takes on the role of scapegoat in thistext.

'Listening to the story of the fire at Thornfield from the hotel-




Voicing and Silencing Madness: A Reading offone dyre IOI

keeper, Jane's first concern is whether Rochester is dead or alive. Thenhearing that Rochester is alive but blind, she is enormously relieved:

"I

had dreaded worse. I had dteaded he was mad. I summoned strength to

ask xxrhat had caused this calamity" (377). Jane has thus located madnessas the ,fecvnd worst of all human calamities: going mad is cettainly better

than dying; but it is worse than going blind.

The fear of this second worst calamity, of going mad, is removed and

overcome, in the text, by localizing madness upon one character, Bertha.Any sense of guilt at doing so has been removed by fbcusing hatredtowards Bertha upon her madness as het determining feature.

v

WJe have thus seen how Jane, fuIIy exercising the privilege of being the

sole narrator of the story, escapes the labei of a mad person in spjte of

references repeated and circulating through the text, which might associ-

ate the idea of madness with her.

These narrative techniques I have described as used by Janc tempt the

reader to see Bertha as reduced to something Iike Jane's double, or as

some kind of symbol, projection, personification, embodiment ofJane's

unknown reprcsscd dark side, especially her madness, wi]dness and sexu-

ality.i5 Seen in this light, Bertha's body teflected inJane's mirror could beconsidered as positive evidencc that Bertha and Jane literally form mir-

ror-images of one another. Fcminist accounts of this text have broughtBertha to our attention in this w2y; but they have not shown how the

characters work textually; how the text narrates, controls and silences

Bertha. This is what I have tried to do, through isolating aspects of the

textual svstem. '

There are implications scattered thtoughout lane Ll],re that Bertha is a

real person: her concrete name, her history in the VO'est Indies, her familyrepresented by Richatd Mason and physical evidence such as her body

i5 Slightly different as they are, many critics see Bertha as the doub]e ofJanc and/or

some other characters, This is what we find in Terry Eagleton (ig7s), Adrienne Itich

(ig7g), Elaine Showalter (ig77), Sandra M. Gilbert and Sus2n Gubar (ig7g), SusanFraiman (igg3), Elisabeth Bronfen (igg2), Param2 Roy (ig8g). Gayatri Spivak, ho"Tever,

develops a unique discussion about the relationship between Bertha in.1}ine fpre andAntoinette in IB?7de ,Skergasso .sua, giving Bertha, as it were, ontological significance as

Antoinette. See `Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperi21ism', (:>iitical ineuirv i2

(ig8s), 243-26i,




io2 Akiko Kawasaki

and screams. It is Jane's narration which silences Bertha's voice and`proves'

her madness, however; and it is this which inevitably tempts us

to reduce Bettha to Jane's double. Once Bertha's ontological se]f is ig-nored in the name ofJane's double, then it is not necessary for us to

grieve over her death, because Bertha is, strictly speaking, not dead butalive, integrated into Jane's self and into her selfnarration.i6 As I haveargued, then, yTlarne Eyre provides us with a textual and narrative system

which controls the idea of madness and allows us, despite all it hasrepresented on the way, to share the joy of the suspended happy-endingfor Jane and Rochester.

The University of Tokyo Received February 8, 2ooi

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