Space in “Jane Eyre”In her novel, Charlotte Bronte makes the protagonist Jane Eyre to encounter a variety of settings. The settings portray Jane’s character, her emotions and the events that are going to occur in the novel.Each space represents her search to a meaningful existence in society, marks the issue of her personal progress from the perspective of personal integrity and personal development in response to the pressures and expectations of the nineteenth- century social class system.
Due to Bronte’s use of pathetic fallacy, the reader may distinguish how each setting provides us with information about Jane’s character and feelings, about her personal journey and her quest for equality, independence and love.Public and Private Space Nineteenth Century powerfully emphasizes the connection between the representation of the private, feminine space, the possession and strong articulation of an individual self in representations of women’s lives and the women’s struggle to behave differently from the standards imposed by society at that time. According to the patriarchal criterion of an ideal Victorian woman, a woman was supposed to be “the Angel in the House”, the domestic feminine ideal what was expected to be seen by Victorian society, who always devotes herself totally for home and people in it. They believed that woman’s proper sphere should be at home, separated from the man’s one. And there in her proper sphere she should devote to her proper duties, to domestic labor and to the needs of others, as it is shown in this paragraph: She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish.
She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it – in short…
she never had a mind or wish of her own…
Above all – I need not say it – she was pure. (as cited in Newman, 1996, p.9).
As the reader may observe after reading the novel, Jane Eyre is too far away from the ideal of “the Angel in the House”, from the very childhood she tries to escape from this domestic space implied by Victorian public. She avoids public spaces where she is expected to act and behave as an idealized feminine figure by patriarchal society. She tries to isolates herself, to reinforce her personality both with the interior space and with landscapes as well. Her estrangement from social and familial life is imaged by her protective isolation from domestic space, while her spirit is constantly wakeful to search out spiritual, moral affiliation in the outer spaces. She finds herself in harmony with the natural space, this enclosure suits her clearly. She is comforted by the weather and she is friendly to all the ambassadors of Nature, she finds herself at home, which is a sign of her psychic maturity and growth in wisdom. In her own, private space she can mediate, and think about her aspirations as an independent woman. From the beginning of the novel, Jane stays near at a window and reads a book.
The windows are described as heavily festooned with draperies, in this order it creates a separate dimensional space from the rest of the house, which serves as a shelter and inner space for Jane. As Maurianne Adams states: “Jane has pulled inward, and withdrawn from a physical self occupying social and familial space at Gateshead, into a ‘placeless’ or status – and space-free spiritual and moral identity, occupying thin air. Jane withdraws into her imagination and her spiritual integrity, a process by which ego is reduced to its irreducible and invulnerable inner core. Withdrawal, however, is not to be understood as simply negative. Although the elfin and visionary mirror image also presents to Jane an image of terrifying supernaturalism, this effect is the pagan antecedent for Helen Burn’s mystic and Christian anticipation of that happy day when the spirit would be freed from the fetters of the flesh. (186)”. Her enclosure in the novel takes on forms beyond domestic spaces, she enclosures in her own body and mind in order to overcome the struggle to attain and give voice to her own desires.
Even her work as a governess at Thornfiled provides her with a private English home. Jane is seeking for a space which will be out of domesticity and paid labour, she does not find herself happy about becoming a perfect lady who will be to everyone’s liking, she wants to explore woman’s sensibility. Her super mind and omnivorously soul can not be imprisoned in the frames imposed by Victorian public, she is far above these limits. Her own, private space enables her to grow wings, to gain knowledge. Jane is incorporated in a Victorian body, but her tender nature is not from that time. Her inner space is there where she can be herself in a remarkably contemporary way, where she can give utterance to her thoughts.Gateshead Hall A girl at a window. She is seeking for freedom.
