Discussion: Frankenstein

We began this discussion by, as usual, speaking a little bit about the background of the person as well as what was going on in the world (usually Europe) at the time. In this case, Mary Shelley's backstory was as interesting or even more so than the text we are reading of hers. There were several significant people in her life, most notably her father William Godwin and her lover (later husband) Percy Bysshe Shelley. As well, in the background, there is her deceased mother, early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, whose writings Mary Godwin Shelley would have read.


Mary Godwin would also have been exposed to many many intellectuals during her childhood: writers, philosophers, scientists, politicians etc. Percy Shelley was a fan of Mary Wollstonecraft and of William Godwin and falls in love with Mary Godwin when she is about 17. They elope (illegally as PB Shelley is still married to Harriet Westbrook) to the continent, accompanied by Mary's half-sister Claire Clairmont (who later becomes Lord Byron's lover). After a couple of years of moving around on the Continent and in Britain, the Shelleys head back to Europe, again accompanied by Claire. Byron has been ejected from England due to accusations of incest among other things and the Shelleys find themselves his neighbours in Switzerland. Claire becomes pregnant with Byron's child - her daughter Allegra was born in 1817. Prior to the summer of 1816 when she began Frankenstein, Mary Shelley bears two children, a daughter who dies a few days after birth and later a son, William. That Fall (1816), both Harriet and Mary's older half-sister, Fanny, commit suicide. Mary completes Frankenstein the following spring, 1817.

Frankenstein was conceived during a summer spent in Switzerland with PB Shelley, Claire Clairmont and Byron. The Shelleys had had to travel through France in 1814, just after Waterloo which had devastated France. Mary would have had a close connection to France given her mother's interest and presence in Paris during the French Revolution. There had been a volcanic eruption and the weather that summer was very bad and they had to amuse themselves indoors, reading gothic novels and German ghost stories and eventually challenging each other to write their own ghost story. Mary struggled to find a worthy idea and an image comes to her in a nightmare one night. Shelley continued to work on Frankenstein upon their return to England in the Fall, with PBS' encouragement and support. It is published in January 1818.


We discussed several of the noted themes in this novel: alienation, intellectual hubris and good science/knowledge vs bad science/knowledge. One area of discussion was about the difference between 'being' and 'appearing', a Rousseauian concept and which we see in the alienation and rejection of the creature based solely on his appearance.


Stephen also mentioned the recurrence of the word 'sympathy', here meaning a sympathy of minds. Captain Walton is looking for this and feels he had found it in Victor Frankenstein; the creature is desperate for this and never finds this, and this drives his actions his entire life.


Stephen's notes for this discussion include some "plots to follow": Walton’s Journey to find the “power that attracts the needle” – Walton is the one who “learns”, who has a chance to reform himself; those seeking glory via the pursuit of knowledge “secret of life”, becoming isolated from society; the Creature’s transition from benevolent “child of nature” to violent predator due to alienation and injustice.


There were also various themes: Nature vs Nurture – The Individual and Society; Dangerous Knowledge (including the failure of science to take responsibility for its creations which in the 20th century became a metaphor for issues around nuclear power); Parenting (and the issue of men trying to take over women's role as the carrier and nurturer of the child - women were particularly weak in this novel which is interesting considering the author is a woman) and the novel was also affected by the proximity of the French Revolution (power of reason, the innate human capacity for reason and benevolence and justice).


BYRON gave us some background on the Prometheus myth, important since Shelley's novel has the subtitle "The Modern Prometheus". Her husband, PB Shelley also considered himself a Prometheus. Prometheus was originally a trilogy (Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound and just the title of the 3rd, lost, play, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer). He was a titan and his name is thought to mean foresight (though one theory translates it as thief of fire). Prometheus helped Zeus but later interfered in Zeus' plans. He is seen as a trickster figure. In Hesiod's Theogeny, the use of fire was already known to humans but Zeus takes it away as punishment for a trick. Prometheus smuggles fire back to the humans in a giant fennel stalk. In Aeschylus' play, in addition to giving mankind fire, Prometheus is also thought to have taught them several arts of civilization such as science, medicine, agriculture as well as mathematics and writing He helped Zeus but then he intervened in Zeus' creation of man by giving humans fire. He became a figure who represented rebellion but who also represented human striving, especially after scientific knowledge. I don't know whether prior to Frankenstein Prometheus symbolized the risk of overreaching, hubris and unintended consequences.


