Women in Jane Eyre and Madame Bovary

Wo manpower in Jane Eyre and Madame BovaryThe beation of women in Charlotte Bronts Jane Eyre (1847) and Gustave Flauberts Madame Bovary (1857) is unity of the principal informatives of the saucys. Clearly, the presentation of women in each case is influenced by the authorial directive which drove the novels and certainly the gender related issues can be seen to be interrelateed to this. In addition, the geomorphologic imperative of the narrative voice invites a specific perception of the women which is only essenti eachy revealed when the text is examined closely, particularly in terms of contrast and comparison.In twain the novels to be discussed here, the central protagonist is egg-producing(prenominal) and veritable(a)ts ar arranged around a womanhoods flavor and struggles in a society existing by men for the convenience of men. Also, the books each have an eponymous heroine which invites the initial perception that the entire narrative is to be fundamentally built up on a female centre of consciousness (though Flaubert, in common with many critics, thought the novel guilty of faulty perspective1, partly because of this, perhaps). However, this must be qualified by the inter spielion with former(a) female characters which each novelist uses almost(prenominal) to develop the plot and intensify the readers understanding of the titular heroines actions in each case. two novels also present images of women who in different ways either reflect or challenge perceived nonions of how women should behave in contemporary society. Indeed, it world power be said that each of these books question the basis upon which fundamental mores of the era were based and deviated from accepted virtuous standards. Perhaps because the chief agents of this in both novels are women, the books were thought even more outrageous than might new(prenominal)wise have been the case though stereotypes and prejudices have at least roughly po seative aspects2 even if only in their repudiation.However, though Bronts novel opens by establishing a deeply disturbing matriarchal environment which does little to challenge the idea of the stereotypic wicked-step fetch, in the person of Janes reluctant guardian, her aunt, Mrs Reed, by whom she is degraded in a home where the child is less than a servant3, it nevertheless gives the author, with Jane, the opportunity to intimate that the roots of an inner-strength and self-reliance which are to be so primal to her in the future are imbedded in her childishness trials. The inevitable inference, perpetuated by the fact that a considerable amount of Janes suffering is inflicted by women, is that cruelty in some sense straitens the character. Moreover, the embryonic woman may be perceived in Janes acceptance of this treatmentThis reproach of my dependence had run a vague sing-song in my ear actually painful and crushing, barely only half intelligible.4Janes subsequent subjugation, both as a pupil at Lowood Sch ool and in her position as a governess, the last-ditch non-persona of 19th century female existence and one of which the author had personal experience, may be seen to be endured with extraordinary patience because of these early insults. Indeed, Bront wrote the character of Jane to be plain, small, and unattractive, in defiance of the accepted canon5 and want herself, in fact, so her women are inevitably influenced by this directive Why was I invariably suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please?6 This thirst to please is quite definitely connected here with the female stereotype which to some extent Janes later behaviour negates. Thus, Bronts portrayal of the female child is, to invert Wordsworth, mother of the woman for the in judge of her treatment is forcibly emphasised, as it is later at Lowood (the cruelty of which was autobiographical as two of Bronts sisters died at a school very similar to it). It is crucial that Janes s ufferings should be seen to be inflicted by women, for as Jane says, I doubted not-never doubtedthat if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly7. Clearly, the authors directive is to display how very different is the cruelty of women inflicted upon their own sex from that of men who, like Rochester, involve a sexually charged sadistic element in their cruelty towards women.Flauberts novel creates rather a different consciousness, however, and the directive for this is possibly created by the warmness of the novel, which was for a time banned in France on the grounds of obscenity. Emma Bovary, hostile Jane Eyre, is driven less by the sense of injustice brought about by her familial circumstances than her desire for a more impassioned existence than her husband, the honest doctor Bovary, can provide. In a sense, she is the antithesis of Jane, since she longs not for a simple existence with a loving husband, that she has, unless for a keep of which she has read in romantic fiction, symbolised by her desire for a