Freedom is right there behind the window, so close to her, but Jane has to stay at Gateshead, reading the book about birds, and dreaming about the liberty and independence which is yet to come. Gateshead is the lavish home of the Reeds, Jane’s aunt and cousins, initially functions as a symbol of oppression in young Jane’s life. Even the name, “Gateshead” is suggestive of a portal-though whether an ingress or egress is entirely dependent upon Jane’s choices. Penniless and orphaned, Jane discovers the “gate” that should have opened upon a loving and comfortable life closed to her with cruel and indifferent finality. Repeatedly she is reminded that she is not a part of Reed’s Family.”You have no business to take our books; you are dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not live here with gentleman’s children like us and eat the same meals as we do, and wear clothes at our mama’s expense.” (Bronte, 6).
This passage shows how Jane was discriminated and excluded by this family.She represents not more than just a heavy burden for Mrs. Reed and her children.
At Gateshead Hall, Jane is tortured and oppressed by her cousin, John Reed, a boy who was acting like the owner of the house and even of Jane’s life, who had a great impact on his mother, who uses to favor him. He pleased to abuse her constantly, calling her a “rat”. She was trying to resist to his mockery, until he knocked her down throwing a book at her. Then hatred and anger overtook Jane, spreading through the whole being of her as fast as a disease.
She called him “a murderer”, “a slave-driver” and comparing him to “the Roman emperors”. Hearing this, John Reed, got angry and attacked her. When Jane tries to defend herself, she is blamed for everything. She is accused of “flying at Master John” displaying “such a picture of passion” and “she?s like a mad cat”.
Trying to defend herself from the further physical violence executed by her cousin, was an unacceptable and objectionable behavior, which does not correspond to a girl who should know her place in that house and society. Mrs. Reed is linked to the promise she gave to her husband, Mr. Reed, who passed away, to bring his niece up, to provide her with a decent education and a happy childhood as each child deserves, but Mrs. Reeds, venomous woman, did not keep her promise. She mistreats and looks down on Jane, who does not conform to the image of a Victorian child. She is not quiet, obedient, and does not act in a pretty manner as she is expected to, by society.
She embodies a fearless, strong spirit, to whom justice is the only truth. She is thoughtful, she questions a lot. Obviously, she creates a distress for Mrs. Reed, who states that lie is the biggest ailment of Jane. She is “termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon and from noon to midnight” (Brontë 10).
After the incident that took place between Jane and her son, Mrs. Reeds locks Jane in the Red Room, she believes that insults and punishments are intended to transform her into the model Victorian child: pious, quiet, and above all, unquestioningly obedient. Gateshead Hall Bronte: (page 30) “…prepared as my heart was for horror,shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears…I was oppressed, suffocated…” Red Room symbolizes a type of prison for Jane, not a physical, but an emotional prison , for all that, she pulls through, after being imprisonment. Jane reaches her ethical awakening, turning from a child into a more mature person. She ascertains that how much she would not strive, she will be forever an outsider for Reed’s family, a person with a different identity which is not well received by Gateshead Hall. “All John Reed?s violent tyrannies, all his sisters? proud indifference, all his mother?s aversion, all the servants? partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a deposit in a turbid well” (Brontë 10) .
She asserts for herself that she will never be accepted by Reed household, that she has only herself to trust. She is lonely and she faced this fear of being completely alone. After spending a night in Red Room Jane’s rebellious nature and her last punishment induces a fit of hysteria, a “gate” of opportunity opens for the young ward. Gateshead Hall marked the beginning of Jane’s journey.
She had to move beyond or ahead of the gate to the new life waiting for her. She grows out of a little girl who is afraid of her cousins. She is less afraid to stand up for herself.Lowood Lowood Hall is an institution that prepares girls for work as teachers or governesses.
The lexis ‘low’ infers the low position of the girls in society, which links to the novel as a social protest. The lexis ‘wood’ suggests they are hidden and protected from the outside world, as if society is ashamed of them, because in main part the school is consisted of orphans from impoverished backgrounds. The school constantly reminds them of their lowly and dependent social status and it is the next place where orphaned Jane settles to, after leaving Gateshead.