Byron asked about Alienation: "the monster is victim to extreme alienation. Do we relate to this today? Some types of alienation include alienation from his creator, alienation form friends, alienation from himself. But, is the monster actually alienated from himself? Or are we today more separated from ourselves than the monster was? (On 131 the monster asks himself questions most people wouldn’t dare. He tries to understand himself.) Oddly, regarding alienation, we can perhaps see the monster and Frankenstein as aspects of one being separated from itself...could this be an outcome of what happens when we 'knowers' don't really know ourselves? Is this our warning?" Stephen noted that Frankenstein and his creature are never seen together and asked whether this could position them as 2 facets of a human being. Similarly, Frankenstein's friend Henry Clerval could be seen as an amalgam of various missing aspects of Frankenstein's being: lightness, gaiety, creativity, passion and compassion, conscience etc.

Byron had a lot to say about what Frankenstein tells about Beauty. "Our society is filthy. Our understanding of beauty is delusional and off target. We have people injecting botulin into their faces. We have people cutting the fat out of their bodies without making any more significant life changes. We have lineups at the makeup store where people pay plenty of money to paint over their skin. We have people putting silicone into their chests to look bustier. We have people eating liquid diets. People starving themselves to look thinner. People spending hours a day at the gym. And to what end? Is this end beauty? It is more likely that the hideous monster is a better example of what beauty ought to be? Most of us can’t accept ourselves in our own skins, so who are we to judge beauty? Are our imperfections what make us ‘ugly’? Or is it more likely our imperfections are what make us beautiful and we cannot see this?"


"Arguably, the monster’s biggest problem is that he is too human. In fact, he is more human and humane than people not created by Frankenstein. What does this say about our fellow creatures and the level of humanity with which we treat each other? How good have we gotten at being terrible human beings since the time this book was written? Would a present-day retelling look much different? Or is this really just a warning of our ambitions as human beings striving to be what we think better human beings would be? Victor says it himself: "seek happiness in tranquility, and avoid ambition" (220)."


Abilio also presented some aspects of the novel. He spoke about the danger not just of science but of knowledge, citing Facebook and do we want one site where everyone, from childhood friends to employers to people you met travelling etc, can find out masses of information about you. It made me think about data mining and the gigabytes of information companies and governments are collecting about us, to the point that analysis of our emails, Facebook posts, spending habits etc can tell a stranger what our age and gender is, religion, sexual orientation, whether a woman is pregnant and when she is due (being done currently by Walmart to allow for targeted marketing of customers so they can send them ads for baby stuff).


I'm still amazed at how relevant many of these texts are. We often read them thinking that we have to remember the context in which they were written or make allowances for customs and norms of the time yet so often the insights, the conflicts, the questions they are grappling with are ones we still are grappling with today. Wondering about the danger of knowledge takes us right back to where we started in September with Genesis and Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge. And here we are with Mary Shelley in 1817 worried about the dangers of untempered intellectual curiosity and here we are today still unable to come to any consensus as we play around with DNA, with weapons of mass destruction and with super computers and the Higgs Boson.

Shelley: Frankenstein

Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus; Penguin Classics, London, 2003

Mary Shelley grew up in a household composed of her father, noted rationalist philosopher and writer William Godwin, her step-sister Fanny (who was the 1st daughter of Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft and her American lover, financier Gilbert Imlay) as well as Godwin's 2nd wife and her children.  Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, had died 10 days after Mary's birth, due to complications from the birth.  According to Maurice Hindle's introduction, Mary grew up with a father who espoused the view that a "new system, based on 'universal benevolence', could create a just and virtuous society," maintaining that this virtue "would naturally emerge from the exercise of reason and free will, as developed in an 'enlightened' society."  Hindle quotes Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and writes "knowledge, and the enlargement  of intellect, are poor, when unmixed with sentiments of benevolence and sympathy...and science and abstraction will soon become cold, unless they derive new attractions from ideas of society."