marriage at midnight by the light of torches8 (though this has been shown to be also a custom rather than an idiosyncratic whim9). Emma is, from the premier, presented sensually she shivered as she ate, in that locationby causing her rather full lips, which, in moments of silence, she was in the habit of biting, to fall slightly apart.10 Anticipating Hardys description of Tess eating a strawberry offered by her seducer, Flaubert focuses the attention of the reader immediately upon Emmas mouth, slightly open, in an unconsciously provocative attitude. In this, she is very different from Jane, who is presented as modest to the point of austerity, perpetually dressed in dark clothes, partly due to her situation but also, the reader might infer, due to a repressed self-image. (Interestingly, Flaubert oftentimes dresses Emma in blue, with varying numbers of flounces this would be recognisable in the Catholic France as the colour tradi tionally associated with the Virgin Mary.)Nowhere is this more evident than when she is compelled by Rochester to attend an evening party at Thornfield and we see her juxtaposed with the flirtatious Blanche Ingram and the party who, dressed in white flock11 into the drawing agency like white plumy birds12 in stark contrast to the soberly dressed Jane, all in grey. The women speak in an habitual13 way, indicating that it is both natural and skilful a register of opposite inflection which suggests the elaborately artificial, indicative of their representation, via Janes perspective, at least, and since Janes voice is that of the book, that is the view we are invited to share. As she says, Miss Ingram was conscious remarkably self-conscious indeed14. Bronts employment of the term self-conscious is arouse since it encapsulates, in the two meanings of the term, the difference between Blanche and Jane. Blanche is conscious of herself as a vain exposition but Jane is self-conscious in terms of abnegation. Significantly, at this point, the narrative register switches, to present the scene as if Jane is watching it I sit in the shadeif any shade there be in this brilliantly-lit apartment the window-curtain half kills me15. (Apparently Charlotte was also self-effacing at parties, where she would hide behind the curtains in order to be both present and not so.) The author thus employs a dual vicariousness of experience, since she is speaking autobiographically behind the veil of Jane who is now watching herself in a recalled reactive, I might gaze without being observed16 as she remarks. The womens conversation is at best indiscreet and at worst cruel, as they discourse on the nature of governesses, the whole tribe17, more or less as one might of a separate and inferior species of being which they undoubtedly study to be true, in common with most of the aristocracy of the time. Moreover, they speak of an immoral tendency18 which they believe to be present in the g overness and the entire lack of covert which attaches to the position. Charlotte had experienced this herself, no doubt, in her life as a governess, belonging neither upstairs nor downstairs and loathed by servants and masters alike. The Ingram party are object lesson of women who subjugate others of their sex within the class conscious society in which the novel operates, and by showing them as vain and shallow as wholesome as unkind, Bront invites the reader to infer that their judgements are likewise via an intimate distancing.It is interesting to compare this behaviour of Janes with that of Emma Bovary at a ball. Far from wishing to hide herself, Emma longs both to see and be seen on a larger stage than that of the country town of the titleEmmas heart gave a faint flutter as she stood in the line of dancers, her partners fingers lightly rigid upon her arm, waiting for the first stroke of the fiddlers bow to give the signal for starting. But very soon her emotion vanished. l amentable to the rhythm of the orchestra, she swam forward with a gentle undulation of the neck. A smile showed upon her lips at certain tender passages on the violin, when, now and again, it played simply and the other instruments were hushed. The sound of opulent coins chinking on the baize surfaces of card-tables was spend a pennyly audible. Then, with a crash of brass, the music would once more strike up loudly. Feet took up the measure, skirts swelled, swishing as they touched one another, hands were given and withdrawn, eye, downcast a moment in front, were raised again in silent colloquy.19This intense sensuousness follows Emmas mockery of her husbands desire to dance and it is clear that she wishes to enjoy this experience in solitude though not of course in isolation. She desires her husbands absence and thus Flaubert separates the concupiscent Emma from the practical one. in that respect is a danger and excitement here for which Emma longs and which is be not only i n the silent colloquies but also in the chinking of the g obsolescent coins at the card