For Jane, it represents a continuation of mistreatment and harassment, a low period in her life. Her first meeting with Lowood Institution takes place in a rainy and windy night. The gothic and gloomy setting barely allows newcomer pupils to distinguish any presence of windows or lights. The next day, Jane discovers by the daylight a ;convent-like garden;, i.e. enclosed, and a building whose inner façade is partially ;lit by mullioned and latticed windows, which gives it a church-like aspect”.
This place was ruled by Mr. Brocklehurst, who uses his power to oppress the girls at school and to repress their individuality and identity. Religion is used as a tool to oppress them as well, threatening that the naughty girls will burn in hell. Mr. Brocklehurst, employs a host of brutal techniques to enforce submission in the girls, ranging from beatings to the withholding of food, water, and rest. Most significant, however, are the emotional and spiritual abuses to which the girls, and Jane in particular, are subjected. This dreadful treatment depicts Victorian class ideologies in which poverty was considered as a sign of physical, psychological, and spiritual failure. Frequently, Victorian society was attributing the outbreak of disease in impoverished communities.
Victorian class hierarchies also presumed a related spiritual and psychological faintness in the lower classes. Mr. Brocklehurst, who is on the top of the social ladder, judged Jane for being poor.
He also thought that Jane was always supposed to be misbehaving because she is not as quality as those in his class. He told everyone that Jane was a liar and that the girls should not be friends with her, he magnified all the bad qualities Jane had, most of which were not true, and attributed Jane a naughty girl image. The presence of the vile clergyman is meant to give Jane a portrait of the newcomer as a "careless" girl (ibid.
, 55), a sycophant of Satan, no less, "a little castaway", "an interloper", and "an alien",8 "worse than a pagan", and "a liar" (ibid., 56, passim) , someone therefore whom peers and teachers alike should beware of because she wills herself as an independent being, the odd one out, totally lacking in gratitude. Mr. Brocklehurst represents another male character Jane stands up to.
She describes him as “a black pillar … a sable clad shape standing erect on the rug: the grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital” (Brontë 25). Mr.
Brocklehurst is the “Victorian super-ego”, he is also described as a giant phallus symbol (Gilbert et al 343-44). Beside the fact that Lowood is just like another prison under the control of Mr. Brocklehurst, here Jane meets some people of her sort: Helen Burns and Miss Temple share in some of her strangeness. Helen Burns represents the opposite of Jane’s character. She is the embodiment of a quite pathetic character, who is unable to stand up for herself, considering that one of her duties is to endure injustices in her life and believing that she will see justice in heaven, however she becomes a good friend to Jane. As her friend Jane accepts the idea of the doctrine of Christian endurance which Helen follows, which is totally lacking in the case of Jane as she believes in fighting against injustice, saying: “And if I were in your place I should dislike her; I should resist her. If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose” (Brontë 46). Being a wild and rebellious spirit, Jane’s rage wants out, when she encounters such injustices.
Helen is portrayed as an-angel-in-house, a Christ figure. She embraces, feeds and counsels Jane, creating a figure of a mother, but she would never be a role figure for Jane , because of her longing for death and heaven and way of self-surrendering. After six months of Jane’s arrival, Helen dies of consumption (tuberculosis), her death could symbolize the death of the angel.”A woman writer must examine, assimilate and transcend the extreme images of “angel” and “monster” which male authors have generated for them” and the author must kill both since they kill the female creativity (Gilbert et al 17). It could symbolize also Jane’s unconscious wish to free herself from surrendering to the identity of the angel-in-the-house. However, her death arose the the maturity in the character of Jane from a short-tempered girl who never endures to a girl who endures what not towards the climax and still stays composed and calm. At Lowood, Jane finds a substitute mother in Miss Temple, as she describes her: "Miss Temple is full of goodness; it pains her to be severe to any one, even the worst in the school: she sees my errors, and tells me of them gently; and, if I do anything worthy of praise, she gives me my meed liberally. One strong proof of my wretchedly defective nature is, that even her expostulations, so mild, so rational, have not influence to cure me of my faults; and even her praise, though I value it most highly, cannot stimulate me to continued care and foresight.