Hindle mentions the Gothic imagery popular at the time Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and the use of monster imagery to demonize anything challenging the status quo.  Hindle notes that this style even permeated the writing of conservative political philosophers such as Edmund Burke, and in his introduction he includes a passage from Burke commenting on the French Revolution where he wrote that "vice assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing its principle of life by the change in its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with the fresh vigour of a juvenile activity.  It walks abroad; it continues its ravages..."  Godwin himself was commonly described as a monster.  Walpole described him as 'one of the greatest monsters exhibited by history' and Burke called Godwin's opinions "pure defecated atheism...the brood of that putrid carcase the French Revolution."

Hindle ends his introduction by quoting physicist Brian Easlea in Fathering the Unthinkable who raises the issue of "Mary Shelley's indictment of masculine ambition" and her exposure of "the compulsive character of masculine science."  Hindle tells us that in her last novel, Shelley ends by having the hero say "This...is Power! Not to be strong of limb, hard of heart, ferocious and daring; but to be kind, compassionate and soft." In Frankenstein, Shelley certainly seems to want to highlight the hubris and the danger of the purely intellectual approach to science, something that still resonates today when the newspapers are full of reports of people trying to manipulate DNA to create new, "better" beings, implanting uteruii into women so that they can bear children, manipulating our environment on a scale that is truly earth-shattering and then proposing to mine the solar system for our short term benefit...  The awareness that today these reckless experiments in the name of 'science' are being driven by greed rather than by the intellectual thrill of discovery, or by a thirst for power via domination over nature, just makes mankind's hubris that much more unbearable.

The original frontispiece for Frankenstein, contains a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost.  This poem has been referenced in so many texts we've read the last couple of months that I am going to have to finally read it.  Echoes of this poem come up again and again in this text.

pg 96 "Alas...when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?"

Shelley writes alot about nature.  "When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations.  A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy." [pg 71].  The nature in Switzerland, where she and P.B. Shelley were living when she conceived of and wrote Frankenstein, contributes an enormous amount to the Gothic - as well as the elemental - feel of the book.  I couldn't help but compare her descriptions of the area around Geneva with her mother's descriptions of Denmark, Norway and Sweden when she travelled through those countries in the 1790s.  I find her writing particularly her choices of adjectives (imperial, vast, glorious, immutable and especially the overused adjective 'sublime') overwrought but I did appreciate the scenery she evokes, and the sense of place.

The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial Nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the avalanche or the cracking, reverberated along the mountains, of the accumulated ice, which, through the silent working of immutable laws, was ever and anon rent and torn, as if it had been but a plaything in their hands.  These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation ...  [pg 99]

...Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles, and it's tremendous dome overlooked the valley. [...] The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal nature bade me weep no more.  [pg 98] 

Shelley was particularly affected by her hikes around the Mer de Glace near Chamonix.

The sea, or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains, whose aerial summits hung over its recesses.  Their icy and glittering peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds.  My heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed - 'Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life.'

I can't help but contrast this paean to the joys of life with the perspective Shelley offered some 25 pages earlier.   Frankenstein's youngest brother William is murdered by Frankenstein's nameless monstrous creation. Frankenstein's friend Henry, in an excess of exclamation points and overblown sentiment, tries to console him:

Dear lovely child, he now sleeps with his angel mother! Who that had seen him bright and joyous in his young beauty, but must weep over his untimely loss! To die so miserably; the feel the murderer's grasp!  How much more a murderer, that could destroy such radiant innocence!  Poor little fellow! one only consolation have we; his friends mourn and weep but he is at rest.  The pang is over, his sufferings are at an end forever.  A sod covers his gentle form, and he knows no pain.  He can no longer be a subject for pity; we must reserve that for his miserable survivors.

Truly a bleak outlook on life.  I'm not sure that I would have found Henry's words comforting in the face of the loss of a child.  This is always something I have never understood about many religions: the Christian religions which preach about living your life in such a way that you may ascend to heaven but regardless you will have to spend time in purgatory (and as Dante showed us in his Inferno, there was no section except the outermost part of the circles of Hell where you would want to spend even one second); the Vedic texts and Buddhist philosophy which counsel people to aim for the almost unattainable Nirvana; the Greeks describing an unattainable perfection of forms; to the Islamic texts with their promises of the companionship of pure ones in paradise.  Why should there be any sorrow or resistance to death if what comes later is what you are supposed to be aiming for, if life is just something to be endured and suffered through.  I can understand that, if day-to-day life is hard, people would dream of something better after they die but in that case, why fear it or grieve its coming?