tables. Flaubert foreshadows Emmas own risk-taking here as she is thrilled by the intensity of the atmosphere in a way that Jane most emphatically is not. Further, Emmas feelings are present in the way in which the author describes Emmas points dapuis involving the reader in her sensuality as she swam forward with a gentle undulation of the neck. How different is this subliminal image of the swan from that rendered by Jane? Moreover, Flauberts intense desire for verisimilitude will not allow for the shady and duplicitous register of the faux autobiographical first person narrative which Bront adopts, and which was imitated by such notable authors as Dickens in David Copperfield (1850) and therefore attempts to present Emma as both fragile and strong, flippant and serious, a fully rounded woman, in fact, having her feet firmly on the ground in some areas but dispiritedly romantic in othersSometim es she sketched, and Charles found much delight in standing at her side, watching her bend above her drawing-board, half closing her look the demote to judge the effect of her work, or rolling little pellets of bread between finger and thumb. The quicker her hands moved when she played the piano, the greater his surprise. She laid low(p) the notes with a sure touch, and could run down the keyboard from treble to bass without a moments pause. But there was another side to Emma. She knew how to run her house. Because of all this the consideration shown to Bovary increased. 20It is important that Bovary came to value himself the more highly for possessing such a married woman21 as he thus inverts the received notion that a womans placement derived from her husband, not the reverse. The difference within writing is then coextensive with the difference between the sexes22 and for the essence of mediocrity, Charles Bovary, the gifted, artistic yet apparently level- goed Emma, is the equivalent of a advance(a) day trophy wife. Therefore, when he is betrayed by her infidelities the pain is all the greater. Marriage was the principle duty of both men and women in the centuries up to and including the nineteenth and after, and the matrimonial state, as well as deviations from it, drives the narrative throughout both novels. Emma is highly regarded not just because she is beautiful and artistic but because she can adequately cope with what society expects of a wife. Further, it is reasonable to assume that the latter approbation would be principally granted by the provincial matrons who will later disapprove so strongly of her behaviour. Thus, Flaubert exposes both the inherent hypocrisy of the society and the restrictive expectations of the role of a wife. Both parties to such a union are ultimately upset and Flaubert at least offers a reason for Emmas behaviour by means of emphasising her husbands mediocrityHad Charles but shown the will to listen, had he but suspected the movement of her thoughts, or seen but once into her mind, her heart would, she felt, suddenly have released all its wealth of feeling, as apples fall in profusion from a shaken tree. But as their lives took on a greater engagement, so did detachment grow within her mind and loose the bonds which bound them.23Analysis of a translated text is always problematic but the semantic field is so apparent here that it is possible to comment on the text with some power point of accuracy. Clearly, what drives this damning description of Charles is the fact that he manifestly has a choice it is as if he makes no effort towards understanding his wife and thus the intimacy which might have been is displaced by detachment. Moreover, the idea that they are bound by their respective postures impacts upon the metaphorical rendering of the passion contained within Emma. Similarly, the repressed passion of Jane cannot be released until Rochester has in a sense been emasculated so that he needs Jane and understands her need to have an existence of her own without entrapment.This picture of woman as imprisoned within both body and soul by the propriety of a fundamentally hypocritical society is literally true of Rochesters touchy wife, Bertha Mason. Perhaps because of the tendency to focus upon Jane and Rochesters romance, the plight of Bertha is rarely examined and she is confined to a Gothic stereotype which reflects Charlottes reading, as does the Byronic Rochester, but leaves little room for a sympathetic reading of the womans existence. She is simply presented as an impediment derived from an entrapment in Rochesters youthMr. Rochester flung me behind him the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek they struggled. She was a big woman, in statue almost equalling her husband, and heavy besides she showed virile force in the contestmore than once she almost throttled him, athletic as he was. That is my wife, said he. Su ch is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to knowsuch are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours And this is what wished