The document provides instructions for an in-class activity on the topic of subjectivity and interiority in Jane Eyre. Students are divided into groups and must find examples from the text that describe aspects of Jane Eyre's character. They are given guidelines for acceptable examples and must have one group member present their finding to the class. The document also discusses theories of how subjectivity is formed through social forces and power structures, and how Jane Eyre resists having her subjectivity shaped by the demands of others through her narration of her inner thoughts and feelings. It explores how the novel sets up a distinction between surface and interior depth that Jane is able to decode through practices like physiognomy and phrenology. Students are assigned
2. What participation looks like today
1. We’re going to start with a group activity. If everyone in your group speaks AND one person
from your group presents your result to the class, each member of your group gets 2 points for
today.
2. If you individually say something else in discussion, you can receive 1 more discussion point.
(Limit: 1.)
3. One bonus participation point for the first person who connects
the video that I played before class to the related point that I make
in today’s lecture.
4. Keep track on a slip of paper (near the door) and turn it in at the end.
PUT YOUR NAME ON IT.
3. Who is Jane Eyre?
BUT ALSO: WHO ARE YOU?
MAKE A LIST OF FIVE WORDS OR PHRASES THAT DESCRIBE WHO YOU ARE.
4. But who are you?
-How many descriptors that are readily visible to other people? (Ex: brown hair,
tall, maybe gender.)
-How many descriptors that describe a social category? (Ex: athlete, rich person,
student.)
-How many descriptors that describe personality or inner characteristic? (Ex:
smart, kind, optimistic.)
[Obviously there is a connection between many of these “outside”
characteristics and “inside” characteristics…]
5. Group textual hunt: Who is Jane Eyre?
#bookdetectives
Group: five people, someone in your group who everyone does not know, someone must have
the book with them. Everyone must talk in your group.
Text: First 15 chapters of Jane Eyre.
Find: Multiple textual examples (maybe 4-5) in which someone (the narrator or a character)
identifies what you think is an important aspect/characteristic of who Jane Eyre is.
◦ It can be an “inner” characteristic or an outside or social characteristic.
◦ It should not require much of your own interpretation to identify the characteristic/aspect:
GOOD: “I said, ‘I’m a really angry person.’”
BAD: “I punched him in the face.”
◦ Each textual example should only be ONE SENTENCE.
Go: Send someone to the board to write ONE of your chosen sentences.
Make sure you include the chapter number and (if using the Penguin)
the page number.
7. Industrial Revolution I: Factories
Blake’s “dark Satanic mills”
Steam factories flourished from 1800 on, though, by 1850, the majority of workers in England
did not work in factories.
BUT, conditions in factories were BAD.
Three laws regulating work in the cotton mills only:
◦ Factory Act 1833: no kids under 9, kids age 9-13 could
only work 8 hrs/day for 6 days/week.
◦ Factory Act 1844: no kids under 8, all kids limited
to 6.5 hrs/day; women limited to 12 hours/day.
◦ Ten Hours Act of 1847: women and children limited
to 10 hrs/day.
Source: Altick (1973)
8. Industrial Revolution II: Cities
Fast growth, large size
Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool all grew by 50% from 1821-31.
London population doubles from 1800 to 1850.
By 1851, more than half the population of England
lived in cities. (Never in European history.)
Unpleasant conditions
Manchester in 1830s: 40-50,000 ppl lived in cellars.
Liverpool in 1860s: 66,000 people/mile.
Source: Altick (1973)
9. Industrial Revolution III: Railroads
First passenger line in 1830, between Liverpool and Manchester.
By 1850: 6,600 miles of track, 200 separate railway companies.
There were 33 million passengers in 1843.
We will probably talk more about the consequences of this later (they were big).
Source: Keep (2002)
10. Class
Aristocracy: 300 hundred “good” families—blood, wealth, name.
--LAND. Political power—solid control over the instruments of government.
--But, threatened by newly-rich industrialists and financiers.
Gentry: country gentlemen (often younger sons of aristocratic families).
--estates with tenants and laborers; responsibility for local government.
--Ex: Mr. Rochester.
Middle class: the expansion is one of the great phenomena of the 19C in England.
--manfacturers, brokers, bankers, financiers, traders, providers of consumer goods; eventually clerks
and civil servants.
--shift in economic and moral center of gravity: what is good for the MC is good for England.
The masses: “the million,” working class, laboring poor, etc.
--laborers in field and factory, servants,
--in 1851: 1.8 million in agriculture; 1.7 million in textiles, 1 million menial domestic servants.
--New Poor Law (1834): workhouse must be worse than conditions outside of it. Often lead to
transfer to a city.
11. Reform Bill
Who sat in Parliament? Aristocrats and gentry.
◦ and who voted for them? Aristocrats and gentry.
◦ 1828: England/Wales: 7 million adults; 435,000 men could vote.
◦ 658 member of Parliament; 234 elected by a sizeable body of voters.
◦ Manchester (182,000), Birmingham (146,000), Leeds (123,000): no MPs.
Mob unrest in the late 20s and early 30s over political representation.
First Reform Bill (1832)
◦ expanded electorate to 652,000—all middle-class additions.
◦ Beginning of commercial entry into politics.
And what happened to the laborers? They thought they were going to get the vote.
12. Chartism
People’s Charter: electoral bill of rights demanded by working men.