Frankenstein is a Gothic story.  Shelley describes the scientist's dark arts; and the original concept for the story came to her in a dream when she saw the image of the pale creator bent over his awful creation.  She describes his research:

Darkness had no effect upon my fancy; and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm... I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. [pg 52-53]

Even the 'monster' says that "Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it." [pg 102] - though he had far more reason than Frankenstein himself to find life unbearable.  "So much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men." [pg 168]

Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.  I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.  Make me happy [he says to Frankenstein] and I shall again be virtuous. [pg 103]

The monster pleads a good case for the torment of his misery and, aside from his quickness to wreak revenge, he seemed to have the possibility of goodness as well as baseness within him - just as mankind does.  Yet Frankenstein, despite his initial agreement to create a companion for the monster, deems him "a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated [Frankenstein's] heart." [pg 170] I don't find the monster, other than his physical abilities, to be any more malignant, evil, depraved, barbarous etc than mankind.  The media and history books are full of people far more evil, depraved and ill-intentioned than Frankenstein's monster.  To this day.  So far civilization does not seem to have extracted or cured any of these tendencies from human nature.

At the end of the story the monster laments:

Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment.  Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.  pg 223

Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind has sinned against me?  pg 224 

Society still judges people by appearance, forgiving the beautiful and engaging and condemning the ugly, the odd, the different.

Frankenstein is a good example of reason gone bad.  His scientific curiosity and his hubris took him into dangerous territory and like the scientists today who push the envelope either to see if they can or because of greed, he didn't engage his intellect to consider what the results of his actions might be, nor his humanity to care about the consequences.  Shelley seemed to want to offer a warning about the dangers of actions untempered by humanity or by those human feelings which we tend to think are desirable (compassion, fellow feeling, mercy, unselfishness, affection etc).  She has Frankenstein say:

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.  I do not think that the  pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule.  If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. pg 56

He goes on to say that had this rule been observed Greece would not have been enslaved and the Americas would have been discovered more gradually and the existing empires (Mexico and Peru are the examples given) not destroyed.  In Frankenstein's case he allowed his reason to be a slave to his passion (which Hume has said is how it always has to be).  The consequences of reason being the slave of dark passions (greed, jealousy, hate, envy) often seem to be the most terrible.  The narrator [pg 29] notes that Frankenstein "appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion"but here he is just speaking about allowing his equanimity to be affected by despair or grief.  In the rest of the book however, Frankenstein reminds me of Werther in his self-absorption and lamentations about how his feelings are affecting him.  Page after page about his anguish, shame, guilt, despair, wretchedness, suffering, melancholy etc etc etc. Ah poor me!!

After moping around for years, worrying and depressing everyone around him, Frankenstein has the gall to say to Elizabeth, his patiently-waiting childhood companion, on their long-delayed wedding day:

You are sorrowful, my love. Ah! if you knew what I have suffered, and what I may yet endure you would endeavour to let me taste the quiet and freedom from despair that this one day at least permits me to enjoy. [pg 197]

The self-absorbed, whiny, arrogant man! His sufferings?!?  He caused the death of his youngest brother and allowed the execution of an innocent young family servant unjustly blamed for the murder.  He's kept his family and especially Elizabeth waiting and in the dark about how he is doing - and WHAT he is doing - for almost his entire adult life.  He has unleashed a monster and treated it in such a way that its only aim is to wreak revenge on Frankenstein by taking away anyone he loves (as Frankenstein has prevented the monster from having any loving companion in his life) - and he doesn't warn any of his 'loved' ones of the danger they are in because he is too afraid to own to the enormity and the consequences of his actions.  And he then has the audacity to chastise Elizabeth for being melancholy on their wedding day.

Towards the end, Frankenstein speaks to Captain Walton about reason and passion.  He asks him to "undertake [Frankenstein's] unfinished work; and I renew this request now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue. [...] I dare not ask you to do what I think right, for I may still be misled by passion.