to have (laying his hand on my shoulder) this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon. I wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout. Wood and Briggs, look at the difference Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonderthis face with that maskthis form with that bulk then judge me, priest of the gospel and man of the law, and remember, with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged24Mrs. Rochester is accorded no dignity either by her husband or Jane, indeed the terms of address attached to her are those of lunatic, demon and the entirely divorced from military personnel delineation of the fierce ragout. Bront betrays her own lack of compassion here, as she distances the reader from any possibility of empathy by making Bertha appears as a monster, big and corpulent, in human, in fact. She intriguingly applies the adjective virile to the woman, too, and thereby invites an animalistic sexuality which has, in fact, the reader is led to believe caused Rochester to marry her in the first place, unaware of her familys genetic tendency towards insanity. Moreover, by using a direct comparative with Jane, Bront subliminally and possibly unconsciously, suggests a debasement of the female sex in Rochesters terminology. Both women are referred to as objects, this and that, and their comparative merits highlighted in a detached and oddly disconcerting way. In addition, his language is unpleasantly possessive, that is what I wished to have. Finally, he appeals the justice of his case to God, suggesting that his attitude is correct, even under Divine examination, disparagingly referring to both the priest of the gospel and man of the law. So effective is the authors manipulation of this that the reader, as is undoubtedly the intent, forgets the inherent immorali ty and cruelty which all those present display. In this sense, the novel is guilty of corrupting the readers moral sensibility since it invites a faulty and amoral judgement based upon the romantic imperative the novelist pursues. The fact that Bertha is a woman, not an alien being, does not appear to enter the incarnate consciousness, here. Sexuality is inextricably bound up with the image of the lunatic, here, as Rochester speaks of the conjugal embrace to which he is tied. It is clear to see, then, that for this author, the sexual drive has within it a link to a kind of wildness which sits uneasily with the image of the grave and quiet Miss Eyre, especially since Bertha tears Janes wedding veil on the eve of the proposed bigamous marriage, a Freudian symbol, perhaps, of the virginal brides impending sexual violation. Even Berthas imprisonment may be likened to the previous entrapment of Jane in the red room, itself a Gothic interlude and teeming with female sexual symbolism.It is no accident that when she leaves Thornfield, Jane recovers, after an indeterminate and somewhat obstinate and directionless journey in the abode of the seemingly asexual St. John Rivers and his sisters, Diana and Mary. It is later revealed that these women are related to Jane and they are like her, even to the extent of both being governesses. They are, of course, delivered to the reader as absolute images, as was Miss Temple her role-model at Lowood, and the antithesis of the artificiality of Blanche and the animalistic Bertha. The fact that Jane is literally removed from her previous existence with all its inherent passion to the quietude of a parsonage says much about the didactic split in the presentation of women within Jane Eyre. Certainly, the author is keen to connect love with a kind of sanctity and passion is somewhat marginalised into areas which have significantly dark connectives. The well-read and steadily sympathetic sisters have little in common with the women J ane has encountered at Thornfield and indeed, even St. John himself seems insipid when compared to Rochester, thus the authors ambivalence towards female sexuality is fundamentally present in the collocation of the images of the female which are the inverse connectives between the world of Thornfield and that of the Rivers family. It may be remarked, in fact, that Jane disapproves even of the affectations of Adele, the child of a woman with whom Rochester has had a sexual blood though he is not Adeles father. Thus, even the innocence of the child appears to be tainted, in the authors mind (since Jane is her centre of consciousness), by her mothers sexually promiscuous past.This idea of female sexuality identifies much of the imperative behind Flauberts novel, with his central character suffering a restrict life which we infer to be as unfulfilling sexually as it is temperamentally. Emma and Charles Bovary form an ill-matched couple but their respective discontentment stems from an intrinsic disparity that relates to more than their different aims and desires. In fact, the novel has been called the tragedy of dreams25 and this is indeed an apt description. Flaubert