” She teaches Jane that there is justice in the world and she should fight for it. After Brocklehurst’s accusations, Miss Temple suggests Jane that: “when a criminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his defense. You have been charged with falsehood; defend yourself to me as well as you can. Say whatever your memory suggests as true; but add nothing and exaggerate nothing” (Brontë 60). This person is the fist female positive role that Jane meets. Miss Temple encourages Jane to act as she feels, explaining her that teachers and students will think of Jane as what she proves herself to be. Jane is also encouraged to do well in class and to excel in her studies.
Miss Temple’s guidance has tempered Jane’s impulsivity and fire so that her thoughts have become “harmonious”, her feelings “regulated”, and her appearance “disciplined and subdued”. Spending eight years from her life at Lowood institution, six years as a student and two as a teacher, Jane became a mature and intelligent person. She learnt fluent French, geography, history, and English grammar. She also learned to play the piano reasonably well and had great skill at drawing. She has acquired awareness of her aspirations and that she is trying to act to fulfill them, acknowledging the existence of a wide, real and beautiful world awaiting her on the other side of the panes. Jane emphasizes this intention through her words: My world had for some years been at Lowood: my experience had been its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils (Bronte, 73). Soon, she will advertise for a position as governess and this represents the turning-point in Jane’s life.Thornfield Thornfield Hall is the next location where Jane becomes a resident.
Physically, moving from Lowood to Thornfield Jane has changed her social status and gained both a little freedom and some independence in contrast to her life at Lowood. However it represents an extremley, diffcult path for her. Time here is like running through a field of thorns, they mark and scar her for life, but these moments spent here also entangled themselves around her heart. This place takes its commencement with Jane as a grown-up woman.
The Gothic element here is enhanced as Jane makes her description: “Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me: but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green fields: advancing on to the lawn, I looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion. It was three stories high, of proportions not vast, though considerable; a gentleman’s manor-house, not a nobleman’s seat: battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front stood out well from the back ground of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and broad as oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion’s designation”. When Jane arrives at Thornfield for the first time, she is immediately invited by Mrs Fairfax to come and warm herself by the fire place.
Being welcomed so warm, Jane is overwhelmed by Thornfield’s warmth, her wish for a warm and hearty home comes true. Her quest for equality and independence is nourished when she realizes that Mrs. Fairfax treats her equally, she feels that her position is all the freer. Despite the fact that Jane now feels that she has found equality and freedom at this household, she cannot disregard the fact that she is still dependent, as long as she has an employer. The master of Thornfield is Mr. Rochester, he is the patriarch and is situated at the top of the social hierarchy.
He appears in Jane’s life as the very essence of patriarchal energy, as a Byronic hero. Jane’s stay at his household increased her confidence, self-worth and integrity in herself. She achieves her personal progression, she believes that she is not only a dependent, she is a lady.Therefore, Jane shows Mr. Rochester that she is paid for taking orders, which means that this have nothing to do with who she is, it is merely her job. She becomes a woman who courageously forges her own career.
By wanting to move forward she is in a way rebelling against the life as governess and what is expected of her. This emphasizes her strong ambition and her desire to move upwards in the class structure. Because of her increasing feeling of equality towards her master on the spiritual level, Jane begins to have feelings for Mr.
Rochester. Even though he is out of her reach from a class perspective, Jane feels that they are alike. The newly found feelings for Mr. Rochester holds her back and clouds the mind so set on independence, “..
. wherever you are is my home – my only home. ” (Bronte, 216). Her whole life she was seeking for a home, and now she found it at Thornfield Hall.
In his turn, Mr. Rochester describes Jane as his equal and likeness, he asks Jane to marry him. Jane lets go on herself and listens to her feelings. She chooses to trust the man that she has fallen in love with.
But soon she is going to be disappointed and betrayed because at the church Jane is informed that “Mr. Rochester has a wife now living” (Bronte, 255) . His wife called Bertha, lives in the attic of Thornfield Hall and is responsible for the strange events at household, such as: the fire in Mr. Rochester’s room, the ominous bursts of murmur and laughter, the creeping sounds in the corridors at night-time. Bertha’s persona has an essential role in Jane’s development.