Shelley also has the monster suffer the effects of passion:

I knew that I was preparing myself for a deadly torture; but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse, which I detested, yet could not disobey.  pg 222

Both Frankenstein and his monster allowed their passions to take over their lives and this weakness consumed their lives and laid waste to the lives of everyone around them.

At the end, Shelley imbues the monster with all the mixtures of qualities we find in mankind.

My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change, without torture such as you cannot even imagine.  [pg 222]

Shelley wrote these words in 1816 yet today we are still trying to figure it all out.  There was an article in the newspaper today reporting the results of some experiments into humans behaving in mean or bullying ways. Situations were set up with research subjects where they were told or induced to ostracize or gang up on or to make things difficult for a few other participants.  When they assessed the feelings of the people who had been bullied and compared it to the people who had done the bullying behaviours, they found that it was psychologically more traumatic for the person acting badly or meanly than for the victimized or oppressed person.

I didn't like Shelley's overwrought writing style but the situation she imagined and the themes she wove into her work still hold resonance today - and her imagery has endured and kept a firm place in people's imaginations and in our roster of bogeymen.

Discussion: Jane Eyre

We had a guest professor for this session, Jane Sturrock from the English department - her specialty is 19th century literature.  It was a good session with lots of discussion.

She spoke about various elements in the novel:

• English chauvinism
• Racism
• Treatment of aristocracy (Blanche Ingram) is flawed, shallow
• Coincidences (wanders moor and meets cousins)
• England's imperial role

She mentioned the Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - which highlighted the sexual woman -
The Mad Woman in the Attic - suppressed anger, suppressed sexuality - women's writing.
I read this years ago and don't remember being impressed by it but I'll put it on my ever-expanding list of books to read "when I have time."

Jane Eyre was published in 1847, near the end of the "Hungry 40s" - famines of 1840s
Written in the 1st person, by a woman - adventurous - a woman who insists on her own voice; also childhood was important in this novel which was different for the times.
Liberating and threatening for the period when 1st published
2 years later Dickens started to publish novel in form of autobiography, child (David Copperfield)
Jane Eyre contained a character whose adult role was built on childhood experiences, the suffering child - this device was also seen later in Great Expectations.

We also spoke a bit about the themes of power (adult figures, Mrs Reed, Brocklehurst, Rochester, monied classes), love, money, voice (female, child, poor etc), biblical references.

The Discourse of the novel - we spent a few minutes on Sturrock's opinion on how she reads a novel.  I've never taken any english courses beyond 1st year english so I have no experience of how to "read" a novel.

Martha Nussbaum's name was brought up [again] - and her writings on philosophy, law, literature
"novels direct us to pay attention to the concrete ... moral choice"
Ethical decisions made from actual human situations, relationships

Robert Moyes (UVIC) - novel imagines social realities, Kant's ethical suppositions, Jane Eyre
Doesn't imagine more hypothetical situations than Kant but difference is in quality of imagining

The dreamwork that a novel does: something you recognize from your own hidden life "forlorn child, homeless wanderer on moors, impossible love, later fulfilled"

Some background on the Brontes:
6 children, mother has died then 2 eldest die so Charlotte left as eldest - didn't want that position - they are poor for their middle class
Live in isolation, brilliant children
Reading and writing passionately - reading romantic writers: Scott, Coleridge, Byron, Wordsworth (the child is the father of the man)
Use non-realist, non-rational (dreams, hallucinations, altered states) human experiences
2 imaginary kingdoms (Angria (Charlotte and Branwell), Gondole (Emily & Anne)
Byronic hero - NB for Charlotte
Gothic elements -
2 modes of narrative (realism - burnt porridge, servants) and (gothic - moors, halls, Bertha, Rochester's secrets)
Gothic novels written in 1790s and later - trope: young pure virginal heroine goes to huge dark mansion and threatened by older powerful male (how often has this been repeated ??!?)
Much of power of Jane Eyre comes from combination of realistic elements and gothic
Importance of dreams - sometimes wakes from dream to find an even more dream-like reality.
She dreams of children and trouble.

