This document provides information and discussion prompts for an English literature class. It begins by encouraging students to attend office hours and discuss their participation for the day's discussion. It then excerpts and analyzes passages from Jane Eyre, discussing the characterization of Bertha Rochester and possible meanings behind her actions and descriptions. Finally, it considers feminist and psychoanalytic interpretations of Bertha's role, suggesting she represents Jane's repressed anger. The document examines Jane and Bertha's connections through a literary critical lens.

1. ELIT 46C
Day 5
THE MADWOMAN IN THE ATTIC!

2. Business / Participation
Come by office hours! I have food!
Why aren’t you sending me your bitmojis?
What participation looks like today:
--No group activity today. You’re on your own.
--I’ll give you up to 2 points total for today.
That means saying 2 things in our group
discussion.
--EXTRA: if you didn’t talk in our full group
discussion last Thursday, I will give you an
extra point if you talk today. List that as your “I
didn’t talk Thursday” bonus point when you
self-report.
--Turn in your participation self-report at the
end of class. (You can also include things you
want me to know—about class, topics,
discussion, whatever.)

3. “‘If that will be your married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the
notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what had you
to ask, thing—out with it?’
‘There, you are less civil now; and I like rudeness a great deal better
than flattery. I had rather be a thing than an angel.’” (302, Ch 24)
[Rewritten as dialogue]:
Rochester: “If that will be your married look, I, as a Christian, will soon
give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But
what had you to ask, thing—out with it?”
Jane: “There, you are less civil now; and I like rudeness a great deal
better than flattery. I had rather be a thing than an angel.”

4. “I had rather be a thing than an angel.”
What is the meaning of this phrase in the context of their conversation?
But let’s think about the deeper implications of the comparison that Jane is
posing here.
◦ What do these two categories (thing, angel) have in common when they are applied
to people?
◦ What does it mean to consider someone a thing or an angel?
Dehumanization vs. Idealization
◦ Which does Jane prefer?
◦ Why?

5. Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar
Deanna Kreisel (2016): But is she actually in the “attic”?

6. Jane’s encounter with a thing.
“He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door: this, too, he opened. In a
room without a window, there burnt a fire, guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp
suspended from the ceiling by a chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking
something in a saucepan. In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran
backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first
sight, tell: it groveled, seeming, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild
animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid
its head and face.
‘Good-morrow, Mrs Poole!’ said Mr Rochester. ‘How are you? and how is your charge to-day?’
‘We’re tolerable, sir, I thank you,’ replied Grace, lifting the boiling mess carefully on to the hob:
‘rather snappish, but not ‘rageous.’
A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report: the clothed hyena rose up, and
stood tall on its hind-feet.”
(338; Ch 26)

7. Bertha as a thing.
How is Bertha described in this passage?
In what ways is she described as not human?
What pronouns are used and why does that
matter?
How else does the novel treat her as less than
fully human?
◦ “impediment”
◦ Narrator vs narrated.
◦ Vampire
◦ Clinical case

8. Charlotte Brontë on Bertha
From a letter to W. S. Williams in January 1848:
“The character [of Bertha] is shocking, but I know that it is but too natural.
There is a phase of insanity which may be called moral madness, in which all
that is good or even human seems to disappear from the mind, and a fiend-
nature replaces it. […] It is true that profound pity ought to be the only
sentiment elicited by the view of such degradation, and
equally true is it that I have not sufficiently dwelt on that
feeling: I have erred in making horror too predominant.
Mrs Rochester, indeed, lived a sinful life before she was insane,
but sin itself is a species of insanity—the truly good behold and
compassionate it as such.”

9. Bertha as
colonial haunting

10. Jamaica in the
Nineteenth Century
What do you know about Jamaica in the 19C?
◦ British colony
◦ sugar plantations
◦ slavery
The population in 1834 was 371,070:
15,000 were white, 5,000 free black, 40,000 mixed race, and 311,070 were slaves.
What is Bertha’s racial background? A Creole.
What does that mean? Unclear.
◦ Could mean mixed race OR
a white person who was born and raised in the Caribbean.
◦ Do the physical descriptions in the novel help us?

11. British Empire in 1850

12. Madeira
Portuguese colony, occupied by the English
in early 19C.
Grew sugar, then grapes to produce a
desirable wine.
Guess who did the agricultural work.

13. The objects of British Imperialism
(Freedgood, 2006)
MAHOGANY SILK, TEA, PORCELAIN

14. Is every mansion in England a
haunted mansion?

15. Bertha as Jane’s
repressed anger
MADDY ASKED ABOUT FEMINIST AND PSYCHOANALYTIC READINGS.
THIS ONE IS DEFINITELY FEMINIST AND LOOSELY PSYCHOANALYTIC.

16. Gilbert & Gubar (1979): Jane is angry
Jane’s last name is an important clue to who she is
◦ Eyre = air, heir, ire.
Why is Jane angry? What is she angry about?
Remind ourselves:
“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.” (129-30; Ch 12)

17. Jane’s anger leads to madness
G&G argue that this anger causes Jane herself to start to go mad, to lose control of her
perceptions.
◦ in the Red Room, when Jane has a “fit” and doesn’t remember anything anymore.
◦ the night before the wedding when Jane can’t tell what is or isn’t a dream.
G&G: “On a figurative and psychological level it seems suspiciously clear that the specter of
Bertha is still another—indeed the most threatening—avatar of Jane.”
Jane’s anger is manifested in Bertha and her actions.
Bertha is Jane’s “dark double”: “Every one of Bertha’s appearances—
or, more accurately, her manifestations—has been associated with
an experience (or repression) of anger on Jane’s part.”

18. Jane’s connections to Bertha’s actions
(From Gilbert & Gubar [1979])
Jane Bertha
Jane on the battlements at Thornfield: “[women] suffer
from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation,
precisely as men would suffer” (130; Ch 12)
“When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s
laugh: the same peal, the same low, slow ha! ha! which,
when first heard, had thrilled me: I heard, too, her eccentric
murmurs” (130; Ch 12)
Rochester’s unwanted confidences to Jane about his sexual
adventures (Ch 15)
Bertha’s attempt to burn him in his bed (Ch 15)
Rochester’s gipsy masquerade that upsets Jane (Ch 19) Bertha’s scream and attack on Mason (Ch 20)
Jane’s anxieties about becoming Mrs Rochester the night
before her wedding (Ch 25)
Bertha appears as a “bride” (“I know not what dress she had
on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or
shroud, I cannot tell” [326]) and destroys the veil (Ch 25)
Jane’s repressed anger toward Rochester and Thornfield Does something happen to Rochester and Thornfield???
(No spoilers here!)

19. But what about Bertha?
Bertha can function as an allegory (of colonial guilt or of anger) precisely to the extent that she
has no subjectivity.
But what would it meant to take her seriously as a character (something Charlotte couldn’t do)?
◦ Luciano: “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
What would it be like if we were to posit for her a subjectivity? How would she tell her own
story?
◦ How would she feel about her life experiences?
◦ How would she feel about Rochester?
◦ How would she feel about Jane?
Can you imagine this novel from the perspective of Bertha?

20. For Thursday
Priority:
Christina Rosetti, “Goblin Market” (Norton 1496-1508)
Jane Eyre, chapters 36-38.
A note on Jane Eyre chapters 28-35: “St John” is pronounced “Sinjin”