This is what Charlotte Bronte wants from the ‘man’ of the Victorian era to be. This masculinity is based on the needs of woman and the gentle behaviour of man. This is what men ought to be according to mutual respect and equality of both genders. As a result of this happiness, Rochester’s sight is restored. The hidden message of Jane Eyre is that till and unless a loyal woman is not beside a man his life is destroyed. The opposite is true; the absence of man in the life of woman makes her totally destroyed. This is what happened to Charlotte Bronte. She was an old spinster. She suffered because of her unrequited love with M. Heger.
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’. The word ‘master’ indicates that woman was thought to be no more than a slave. This is the real reason for the female novelists of the Victorian period to pursue freedom and to run away the hegemony of the nineteenth century man. 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 too, 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. Both Jane and Bertha want to get away from the prison life – like beside the Victorian man. The life of woman during the Victorian era was similar to the life of a prison. The Red Room of Jane Eyre is not different from the Attic Room of Bertha. The red colour indicates the serious and severe situations that women were living in. Charlotte Bronte depicted the real dilemma of women in Jane Eyre because these situations were familiar to her.
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.