Fairy Tales - Cinderella?  Bluebeard?
Supernatural world  - 1st meeting - on the road, Rochester riding, Eyre on stile - she hears approach of horse, man and dog and thinks of a supernatural dog
"Mustard seed" Midsummer Nights dream and also parable in bible (mustard seed grows to large plant = kingdom of heaven) - this isn't familiar to me.  Something I'll have to check into.
Also mystical aspect of Eyre and Rochester hearing each other voices when they were far apart.

Many elements of the natural world - speaks to action and character as well - twilight, the moon at various key times (Moon mother figure) - She goddess figure

These worlds intensify the sense that Jane's inner world is NB
Power imbalance - Jane says no to Rochester initially as not the relationship she wants and somewhat going against mores of the time

Sadomasochistic relationships - Rochester and his stunt as the gypsy, how he leads Blanche Ingram along.

Power and gender roles - confrontations Jane has with aggressively male characters
Masculine power, even St John has role of absolute power (or assumption of absolute power)
Charlotte had a relationship and correspondence with a man she called "My Master" - at boarding school
Also Branwell suffered from an adulterous affair with wife of his employer and was tossed out

Love in Jane's life - unloved child, drives her out to seek another life - love of Helen and Miss Temple at school - then Rochester

Power/Priviledge
Jane sees herself as revolting slave when living with Reids but also uses same language later with Rochester.  Rochester wants relationship of equals but as soon as he is sure of her and engaged he starts to treat her as an inferior - starts to direct her and ignore her wishes - put "diamond chain around your neck myself" - shopping trip.
Also image of the harem, seraglio (Chap 24)
Use of language of fetters, charters, harems, depots, colonial language

Rochester is manipulative and playing games (gypsy, pretending to woo Blanche Ingram) - thinks of jealousy as a tool to get what he wants
In Chap 24 Rochester analyzes the power equations of their relationship

Women in 1840s - no rights, little education, little means of earning money
Married Woman's Property Act didn't come into force until 1872

Chap 27 - power imbalance - Rochester furious at being defied by Jane
Women as "frail and indomitable" - striking especially at the time (1840s)

Adrienne Rich wrote on Jane Eyre.

When they finally marry they are more equal - physically Rochester reduced (loss of sight and hand - biblical punishment for adultery) and Jane also now is financially independent and has family (Diana & Mary, St John)

R: Who will care for you?
J: I will, I will care for myself.

Voice -
Truth NB to Jane and for Charlotte Bronte
To Mrs Reid "I dare because it is the truth" - also declares the need for love
To Rochester - similar claims - do you think I can stay to become nothing to you (when thinks will marry Blanche Ingram) etc etc

I'm poor, plain, a woman but I matter
Addresses reader in Chap 12 about women (can 1/2 of humanity survive without a role)

Bible - used throughout - used to give a personal depth to narrative - also refers to Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress; scene in orchard is Adam & Eve; storm and lightening blast
Allusions deepen the text
When finds out about Rochester
Psalm 69 "the waters have closed over me"

By Grand Central Station also uses Psalms; Oscar Wilde's Dei Profundis "out of the depths I speak to you oh god" relationshp with Lord Alfred Douglas from Reading gaol

The ending - moves away from J & R and finishes with St John dying as missionary in India
Ends with words from end of bible
"Imperialist evangelism'

Novels often end by moving themselves out

BYRON's question - power relationships  - Jane only ended up marrying Rochester after she was in the ascendancy (and in sections regarding St. John she does speak about being in the ascendancy so this is a consideration for her).

Kirstin - hero's journey

Discussion about why Rochester had to suffer such deprivations before he and Jane could be happy together - was this symbolic (loss of eyes and hands as biblical punishment for his prior sins) - or was this what was necessary for Jane's equality to Rochester - he was brought down physically as well as through wealth

I felt that Rochester's misfortunes happened as a way to make them equal - Jane could never rise to Rochester's heights because of the class structure and his wealth so by bringing him down physically and through loss of his estate they can approach some equality.

Nature vs Nurture
Can Bertha help her madness?

Rochester at one point tells Jane if she doesn't listen to him he will use violence.
At one point Rochester tells Jane to put her hand in his because as long as he can touch and see her, he will be content - of course later he loses his sight and his right hand.

