At the end of the novel Jane has changed a great deal as a consequence of all the events she has experienced, even though she still upholds truth, honesty and a strong faith in Christianity. But she is now in an environment where she can be truthful and honest about her feelings for Rochester, without compromising her Christian ethics. She has become much more like the Victorian ideal of the perfect woman however she is definitely not like the Victorian woman described in Paula Bartley’s quote: “a decorative, poised and empty-headed companion for a future husband.” Jane does cheer, as Mr Rochester says “Jane’s soft ministry will be a perpetual joy” and she does refine as we see how she changes Mr Rochester from being grumpy and proud to loving. He says p481 “I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto.”
In a way Jane does beautify. Her outward features have not changed a great deal; she will never be physically beautiful. However at the end of the book we are given Brontë’s view on inner beauty. It has become unimportant for Jane to be physically beautiful- after all Rochester has been physically blinded- but Jane possesses great inner beauty that Rochester’s eyes have been opened to. In the conclusion p483 Jane hears someone say “I’ his een she’s fair beautiful.” This means that in Rochester’s eyes Jane is beautiful. This is because Rochester has been blinded to false, deceptive physical beauty and his sight has been unveiled to the real beauty in Jane. Jane does bless. The Chambers 20th Century Dictionary says that to bless means “to pronounce holy or happy, to invoke divine favour upon,” or “to make joyous.” As we have seen Jane accomplishes all of these.
Jane fits Day’s quote in relation to her husband, Mr Rochester. This means that she has met another criteria for the Victorian perfect woman- she has a husband and pleases him well. Jane displays all of what a modern reader would conceive as positive attributes of a Victorian woman but doesn’t seem to show what a modern reader would think to be negative attributes. Jane is not “decoratively idle” as Joan Perkins says or “empty-headed” as Paula Bartley says. Jane’s passions have been tamed by the end of the novel. She is still strong in character and mind but she is altogether more wise and disciplined. She still feels with the same passion: in chapter 36 when Jane discovers that Rochester has survived the fire but does not know what kind of state he is in she thinks to herself, “What agony was this!” However we know that she has tamed her passions in that she can now control her actions, when she sees Rochester she says, “I had no difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation, my step from hasty advance.” Jane does not fully conform to the Victorian ideal of the perfect woman because she still thinks for herself (Victorian women were supposed to simply agree with all their husbands told them) but she adheres to Christian ethics. As a nineteenth century woman and daughter of a clergyman Brontë would be fully familiar with Christian ideals. Jane Eyre fulfils Charlotte Brontë’s idea of a good Christian woman: she is religious but not perfect. Jane is not a saint; she is passionate and wilful. It is shown that she is not a saint right at the end of the novel when she teases Rochester about his hair p470: “ Am I hideous, Jane?” “Very, sir…” With Jane at the end of the novel Brontë presents an image of how she thinks a woman should be in a relationship of equality and honesty with her partner.
Helen Burns and Miss Temple mostly conform to the Victorian ideal of the perfect woman. They cheer, they bring happiness and justice to the children at Lowood: Jane says she gains “some real affection” from Helen and Miss Temple. They refine, it is these two characters that make Jane a good Christian woman from a wild, unloved child. Jane says of Miss Temple “I had imbibed from her… more harmonious thoughts…better regulated feelings…I was content.” They beautify just as Jane does at the end of the novel with an inner beauty: Jane says that Helen possesses “a beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance.” They bless: they make the girls at Lowood holy and happy. We see this through how Jane changes.
Helen Burns and Miss Temple are quite two-dimensional characters. They do not really have a bad side to them but are a portrait of how Brontë sees a perfect Christian woman. Miss Temple fits the Victorian ideal of women getting married but Helen dies before she is of marriageable age. The only way in which they do not fit Victorian ideals of a perfect woman is that they think intelligently for themselves and do not submit themselves completely to men: Miss Temple breaks the rules set by Mr Brocklehurst in chapter 7 when she is kind to the girls at Lowood. Charlotte Brontë is showing her view of when it is right for a woman to not obey a man- when obeying the man would be to do something unkind or unjust. In Helen Burns and Miss Temple Brontë is saying that a woman should be Christlike in everything she does. This fits in with the strong theme of religion that runs through the novel. As Helen says, “Observe what Christ says and how He acts, make His word your rule, and His conduct your example.”
