Abstract:
A prevalent belief during the Victorian age was that the world was divided between
inferior beings governed by passion and superior reasoning beings. On the political
level, this idea separated inferior passion-driven natives from superior reasoning
Europeans. This division contributed to the maintenance and expansion of imperialist
rule in distant lands, for it suggested that Europeans had a duty to civilize primitive
natives. This view of the binary opposition between the passionate and the rational
operated on a cultural level in that women were believed to be dominated by emotions
unlike their male counterparts, who were seen as superior to women because of their
self-control and rationality. As a result of this view, women were believed to be in need
of the mental and physical regulation of doctors and psychiatrists in particular and men
in general. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre reflects her society's belief in the dichotomy
between the inferior passionate being and the superior reasoning being on both the
political and cultural levels. In her portrayal of Bertha Mason, the mad Creole woman,
Bronte shows the passionate Bertha to be inferior to the articulate Jane and the self-controlled
Mr. Rochester. Through the relationship between Rochester and Bertha,
Bronte also points to the need for the rational European to govern the unruly passionate
"other." On the cultural level, Bronte highlights and challenges the Victorian idea that
due to their emotional nature women ought to be confined to domestic life, through her
depiction of Jane Eyre's struggle to ease the societal restrictions placed on women.
Bronte also refutes the notion that women are in need of men's domination through
Jane's fight against attempts by St. John Rivers and Mr. Rochester to control her.
Bronte extends the theme of passion versus reason to a personal level through Jane's
struggle to govern her emotions through reason when she finds that she must leave
Rochester. Hence, Jane Eyre reveals the prevalence of this imperialist notion of the
need for domination in Victorian society as well as Bronte's ambivalence toward it.