Both Jane and Rochester speak the language of reason - they connect through their language and thoughts.

Chris asked why Jane Eyre is considered a feminist novel and what does it say about the role of Women in Victorian society?

Abilio asked about the main elements that determined Jane's final independence: Family and Money.

Jane being locked up in red room as child and Bertha being locked up by Rochester in attic rooms - which she later sets fire to. Parallels.

Jane is a very passionate person and at school she learns to temper this with reason, education.

1st person format was very important as this is a journey of growth and self-discovery.  Makes us empathize with Jane who could be a very drab, minor secondary character (poor dependent, student at foundling school, governess, plain person, poor).

Laura asked about whether Jane's education and learnedness gave her any advantages?

Bronte's Jane Eyre

Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre; Broadview Editions, Peterborough, 2004

I enjoyed re-reading this book.  I had read it a few times as a child/teenager and I mainly remembered the scenes in the orphanage and the mad wife in the attic.  I also have very vivid memories of the 1st scene when she is hiding in the library in the window, reading, and her unjust treatment at the hands of her relatives.  Reading it from a perspective decades later and with much experience under my belt, in my profession as well as the culture around me, it was amazing how much commentary on society was packed into this book.  I still very much liked the character of Jane Eyre.  Bronte had a knack of describing Jane such that we could see why those around her were bothered by her but we were totally on her side.  Her integrity was what sold it for me, her strength of character especially when so very young and disadvantaged.

There were some great lines again that I want to remember:

pg 82 "I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste."

"If you are a Christian, you ought not consider poverty a crime." (to Hannah)

"Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this.” - when rejecting running away to France

There was so much social commentary in this novel:

pg 178

"Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth.  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 just 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 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."

pg 207; Chap XIV

The Nurture vs Nature Debate:

During one of their 1st conversations, Rochester admires Jane Eyre's frank manner, freedom from affectation and her strong statement on the rights of the free-born individual.  He tells her: 

"Not three in three thousand raw school-girl-governesses would have answered me as you have just done.  But I don't mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it."

Jane Eyre contains characters that range from very bad (John Reed, Mrs. Reed, Mr. Brocklehurst) to the very good (Helen, Mrs. Temple, Diana and Mary Rivers), with many characters of mixed qualities in between.  If human nature is in fact Nature (meaning what we are born with), then how much blame or admiration should we give to people for qualities innate to them whether this be musical ability, athletic ability, intelligence?  Qualities such as compassion, honesty, industriousness, integrity are often considered to be much affected by the 3 Es: environment, education and experience but how much of these are innate? Jane Eyre was raised under very adverse conditions and grew up to be a woman with many admirable qualities.  Is she to be praised for this or is this just the nature she was born with?  Rochester considers that he is basically a good man, and he blamed the sinful life he had led on adverse events that happened to him.  Are we justified in condemning John Reed, Mr. Brocklehurst or Blanche Ingram for their faults or were they constrained by their natures?

pg 236
It is interesting to read how much Bronte inserts about reason in her story.

"Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night - of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told in her own quiet way, a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real and rabidly devoured the ideal; "

pg 282
Jane Eyre seems to sit firmly on the reason over passion debate.  Passion isn't bad but if it's a battle between reason and passion then reason should be the decider.

"Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her [Jane Eyre] to wild chasms.  The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are ; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.  Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I [Jane Eyre] shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience."

St John is a very rigid, self-righteous character.  He seems the epitome of what you do not want in a missionary.

"Reason, and not feeling is my guide: my ambition is unlimited; my desire to rise higher, to do more than others, insatiable.  I honour endurance, perseverance, industry, talent; because these are the means by which men achieve great ends, and mount to lofty eminence."

When he describes himself to Jane, he has many conflicting statements.  He says he is a follower of Jesus and has adopted his "pure, his merciful, his benignant doctrines." Yet he goes on to describe his "due sense of Divine justice" and he is nothing if not ambitious.  He was an interesting character for Bronte to insert into her novel and he made me wonder who might have been in Bronte's life that influenced this character.

I thought the characters were interesting, they were not necessarily realistic but they all contained components of interest, qualities or failings that we see in the people around us but sometimes magnified to great effect.