Charlotte Bronte presents different kinds of masculinities in Jane Eyre. These masculinities are featured as dominant and superior over women. Jane Eyre is suppressed by men since childhood. John Reed, Brocklehurst, Rochester and St. John Rivers are patriarchal men. Every one forces Jane Eyre through physical force and Christian threats to be the perfect Victorian woman as thought during that era; to be the ‘Angel of the House’. Every one of these men presumes mastery over Jane as natural right and everyone forms a phallic symbol of power and masculinity over her. They are suppressing Jane at different steps of her life and at different places.
John Reed’s masculinity is a stark traditional Victorian masculinity. Because of his suppression, Jane Eyre is put into the Red Room which is symbolic of the prison-like Victorian masculinity at Gateshead. Jane Eyre revolts against John Reed’s masculinity addressing him: “You are like a murderer—you are like a slave-driver—you are like the Roman emperors”, Jane Eyre (p.08). Besides physical aggression, he wants her to call him “master”. This masculinity is hegemonic masculinity in which Jane Eyre is suppressed physically and mentally. The traditional Victorian masculinity is resembled to the Red Room in which Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte are deprived from freedom and equality. Jane is made like a “mad cat” inside the Red Room. This madness is because of the male dominance over Jane. It is similar to the madness of Bertha inside the Attic.
Elaine Showalter in her book, A Literature of Their Own, describes the Red Room as a “paradigm of female inner space” and as “an adolescent rite of passage into womanhood”. She argues that “with deadly and bloody connotation, its Freudian wealth of secret compartments, wardrobes, drawers and jewel chest, the Red Room has strong associations with the adult female body”. Anyhow, it remains a symbol of the Victorian male dominance against woman. This dominance is social, psychological, and sexual. Jane Eyre, however, revolts against this male supremacy as Charlotte Bronte did. Though John Reed is a gentleman by birth and wealth, this gentlemanliness is not accepted by Charlotte Bronte. The ideal gentlemanliness is a result of genteel behaviour and gender performance.
At another step of Jane Eyre’s life at Lowood, she has faced another hegemonic masculinity based on the standards of religion represented by Brocklehurst the master of Lowood School for orphan girls. He is using religion for his power and to justify his punishment of the girls. He is another form of hegemonic masculinity in the guise of religion. He is another enemy of the freedom of Jane Eyre. The masculine behaviour of Brocklehurst dominates every movement of the girls inside the school. He follows certain rules of discipline that limits the normal needs of girls as human beings. When Jane first encounters Brocklehurst he is not presented as a man. He is presented as a statue towering over Jane like a “black pillar”, Jane Eyre (p. 26). Jane Eyre describes him like a “black pillar” with a head like a carved mask and a heart made up equal to parts of whalebone and iron. These qualities stand for his cruelty and dominant masculinity. The “black pillar” stands for the Brontean rejected masculinity based on religion which is based not on the teaching of the Christ but on personal needs. This masculinity is like a statue towering over Jane Eyre. This masculinity is not similar to the masculinity of Rochester who is falling and lowering towards Jane Eyre since their first meeting.
Charlotte Bronte presents the traditional masculinity based on the fake religion in the character of Brocklehurst. He is aggressive towards Jane Eyre telling teachers of the Lowood School: “you must watch her: keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save her soul”, Jane Eyre (p.56). His aggressive behaviour towards orphaned girls does not make him an ideal man or a true gentleman. His actions are not according to his preaches. He pretends to be moral, but in reality he is not. He does not have any trait of the ideal masculinity or gentlemanliness because of his double standards. His wife and daughters dress in fashionable dresses and the girls, under his dominance, are left to plain-looking clothes and left freezing and hungry. This is not the way to be a man and a gentleman. Religion proposes equality for all human beings, males or females. His masculine behaviour should command him to ensure pleasurable conditions for those under his control. Gilbert and Gubar, in The Madwoman in the Attic, have argued that Brocklehurst is the best example of the “Victorian super-ego” because of his description in phallic terms in his first meeting with Jane Eyre as “black pillar”.
Brocklehurst’s male sexuality is a threatening to the female sexuality. His gender role in the society is an oppressor of female sexuality. This is clear in his speeches at the school. He says:
“I have a master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world: my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven: these, I repeat, must be cut off; think of the time wasted of”, Jane Eyre (p. 54).