She is a representative of body and passion, of rage and anger. She shows them frankly through her destructive behavior. To develop and to mature completely, one must face different aspects that could happen in oneself and acknowledge both negative and positive emotions within oneself, as she does. Bertha could be considered as double Jane. Jane exhibited negative feelings and negative behavior itself at Gateshead and now she represents outwardly a calm adult and inwardly a passionate woman.
She acknowledges the inevitability of their existence together. Bertha’s existence offers time for Jane to mature and to ponder over her values.Despite the fact that his wife is living, Mr. Rochester asks Jane to be his mistress, but she immediately refuses him, because she is conscious that being his mistress will be a form of slavery and dependency, a union that would not be based on equality.
Being aware of her worth and integrity, Jane again is rebelling against Mr. Rochester, she is taking back her own self and decides to leave Thornfield. Mr Rochester is not happy with her decision, he is trying to keep her passionately, almost violently, but he understands that she is a independent creature and there is no reason to force her to stay.
Her instinct for self-perseveration forces her to leave her loved one and to progress even during hard times. Being pricked by thorns of love, life and by the actions of Mr. Rochester she is moving away with dignity, independence and self-worth. This idea is well drawn in her words:”I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself” (Bronte, 280).
After the mental and emotional struggle she had suffered at Thornfield Hall, Jane moves forward to Moor’s house.Marsh End Running away from Thornfield, Jane inhabits the house of her cousins, the house is situated right between nature and society, at Marsh End. The name suggests the end of her search. She describes the house in the following way:”They loved their sequestered home. I, too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof, its latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged firs – all grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden, dark with yew and holly – and where no flowers but of the hardiest species would bloom – found a charm both potent and permanent … I saw the fascination of the locality.
I felt the consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline of swell and sweep – on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell, by moss, by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow granite crag. These details were just to me what they were to them – so many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast and the soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and sunset; the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for me, in these regions, the same attraction as for them – wound round my faculties the same spell that entranced theirs”. Through this description she manifests her love and admiration for this place, which became a soul place for her. Here Jane is given what she craved since childhood-a family, a home. Being exhausted and half starved, River’s Family nursed her back to health. Their support had an important role in Jane’s recovery. At Moor’s house some of her wishes came true, she finally found a family she develops further her educational identity by studying together with her cousins Diana and Mary.
Her wanting to work and be independent of the help and benevolence of the Rivers family proves her desire to be autonomous and hard-working member of society. Her cousin St John Rivers helps her to start a small charity school which gives her professional self-confidence. At Mars End she also receives great sum of money in form of an inheritance from her uncle.The only advantage Jane sees in this sudden wealth is just the autonomy that money bring. Jane appreciates much more the discovery of her newly relatives than the discovery of this fortune, because here her relationships are notably different from her relations with Reed’s family at Gateshead. She is more than happy to be able to share this inheritance of twenty thousand pounds with her cousins.
“the independence, the affluence which was mine, might be theirs too . . . It would please and benefit me to have five thousand pounds; it would torment and oppress me to have twenty thousand .
. .” (Brontë 1992, 341–342). At Moor’s she found not just a place of wealth but a place of refuge and peace as well. John Rivers seeks more frequently Jane’s attention and proposes her to become his wife and to accompany him as a missionary in India.
Jane clearly rejects his proposal, because John Rivers sees Jane just as a tool for his mission. She is educated, hardworking, she fits just perfect for the role of missionary’s wife. He states that his proposal is not for his own sake that Jane is needed but for God’s. Jane would agree to accompany him as his friend or sister, but not as his wife. She fears and refuses the loveless marriage with her cousin.
She can’t receive from him the bridal ring and to endure all forms of love, knowing that her spirit will be absent there.She fears also the idea of cold and loveless sexual intercourse. She refuses to abandon her ideal of love for the higher purposes of her cousin’s expedition. His cheerless ideas about love and his domineering masculinity offenses Jane’s notion of love and her identity. His proposal neglects her personal aspirations. She foresees that in India she would be under his daily repression.
