The Symbol Of Fire In Jane Eyre And Wide Sargasso Sea
During the Victorian era, women’s roles became more sharply defined now more than at any time in history. In this period, women were seen unstable, emotional and to the point where they were incapable of making rational decisions. They had a strict code of behavior and were perceived as frail, weak, and were confined within the home. Charlotte Bronte and Jane Rhys use fire as a symbol of the newly developing condoned behavior for women and the madness that prevails due to confinement in their novels. In Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea the motif of fire, prevalent in both the representation of Jane’s passion and Antoinette’s decline to madness, leads the reader to unveil the differences and similarities between Rhys and Bronte’s take on the symbol of fire.
In Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre is often ridiculed, punished and isolated due to the ‘flame’ she carries within herself; her passion and zeal that is not appropriate for a fine girl of the Victorian era. After Jane is ridiculed by Mr. Reed in the presence of Mr. Brocklehurst, the dean of her new school, being labeled as; a liar, scoundrel, and girl of trickery, Jane’s drive for justice and her passion overtakes her conformity as she lashes back at Mrs. Reed. Finally silencing Mrs. Reed, Jane describes her quarrel with her ‘suppressor’ reflecting, “A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a great emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed; the same ridge. . after the flames are dead. . . Half an hour’s silence and reflection had shown me the madness of conduct”. Jane’s young mind, not yet completely acclimated to the reserved and restrained behavior condoned for women of the time. And although she does retaliate against Mrs. Reed and in a sense, against her family for the years of suppression she endured, Jane’s “reflection had shown me (her) the madness of conduct, and the dreariness of my hated and hating position”.
Jane becomes aware that yelling and menace doesn’t exact justice but using her flaming passion to move past the insignificant/ineffective quarrels and make something of herself through her actions does. As she matures into a young woman, the newly employed governess faces, fear of being perceived as discontented. Entering the workforce is a feat of its own and Jean knows that in order to preserve her title and her new life, she must conform for the time to model the image of an educated, but reserved woman. With a yearning to explore new possibilities and with unrelenting zeal for life, Jane expresses her agitation with gender roles and confined behavior stating, “I believed in I wished to behold. Who blames me? Many no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it; the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. —a tale my imagination created and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence. 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. . . . Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel. . . 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. ”
The diction highlights Jane’s feelings of imprisonment and her longings for freedom and equality. Jane’s words are also relevant to the general condition of Victorian women. The images of restlessness and pacing, of feeling “fire, feeling, desire” and “too rigid a restraint, ” are examples of points in the book where the readers are meant to feel as Jane feels and become impassioned. In addition to instances of physical imprisonment, Jane learns to escape the fetters of misguided religion, of passion without principle, and of principle without passion. Jane extends her feeling of entrapment to her fellow women and criticizes what she believed to be stifling Victorian conceptions of proper gender roles. Charlotte Bronte uses the symbol of fire to represent the passion and zeal Jane has within herself throughout the novel in the midst of confinement. A life surrounded by tumult, chaos, and confinement finds prevalence in the world of Antoinette Cosway. Throughout the novel, Antoinette’s relationships with others are marked by alienation, exclusion, and cruelty, so that she consistently seeks solace in the natural world. The sad story of Antoinette’s chaotic life and eventually her decline to madness, could all be represented by the symbol of fire throughout the novel. Cosway didn’t become the ‘madwoman in the attic’ overnight, his madness was a result of years of confinement and trauma. This trauma was caused by an event that occurred in Antoinette’s childhood. One night as a young girl, she is awoken to mobs of disenfranchised former slaves surrounding her house, pitchforks raised, their voices rising and danger settling very close to home surrounding her world with unexpected havoc and fear. Antoinette witnessing her world collapse, narrates, “Some of them were laughing and waving sticks. . . And I was afraid because I knew that the ones who laughed would be the worst. . . The yells stopped. I opened my eyes, everybody was looking up and pointing at Coco on the glacis railings with his feathers alight. . . they began to go then, quickly silently. . . They were not laughing anymore. ”
With all the chaos arising in Antoinette’s life, the worst comes when her parrot is seen on fire, its feathers burning. The fire that is burning the bird represents all the commotion in Antoinette’s life. The fire that burnt down her home, marked the beginning of her tumultuous, alienated and restrained life and as her mother descends into madness, Antoinette’s life fills with this consuming fire, fueled by the constrainment she feels. As Antoinette gets older, the restraint on her life becomes ever more prominent. After marrying an Englishman named Mr. Rochester, a man she doesn’t know for his financial benefit, her life takes an even darker turn. After a disastrous honeymoon, Mr. Rochester deems her not mentally stable and locks her away in his attic, watched day and night, any scrap of identity or independence stripped away from her with the twist of a lock. Slowly Antoinette disintegrates, both mentally and physically. In her cellar, in the attic, Antoinette describes her room stating, “I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do. I will remember I thought. I will remember quite soon now. Antoinette’s decline to madness is exhibited by her relationship to fire. In the beginning of the novel, fire represented everything Antoinette hated: chaos, destruction, tumult, constrain. However, in this passage, it can be seen that Antoinette finds the fire beautiful and intriguing. She is fascinated by the chaos and it becomes all she knows. Finally, in the end, Antoinette lets the chaos, the madness, the fire consume her fully in a dream-like trance as she describes, “I saw the orchids and the stephanotis and the jasmine and the tree of life up in flames. . . I heard the parrot call as he did when a stranger called Qui est la? Qui est la? And the man who hated me was calling too, Bertha! Bertha!. . . I looked over the edge and saw the pool of Coulibri. Tia was there. She beckoned to me and when I hesitated, she laughed. . . I called ‘Tia!’ and jumped. . ” Her madness goes full circle as she revisits the traumatic day that changed her life, and instead of running away from the chaos, she jumps into the fire and lets herself be consumed by madness. Her neglected, suppressed feelings that later turn to madness and fury, may be viewed as a symbol of the imprisoned female’s condition and her fire was her escape from her shackles.
Bronte and Rhys use the symbol of fire to represent Jane’s passion and Antoinette’s decline to madness; both in the midst of suppression and confinement for women in the Victorian era. Although both Jane and Antoinette fire blossoms as a result of the confinement and restraint they face; Jane’s fire depicts her everlasting passion and determination while Antoinette’s evolves throughout the book, initially representing chaos and gradually coming to depict her decline to madness. This can be taken as a message to women in today’s time as a message to never let conventionality represent morality if they feel that what it conventional isn’t just. With a history of being silenced, women must find their inner fire and hone it to stand for what’s right when most people find it more convenient to stay quiet.