His mission is to desexualize the girls who are under his dominance including Jane Eyre at Lowood which represents another suffocating enclosure “where orphan girls are starved or frozen into proper Christian submission”. His masculinity is the best example in which men use religion to justify their dominance over women and the poor. Such masculinity which is based on religion oppresses women focusing on their desexualization. This is the essence of Brocklehurst’s masculinity that his mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh. So, Jane Eyre finds it another red room. Therefore Jane rebels against the religious masculinity because of men’s exploitation of religion. Charlotte Bronte denounces the suppression of women at the level of the family and society’s institutions and at the level of the society as a whole. She finds oppression at home, at school and at the society.
The masculinity of St. John Rivers is no exception from the dominating masculinity of both Brocklehurst and Rochester. St. John is a religious dominating man, though he plays a significant role in Jane’s mature process. Jane Eyre describes him as “a good yet stern, a conscientious yet implacable man”, Jane Eyre (p.349). At his first encounter with Jane, he appears to be an ideal Christian man. He welcomes Jane into his house. He seems to be a charitable man, “willing to aid [her] to the utmost of his power”, Jane Eyre (p.295). He promises her to get a job. His relation with Jane Eyre starts to be that of slave-master relation which is not different from the one with Brocklehurst or Rochester. St. John Rivers sees Jane in a servitude position. When St. John offers Jane Eyre the job of a governess at school, Jane accepts the job with all her heart. The reason for her astonishment is that “it was independent; and the fear of servitude with strangers entered her soul like iron”, Jane Eyre (p.303). However, St. John Rivers has just “seemed leisurely to read [her] face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page”, Jane Eyre (p.302). Her acceptance to be a governess and his surveillance of her face as a page indicates the slave-master relationship between her and St. John Rivers.
The slave-master relation of both Jane Eyre and St. John Rivers changes a little bit after she recognizes him as her cousin and her inheritance is about twenty thousand pounds. St. John Rivers is attracted to Jane Eyre because of her courage and finds her not as beautiful as Rosamond Oliver. This will make her a useful helpmate since he has devoted his life to missionary life. Then St. John proposes to marry her not for the sake of love but for his duty. Charlotte Bronte presents St. John Rivers as “a cold cumbrous, column”, Jane Eyre (p335). He is the opposite of Rochester, who is the passionate man. St John is cold, hard hearted and repressed. His handsome appearance indicates a moral and spiritual superiority which is not found in Brocklehurst. Jane Eyre refuses the masculinity of St. John Rivers. This religious masculinity will snatch her heart and the liberty of her mind. Neither Jane nor St. John find each other born for love, which Charlotte Bronte considers essential for mutual understanding of the relationship between the masculine and the feminine. Love makes no one superior or inferior.
Helene Moglen, in her book Charlotte Bronte: The Self Conceived, argues that “Jane recognizes that St. John would buy her body with the coin of spirituality hypocritically posing as God’s agent”. “ Do you think God will be satisfied with half an oblation?- he asks her- Will He accept a mutilated sacrifice? It is the cause of God I advocate: it is under His standard I enlist you. I cannot accept on His behalf a divided allegiance: it must be entire”, Jane Eyre (p. 346). So his power to enlist her as a wife is directly from God. The hegemonic masculinity of St. John is more powerful than that of Rochester; it is rooted in God’s power as St. John believes. Gilbert and Gubar have argued that the patriarchal values that St. John Rivers represents are unequivocally visible already in his ‘blatantly patriarchal name’ suggestive of St. John the Baptist, ‘whose evangelical contempt for the flesh manifested itself most powerfully in a profound contempt for the female’.
Charlotte Bronte rejects the religious masculinity that suppresses woman’s love and sex into duty. Jane Eyre rejects St. John’s idea of love because she will lose her identity as a woman. Jane firmly tells him “I scorn your idea of love…. I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it”, Jane Eyre (p.348). Jane Eyre does not want to suppress her sexual identity with a man who denounces his desire and totally involved in his mission. She differentiates between the sexuality of love and the sexuality of power. When he proposes to marry her, St. John annihilates her sexual identity as a woman getting the help of the power of religion. He says:
“It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary's wife you must—shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you—not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service”, Jane Eyre (p343).