created in Emma the tragedy of a woman both awakened and doomed by passionpleasance and pain metamorphose into each other. Innocence is unmasked and altered by corruption. In Madame Bovary, following the disappointment of her marriage, these changes occur in Emma because of Rodolphe. Flauberts corrosive irony in the narrative treatment of his characters does not lessen the pain of love or the lyrical power of Emmas erotic awakening.26Emma is, then, an inverse of Jane, since her life is thwarted by marriage whereas Janes is fulfilled by it. In part, this is due to the nature of the narrative because Emma is not in love with Charles as Jane undoubtedly is with Rochester. There is an interesting irony, though, in that Bronts novel is born of her reading whereas Flaubert depicts his heroine as in part destroyed by the romantic dreams which have emanated from hersIn the days before her marriage she had fancied that she was in love. But the happiness love should have brought her did not come. She must, she thought, have been mistaken, and set herself to discover what it was that people in real life meant by such words as bliss, passion and intoxicationwords, all of them, which she had thought so fine when she read them in books.27Flaubert was of the realist school and by producing a heroine corrupted by the romances with which she had been indoctrinated, he emphasises the difference between a womans life in reality and as lived vicariously in the projected images of female enchantment to which Emma here refers. Moreover, Flaubert foreshadows Emmas ultimate tragedy by the ominous words, she set herself to discover what it was that people in real life meant by such words as bliss, passion and intoxication. Emmas innate passion for romantic love is revealed as a puerility sensibility and therefore basic to her. She has been educated in a convent (which Charlotte with her anti-Catholic prejudices would have found appalling in itself) but even there she sees the metaphors of affianced lover, husband, divine suer and eternal marriage, which were for ever recurring in the sermons that she heard, and that moved her heart with an unexpected sweetness28. By juxtaposing love, marriage and religion, Flaubert again invites a religious connective with Emma herself. As was noted earlier, he often dresses her in the blue of the Blessed Virgin and here he is quite provocatively bringing together, in Emma, the twin images of woman in the nineteenth century collective consciousness as either Madonna or whore.In addition to her fictionalised pictures of love drawn from books and religion, Emma is influenced by the stories of an old maid29 who visits the convent and because she belongs to an old family of gentlefolk ruined by the Revolution30 she enjoyed the special favour of th e archbishop31 and was almost part of the convent, privileged to eat with the nuns. This reveals much about the class-consciousness of nineteenth century France as well as the perception of women, since the archbishop controls not only the nuns but also who may be thought worthy to consort with them. Ironically, this old lady sings to the girls love songs of the previous century32 and told stories, brought news of the outside world, executed small commissions in the town, and secretly lent to the older girls one or other of the novels that she carried in the pockets of her apron, and that she herself devoured in the intervals of labour. They were concerned only with affairs of the heart, with lovers and their lasses, with persecuted damsels for ever swooning in solitary pavilions, with outriders meeting a violent death on every journey, and horses foundering on every page, with dark forests and agonies of sentiment, with vows, sobs, tears and kisses, with moonlit gondolas, with grov es and nightingales, with cavaliers who were always brave as lions, gentle as lambs, and virtuous as real men never are, always elegantly dressed and given to weeping with the copious fluency of stone fountains.33Again, Flaubert the realist presents a tongue in cheek picture of the positive images for girls selected by the church, since the old maid of whom the archbishop thinks so highly is potentially dangerous. She also enters into secret negotiations with the girls and bridges the protective gap between the convent and the outside world and fills their heads, as she does her own, with images straight out of Gothic Romance. Flaubert also emphasises that the heroes in these stories are virtuous as real men never are, which foreshadows Emmas later tragic romances with men as they actually are.Thus, Flaubert brilliantly involves the reader in a broad sweep of societys image of women and the external influences which encroach upon them despite the best efforts of enclosure perpetrat ed by the patriarchal society in which the novel operates. In many ways, Emmas future self is determined by her childhood as much as is that of Jane. When Emma is eventually in love she is betrayed and because