Jane Eyre
Literary Gothic in Special Collections
Brontë family manuscripts in Special Collections
Oscar Wilde in Special Collections
Twentieth century gothic: Dennis Wheatley & Sophie Hannah
Rowena English introduces Jane Eyre:
Published in 1847, Jane Eyre is a forerunner to late-nineteenth century literature described as ‘Imperial Gothic’, which explored contemporary anxieties surrounding the decline of the British Empire.
Central to Charlotte Bronte’s exploration of ‘Imperial Gothic’ is the character Bertha Mason, wife of Edward Fairfax Rochester. Certain that the fortunes of Bertha’s parents - a West India planter and his ‘Creole’ wife - are ‘real and vast’, Rochester trades his ‘good race’ for Bertha’s substantial dowry. Her pale skin, dark hair and violent passions are typical of nineteenth-century depictions of ‘Creole’ people, descended from white European settlers but born in the colonies.
Rochester attributes Bertha’s moral degeneracy or “madness” to her racial ambiguity: it is both hereditary, ‘passed down through three generations’, and symptomatic of her upbringing in Jamaica’s sultry climate. Described as a ‘clothed hyena’, a ‘demon’, Bertha is bestial, even monstrous. Rochester hopes to curb her corruption by incarcerating her at Thornfield Hall, just as he hopes to civilise his French ward, Adele, by transplanting her to the ‘wholesome soil of an English country garden’.
Whilst Bronte’s depiction of Bertha may seem to uphold those racial stereotypes which justified the ostensibly civilising mission of British imperialism, a letter written to her publisher suggests otherwise:
It is true that profound pity ought to be the only sentiment elicited by the
view of such degradation […] I have erred in making horror too predominant.
(Letter to W.S. Williams, 28th October 1847)
Bronte’s regret that giving precedence to the Gothic may have prevented an appropriately sympathetic response to Bertha, suggests we should instead read Jane Eyre as an exploration of contemporary anxieties about the true cost of colonialism. By burning down Thornfield Hall, Bertha brings the horror and violence of slavery into the heart of a British, aristocratic home built on the wealth of an increasingly controversial trade.
The fire in which Bertha dies takes place in 1833, the year Britain’s Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act. Notably, the committee responsible for considering the abolition of slavery was established one week after the public execution of Samuel Sharpe, leader of an uprising of slaves in Jamaica. The impact of such violent opposition to British colonial interests was far-reaching, both financially and ideologically: slavery was becoming less profitable and less palatable in the British consciousness.
Bertha’s haunting presence in Jane Eyre serves to remind its reader that the crimes of colonialism are the dark secret locked away in the heart of the English country home.