According to his masculinity, Jane is born for labour not for love. She recognizes that what St. John Rivers wants is not a wife, a woman, but in his own words, “a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle”, Jane Eyre (p319). She will be no more than a possession like any other ones. It was customary during the nineteenth century that a woman is not born for love or at least she cannot express her desire about love. This was naïve to speak about her sexual identity. She must be the angel of the house. Her gender role is to be a good helpmate for her husband. St. John misuses religion to prove his wishes. Religion is a weapon in his hand. Jane Eyre has refused St. John’s masculinity since it is no more than Brocklehurst’s pillar of patriarchy. He has a dominating masculinity that makes him deviate from real Christianity. Through Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte rejects the religious patriarchal masculinity that was prevailed during the Victorian era.
Charlotte Bronte presents several types of masculinity represented in the male figures: John Reeds, Brocklehurst, Rochester and St. John Rivers. The four male figures dominate over Jane Eyre. They assume superiority over Jane. Rochester and John Reed assume superiority due to wealth and power; while Brocklehurst and St. John Rivers assume superiority due to the power of religion. St. John is overzealous to his job as a missionary man forgetting his sexual desire as a man. Moreover, he wants to destroy Jane’s sexual desire as a woman. This is equal to death for Jane and her creator, Charlotte Bronte. Brocklehurst’s masculinity is rooted in hypocrisy and selfishness. Religion is also a weapon in his hand to suppress women and sending them into “A pit full of fire”, Jane Eyre (p.26). Brocklehurst stands for the religious tyranny which attempts to submit the young orphan girls into surrender by starving them. This masculinity represented by Brocklehurst is rejected by Jane and Charlotte Bronte.
Rochester is another patriarchal male figure, who initially tries to overpower Jane Eyre. He wants her initially as a mistress which outrages Jane Eyre and makes her run away from him. However, unlike John Reed, Brocklehurst and St. John Rivers, the other patriarchal male figures Jane so powerfully resists, Rochester acknowledges her identity and her power, almost right from the start of their first encounter. Later, he acknowledges her as an equal partner claiming “I do not wish to treat you like an inferior”, Jane Eyre (p.114). His amenability to change his patriarchal behaviour gives her reasons to come back via his supernatural cry “Jane, Jane, Jane” though he is “a thirty-six hour coach ride away” , Jane Eyre (p.496). Jane responds to the voice of equality, independence and power. She comes back and finally marries the man who respects her identity and womanhood. This is the ideal masculinity that Charlotte Bronte establishes to dominate the nineteenth century Victorian society.
Jane Eyre has a significant role in the construction of the new version of the masculinity of Edward Rochester. After the coming of Jane Eyre, not only into Thornfield but also into the life of Rochester, his life is changed from the wandering through Europe searching love with different mistresses to a life of stability at Thornfield. Stability is another base for his new masculinity. She plays three major roles in his life; she helps him while falling from his horse at the first encounter, she rescues him from the bed fire done by Bertha, and finally she comes back to him after the burning of his house and becomes his sight and his hand. Rochester describes her as his angel and his comforter. Rochester says:
“Ten years since, I flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate, and rage, as my companions; now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with a very angel as my comforter”, Jane Eyre (p. 221).
So, Jane becomes his comforter and the substance of healing and cleansing of his soul. Jane Eyre is the purgatory factor in his life. She has snatched him from the status of the traditional Victorian masculinity that he is living in. Rochester has kept Bertha in the attic for ten years. He is ‘half mad’ wandering through Europe for ten years too. The effect of Jane on his character is so strong that he changes his sense of inferiority towards the position of women, like Bertha’s in his house. Rochester justifies his sense of inferiority saying:
“I don't wish to treat you like an inferior: that is (correcting himself), I claim only such superiority as must result from twenty years' difference in age and a century's advance in experience ”, Jane Eyre (p. 114).
Charlotte Bronte, through Jane Eyre, wants to reconstruct the masculinity of Rochester. Bronte attacks the Victorian masculinity and gentlemanliness that are based on inferiority of women and the superiority of men. The strong and rebellious character of Jane Eyre enforces Rochester to treat her as an equal no as an inferior. This is the essence of Charlotte Bronte’s construction of the new masculinity which is based on equality of both genders.