of this she is doomed since she has so inveterately been schooled in the expectations of the romantic novel. Through Emma, then, Flaubert is able to develop the theme of a reactive against a genre of which he powerfully disapproved.A further, deeply Freudian, image of women is produced via Charles relationship with his mother. This controlling woman has arranged her sons first marriage, by which she never feels threatened, but is much less secure as her sons favourite34 now that he has Emma in his lifeCharless love for Emma seemed to her like an act of treachery to her affection, a trespassing on ground which was hers by right.35This bizarre connective of displacement, with all its psychoanalytical implications, has resonance later when Emma, uninterested in her daughter, Bert he, for a long time suddenly becomes maternal following rejection by her lover. In this way, Flaubert once again examines the nature of the connective between the images of womanhood commonly represented in contemporary society. In addition, he examines the corrupting influence of the over-bearing mother, who reminds him of her pains and sacrifices on his behalf36 and Charles is caught in the all too familiar trap, even today, of wanting both to honour his mother and please his wifeCharles did not know how to answer these outbursts. He respected his mother but was deeply in love with his wife. He held the formers judgement to be impeccable, yet found the latter beyond reproach.37The extraordinary contemporaneousness of this dilemma emphasises the fact that perhaps Flauberts novel holds up better than the more popular Jane Eyre with its outdated mores and Gothic imagery. Perhaps this preference is, in fact, an enduring symbol of a generic resistance to the real in the novel and the f act that women remain largely the readers of such fiction as Charlottes rather than Flauberts is indicative of an inherent, if politically incorrect, desire in the female to want romance.The women in both of these novels stand against what society expects of them but the very different nature of their stance is represented powerfully by their contrasting endings Jane Eyre becomes the happy wife whilst Emma Bovary commits suicide. Tracing these endings gives an indicator of societys perceived apprehensions of a womans role and the individual authors widely different directives.However, there is no simplicity to this as Janes resolution is gained only by means of the diminishment of Rochester she has to become his nurse, as she was once his comfort and refuge, before she can become his wifeThe caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson. And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?if you do, you little know me. A soft hope blent with my sorrow that soon I should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips so hard sealed beneath it but not yet. I would not accost him yet.38Rochester is portrayed here as the Byronic hero sufficiently reduced in placement as to make it possible that Jane can be his equal, it is almost as if Bront somehow feels that the dynamic presence of Rochester would itself be reduced if he were not in some way diminished in order to marry her. Thus, the novelists own perceptions come under scrutiny since there is a clear ambivalence in a woman who seems throughout her semi-autobiographical and intensely personal novel to promote an image of a woman who can stand alone but who subliminally, perhaps, becomes a reductive image in her marriage. Addressing the reader directly, as she does when she famously declares that she married Rochester, Jane suggests that the reader does not, perhaps, know her after all.Emmas suicide is handled much more directly i n keeping with the woman Flaubert has sought to reveal, even in death seeming both passionate and beautifulEmma was lying with her head on her right shoulder. The corner of her open mouth formed, as it were, a black hole in the lower part of her face. Her two thumbs were flexed inwards towards the palms of the hands. There was a powdering of what looked like white dust on her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to disappear in a viscous pallor which gave the impression that spiders had been spinning a delicate web over their surface. The sheet sagged between her breast and her knees, rising, further down, to a peak above her toes. It seemed to Charles as though some great weight, some mass of infinity, were lying upon her.39The overwhelming impression here, especially in Charles perspective, is that Emma is a woman crushed by her passions and surrendering to guilt, a mass of infinity, which is perhaps divert given the mores of the time. However, Emma is as the reader first saw her, with her mouth parted, albeit here transmuted to the black hole which forms the lower part of her face. Is this then the inversion of her passionate nature or merely the novelists naturalistic rendering of a corpse? The delicacy of the description suggests a sympathetic