◦ universal manhood suffrage
◦ secret ballot
◦ equal electoral districts, etc.
Riots and demonstrations throughout 30s and 40s
—fear of revolution in the air.
Climactic rally in 1848
◦ The Charter was thrown out by Parliament.
◦ And nothing happened.
(Eventually full male suffrage in 1867.)
13. Access to education
Poor: religious and charity schools, 2-3 years, mostly teaching obedience and religious piety.
Middle class: local classical schools. Sometimes could be pretty good.
Upper class: boys start with home instruction, then “public” school, then Oxbridge colleges.
Mostly classical education; may or may not get anything out of it.
14. How can we read Jane Eyre in this
historical context?
Well, we have to be slightly careful: dual period.
◦ Published 1847.
◦ Narrates events of the 1820s.
Some relevant things:
◦ why she wants to stick to her “caste” over being poor. (Ziyan’s question in the forums)
◦ what was up with her education at Lowood.
◦ why she talks about “the millions” who want to rise up.
But can we sufficiently answer the question of who Jane Eyre is based on this context?
16. Interiority and Subjectivity
Interiority: inner life or psychological existence.
Subjectivity: possessing conscious experiences, such as perspectives, feelings, beliefs, and
desires, as well as the agency to act on them.
In a sense, they are synonyms, but subjectivity is more of a theory term—one that we will return
to again.
What does Jane’s subjectivity (her inner life) look like?
Make a list of her thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, etc.
17. Where does one’s subjectivity come from?
What helps to influence/construct it?
Per some theorists (Marx, Althusser, Foucault), you have subjectivity because you are made into
a subject.
◦ Subjectivity is formed, produced, by social conditions or power (discipline)
◦ Who you are is determined by what social conditions demand/expect you to be.
What kids of subjectivity is Jane supposed to adopt? How is she supposed to be formed?
◦ Gateshead and the Reeds: what subjectivity is demanded of her?
◦ Brocklehurst Lowood: what subjectivity is expected of her?
Who becomes the perfect subject of Lowood?
◦ Post-Brocklehurst Lowood: what subjectivity is expected of her?
◦ Early Thornfield (pre-Rochester): what is expected?
And how does Jane respond to these demands to form her subjectivity in certain ways?
18. She resists.
“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action;
and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine,
and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. 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 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.”
(Ch 12; 129-30)
19. Surface/Depth
But one of the ways we experience Jane’s subjectivity is through the narration of her interior life.
On the outside, her resistance is not always apparent—much as those millions who secretly
(silently) want to resist.
What the novel is doing here is setting up a distinction between surface and depth.
This is actually one of Brontë’s clear intentions in this novel: to represent the depth that is
concealed below the surface.
Brontë’s critique of Jane Austen:
“She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously
well. […] She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him with nothing profound. The
passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that
stormy sisterhood […]. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study: but
what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen
seat of life and the sentient target of death--this Miss Austen ignores.”
20. How to read depth from surface
This is what Jane Eyre, again and again, attempts to do.
Most people are not good at this.
◦ Appearances in the novel often fool (but not as much as some think).
◦ Jane on Mrs Fairfax: “There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching a character, or observing and
describing salient points.” (Ch 11; 124)
But Jane is not an amateur—she is an expert at this sort of decoding. And she does this through
reliance on two pseudosciences:
Physiognomy: ancient practice of judging personality from facial characteristics.
Phrenology: Devised by Franz Gall, late 18C. Very popular in 19C.
Study of the shape of the skull as a signal to character and mental abilities.
Note: both of these practices were horribly racist
(though Jane mostly doesn’t use them for those purposes).
21. “I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty; his full
nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were
very grim, and no mistake. His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in
squareness with his physiognomy.”
--Jane and Rochester’s first meeting in Thornfield (Ch 13; 141).
22. “Mr Rochester, as he sat in his damask-covered chair, looked different to what I had seen him look before; not quite so
stern—much less gloomy. There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes sparkled […]; for he had great, dark eyes, and very
fine eyes, too—not without a certain change in their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you, at
least, of that feeling.
He had been looking two minutes at the fire, and I had been looking the same length of time at him, when, turning
suddenly, he caught my gaze fastened on his physiognomy.
‘You examine me, Miss Eyre,’ said he: ‘do you think me handsome?’
[…]
‘Criticise me: does my forehead not please you?’
He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizonally over his brow, and showed a solid enough mass of
intellectual organs, but an abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have risen.
‘Now, ma’am, am I a fool?’
‘Far from it, sir. You would, perhaps, think me rude if I inquired in return whether you are a philanthropist?’
[...]
‘No, young lady, I am not a general philanthrophist; but I bear a conscience;’ and he pointed to the prominences which
are said to indicate that faculty, and which, fortunately for him, were sufficiently conspicuous”
--Jane and Rochester’s second interview at Thornfield (Ch 14; 153-55).
23. Homework
Read more Jane Eyre (through Ch 23). I know, I know.
Discussion forum post by Wed, 6 PM. One response by Thursday, 9 AM.
On Thursday, we will talk about the Red Room, eerie laughter, the gypsy, as well as what Jane
really wants and what that means.
Don’t forget to turn in your participation sheet for today!
PUT YOUR NAME ON IT
(Also, what was the link between Peter Gabriel and today’s
lecture?)