Jane Eyre is the fire extinguisher of his bedroom. Jane saves Rochester from the fire of Bertha. The fire is symbolic. It is the sexual fire of his disturbed life with Bertha. Bertha puts on sexual fire in his bed with other lovers. She has excessive sexual desire but not quenched by Rochester. Instead, Rochester enjoys his love with mistresses all over Europe. The patriarchal society punishes the woman for illegal relations and does nothing for the man. All in all, Jane comes to extinguish both fires in the life of Rochester . She has suppressed fire within her soul. She feels as Rochester feels. Jane cannot forever “keep the fires of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital”, Jane Eyre (p. 347). After she rescues his life in his bedroom, he again represses himself when he says, “Goodnight, my —,” when he stopped and bit his lip”, Jane Eyre (p.154). Rochester cannot say ‘my love’, though too much is expressed. He is a wealthy man in his prime while she is an impoverished eighteen-year-old governess in his employ. He is her master and employer; accordingly there is a hierarchal gap between the two. Jane Eyre, as a saver of his life, destroys the patriarchal gap between them. This scene of the bed fire empowers the status of Jane from a governess to the saver of Rochester’s life. After this scene, their relation becomes erotic that Jane finds Rochester’s bed on fire, alone, at night, and being the only one who can save him. The power dynamics is changed at the bed fire scene. Jane becomes powerful compared to the helpless Rochester.
Up to this scene, Jane Eyre feels that they are not equal because she is financially dependent on him. In the final fire, she comes back financially independent, but he is blinded and his right hand is broken. She finally accepts him as an equal to her. Jane Eyre tells him at Ferndean:
I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own mistress. And you will stay with me? Certainly—unless you object. I will be your neighbour, your nurse, your housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your companion—to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live”, Jane Eyre (p.370).
Jane Eyre plays a significant role in the construction of Rochester’s masculinity which is totally different from the hegemonic masculinity of the Victorian period. Charlotte Bronte presents a new version of masculinity through the presentation of both Jane Eyre and Rochester. Jane is the catalyst for Rochester to change and deviate from his Victorian masculinity and his past. Such masculinity, according to Bronte, is based on equality of the feminine and the masculine. It is also based on the needs and desires of woman.
Charlotte Bronte depicts the struggle of Jane Eyre in her novel to attain equality, independence and self-assertion. Jane Eyre proves to the world of the Victorian era that a woman beating the odds to become independent and prosperous on her own was not as far-fetched as it may have seemed. This is the main goal of Charlotte Bronte on which she deconstructs masculinity. The assertion of the feminine identity is the other face of the coin of masculinity. The concept of masculinity cannot be attained without the knowledge of femininity. Charlotte Bronte not only deconstructs masculinity but she deconstructs the concept of femininity as well. Both Rochester and Jane Eyre at the beginning of novel are restricted to the traditional concept of masculinity and femininity. Rochester is bound by the wealth and social class to assign masculinity and gentlemanliness. Similarly, Jane Eyre is shackled by the barriers of the society. At the Gateshead, she is considered as an outsider. At Lowood, she is put into starvation and oppression under the guise of religion. At Thornfield, she suffers the emotional exploitation by Rochester. However, she revolts against the gender roles given by her society.
Charlotte Bronte revolts against the inequality between men and women during the nineteenth century. She portrays this refusal in the resistant behaviour of Jane Eyre. She resists the male dominance at the Gateshead and to be enslaved by John Reeds and to call him master; instead she calls him Nero, the Roman dictator. She refuses the hypocritical behaviour of Brocklehurst in the name of religion resisting his threats to be sent into hell. She is rebellious more than the other girls of Lowood School. It is Helen Burns who teaches her the morals of Christianity better than Brocklehurst. Moreover, she is a rebellious in every step of her life. When she gets emotionally mature, she resists the emotional exploitations by Rochester to be his mistress. She leaves him and goes aimlessly without a supporter till she comes across St. John Rivers, the missioner at Moor House. The state of being homeless and helpless is the state of woman in the Victorian society in which the woman identity was destroyed by the traditional masculinity. Gilbert and Gubar argue that Jane’s situation being homeless and helpless symbolizes “the nameless, placeless and contingent status of women in a patriarchal society”. This is the essence of Charlotte Bronte’s struggle in her society. Finally, she is financially independent when she discovers her relatives with the amount of money that she inherits from her uncle. Charlotte Bronte lets Jane Eyre’s qualities of womanhood develop step by step. However, she demolishes Rochester’s traditional qualities of masculinity. This deconstruction of masculinity and femininity is done with organic unity. She brings Rochester and Jane into one place where they are equal economically and socially.