Of course, she is able to see that his proposal would give her a respectable social position, an advantageous setting where she might think about her sentiments and visions. However, Jane stays loyal to her feelings. She can not go over herself and obey this loveless conventionalism.
Her refusal represents the last needed affirmation of her own identity and honesty. Mr John Rivers totally refuses Jane’s suggestion of being to him a ‘sister’ and insists on their marriage: “I . . .
do not want a sister: a sister might any day be taken from me. I want a wife: the sole helpmeet I can influence efficiently in life, and retain absolutely till death” (Brontë 1992, 359). Obviously, his possessive manner violates Jane’s autonomy. After the struggle that took place between Jane and Mr John Rivers, she is ready to move on. She still think about Mr Rochester and decides to visit him.
Her inheritance during her stay at Marsh End offers her financial independence so she is not inferior to Mr Rochester anymore. She is ready to reunite with him. Jane returns to Mr Rochester.Ferndean Moving from Marsh End and reaching to Thornfield Hall, Jane finds out that the household has been set on fire by Bertha and that she has committed a suicide. Now everything is destroyed. Mr. Rochester moved to old manor house at Ferndean, purchased by his father.
“I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently I beheld a railing, then the house — scarce, by this dim light, distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the windows were latticed and narrow: the front-door was narrow too, one step led up to it. The whole looked, as the host of the Rochester Arms had said, ‘quite a desolate spot.” Jane comes to describe it as a lonely and isolated place, which relates Mr Rochester actual state of being: he is blind, disabled, he mourns his separation from Jane and the fire at Thornfield.
At this house he isolated himself from the other world. Ferdean also represents the last setting where Jane achieves her final development, the end of her long road. Here she finds the answers for the tasks she questioned for so long. She comprehends the love as the the source of power in her life.The Ferndean setting of the novel also designs the accomplishments her Pilgrim’s Process, of the psychosocial development process: she completed the crisis in her identity in order to solve the crisis of her intimacy and to be able to begin a relationship. She achieved personal autonomy and now she is ready to be healthy dependent on love, on person she fell in love with. At the end of her journey, Jane finally learns how to live with her mate. Here, at Ferndean Jane and Mr Rochester get married and settle down, here Jane starts a family, manages a house and grows up children.
Mr Rochester’s blindness allows Jane to guide and help him, in this order Jane feels more useful to him and this situation drew them closer to each other, she became his right hand, the apple from his eye, as he called her. Jane feels fulfilling from Mr Rochester’s new kind of dependency on her. It is illustrated so well in the following abstract:Jane to Mr Rochester: “I love you better now, when I can really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector.” (Brontë 1992, 394). She is more than happy, that he is needed in her help and love, because he represents her ideal of romantic love, he meets her requirements for a perfect partner, he is her kindred spirit with whom she has full fellow-feelings. She feels free to express her feelings and to be herself, because this man appreciates her identity and personality, mentally and physically, she is a unique and valuable person to him. His presence brings her nature to life, because she is not forced to disown it.Their marriage is based on autonomy and equality.
This equality began at Thornfield but deepens at Ferndean. At Thornfiled they were equal in spirit, but here they are and socially equal. Because of Mr Rochester physical disabilities, he comes downward and Jane moves upward, this fact resolves the social problem in this novel. Due to Jane’s self-determination and inheritance she is placed on a position more autonomous than ever happened in her life, while now Mr Rochester is more dependent, especially on Jane’s help. The social gap between them decreased making them equal spiritually and socially. Their pure relationship allows them to develop and self-explore the intimacy between them, to affirm their personalities in each other’s presence. Not just their common social position brings them together but also their ability to recognize the other self-identity and aspirations.
Ferndean Hall is the place where their souls unite and knit together as Jane makes her description:I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest – blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. . . .To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.
We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character – perfect concord is the result. (Brontë 1992, 399). Their relationship implies the sharing of love, thoughts, work and feelings. Their continuous need of dependency and autonomy, these two dynamic forces make them feel as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. This relationship offers a new vision of mutuality between men and women”.