The most important thing in Charlotte Bronte’s new construction of masculinity is the equality of the gender roles of both Rochester and Jane. Jane Eyre struggles for equality. She declares that:
“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex”, (Jane Eyre p.93)
This text presents the ideas of Jane Eyre as the mouthpiece of Charlotte Bronte on the concepts of masculinity and femininity and the gender roles of both men and women. The women of nineteenth century were supposed to be calm and confined themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags which were the roles of the domestic sphere. Jane Eyre wants to change the stereotypical roles given to women. Women are equal to men; nevertheless they need to use their faculties. Charlotte Bronte challenges her society and proves her feminine identity. She exercises her faculty. Hazel Mews, in the book Frail Vessels: Woman’s Role in Women’s Novels from Fanny Burney to George Eliot, explains that “Just as women need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do, so in the relationship of love two human souls are equal in spite of custom and conventions.” On the basis of such equality Jane wants to have a lover. She refuses to marry Rochester as an unequal like a mistress. She proclaims to Rochester that:
“I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,—as we are!”, (Jane Eyre p.216 ).
To this appeal of equality, Rochester responds to the flesh and spirit of an equal. “As we are!’ repeated Mr. Rochester—‘so,’ he added, enclosing me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: ‘so, Jane!”. At this moment, Jane enjoys the moment of total involvement, power and equality. This is the ideal masculinity that Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte want to establish in a society dominated by males. Charlotte Bronte portrays her love relationship with M. Heger which is similar to the love relationship between Jane Eyre and Rochester. Charlotte Bronte wants love based on equality and justice. However, in a patriarchal society she could not find ideal love. This part is discussed in the aforementioned part of this chapter.
Jane Eyre finally becomes powerful. According to the new identity that she has attained especially after the financial independence, her relationship with others is changed. She is no longer a governess. She is a powerful member of the society. She has overcome all the odds in her life. The final odd is her resistance not to marry St. John Rivers. She responds to the supernatural cry of Rochester to come back. She knows the final story of Rochester as a blind man with crippled hand. The final chapter starts with “Reader, I married him”, Jane Eyre (p.382). The syntactic structure of this sentence shows us that Jane is the subject and the object is Rochester. She is the doer of the action. This indicates that Jane Eyre becomes fully mature. Rather than announcing ‘Reader, we got married’ which would indicate their equality in defiance of gender roles, she declares ‘Reader, I married him’.
Charlotte Bronte lets her heroine marry Rochester after a certain change in the gender roles in which Jane get fully mature socially and economically. She agrees to marry him when she is equal to him. Also, she is aware of his change physically and mentally. He is the ideal man in her life. Rochester changes to be totally different from all the male characters in her life. In return, she becomes his eyes and his hand. Though he is too old to marry her, she accepts to marry him. Charlotte Bronte constructs a new version of masculinity where there is no marginalization of the identity of woman. This masculinity sees woman as an equal partner in life. Charlotte has destroyed all the barriers between men and women that were common during the nineteenth century. Moreover, as in Jane Eyre, she has belittled the powers of the man. She could think this is the best way to make man dwindle into her position. She has destroyed the concepts of the domestic sphere that was given to women. Jane Eyre does not belong to that domestic sphere. This masculinity is the outcome of her writings in a patriarchal society. Her novel Jane Eyre has shaken the societal system of the Victorian period especially after publishing it under the name of Currer Bell. As a novel written by a man, it was praised by critics. When it was known that it was written by a woman, the critics devalued it. Consequently, Charlotte Bronte shocks the patriarchy of the literary elite in particular and the patriarchy of the Victorian society in general.