Blanche Ingram is a society lady, fulfilling the role that society requires for her as a proper upper class lady, yet she is not what Brontë thinks a good woman should be like. She fits the quote: she cheers in her singing and dancing: p181 “she sang, her voice was fine”, she refines, or at least in herself she is very refined: Blanche is described as “queenly.” This suggests that she is womanly and also powerful and important. She beautifies. Blanche possesses physical beauty. Jane says p180 that Blanche has a “noble bust, sloping shoulders, a graceful neck, dark eyes and black ringlets” and p181 that “most gentlemen would admire her.” However she has no inner beauty unlike Helen, Miss Temple and Jane as she is always making harsh and rude comments.
She blesses, but again superficially, because she is such a superficial character. Blanche seems to be a true lady and she fits in very well with what a Victorian upper class woman was expected to be like: she even seems to be getting married at one point in the book. At first we think that Blanche will marry Rochester, love and marriage is another major theme in this novel, but then we discover that the love she and Rochester have for each other is untruthful. Jane says of Blanche p196 “Surely she cannot truly like him, or not like him with true affection!” and she says of Rochester p195 “he had not given her his love.” Blanche fits very well the part of the Victorian lady: she does not speak intelligently or have her own opinion: p195 “her mind was poor…she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own,” which is where other deeper characters in the novel show that they are not true ladies. Brontë’s ideals were focused upon religious rather than social ideals.
Charlotte Brontë portrays a very different image of a woman in Bertha Rochester. Bertha is Rochester’s p310 “bad, mad, and embruted partner.” She has what a modern reader would call a mental illness. In this novel Bertha is the antihero; she is the opposite of Jane. How does Bertha fit in with Day’s quote about the women of his day? Does she cheer? Bertha is not ladylike. She does not sing, dance or joke: she does not cheer the men around her especially not her husband, in fact she makes him miserable. Does Bertha refine? Obviously she does not because she is mad. She is described as p311 a “clothed hyena.” This makes the reader think that she is not a human but an animal to create sympathy for Mr Rochester that he had the misfortune to marry her. To be compared to a wild animal is the least refined a person can be.
Does Bertha beautify? She does not. Mr Rochester compares Bertha to Jane physically: “Compare these clear eyes and the red balls yonder- this face with that mask- this form with that bulk.” This shows the reader how Jane is physically beautiful in Mr Rochester’s eyes whereas Rochester sees how ugly Bertha is: she is obviously ugly to look at for any beholder but for Rochester she is especially ugly because she embodies all his misery and is the sole cause of his unhappiness. When Rochester first met Bertha we are told that p324 “I found her a fine woman, in the style of Blanche Ingram: tall, dark and majestic.” Brontë is showing us here that Bertha as Rochester first met her was just like Blanche. Rochester goes on to say how Bertha charmed the men around her just like Blanche does but like Blanche Bertha’s mind p325 is “common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher” just as Blanche’s mind is, as already mentioned p195, “poor.” Bertha showed outer beauty at first but later revealed that inside she had nothing. This is why Rochester is not deceived by Blanche’s charms: he has already learnt that lesson and therefore falls in love with Jane in who he sees true beauty.
Bertha does not bless in an obvious way. It was society’s ideal of empty, superficial women that allowed Rochester to be hoodwinked by Bertha’s family. In a 21st century relationship the symptoms of Bertha’s mental health issues would have been obvious, “They took care we should never be alone”. The definition of “to bless” from the Chambers 20th Century Dictionary says “to pronounce holy or happy, to invoke divine favour upon,” or “to make joyous.” Bertha certainly does not make anyone happy or joyous at least not after she has married Rochester. In a way Bertha does make Rochester holy when she sets fire to Thornfield p458. It could be argued that it was Bertha that first made Rochester a bad man because he would have never attempted bigamy were it not for her but it could also be argued that Rochester is redeemed through Bertha at the end of the novel. Before the fire Rochester is bitter and has sinned terribly but in attempting to save his wife from death Rochester shows that he is not wholly bad. It would be very easy for Rochester to have let Bertha die in the fire so that he would be free and could have got out of the house unhurt. However Rochester sacrifices himself in the fire for his mad wife and sustains injury from it: he is blinded. Bertha makes her husband holy in two ways: firstly, once she is dead, his passion for Jane is no longer wrong and he is not sinning by wanting Jane; secondly, Rochester has committed a selfless act which goes some way to atone for his previous sins. So Bertha does bless Rochester by aiding his redemption at the end of the novel.
In conclusion I can say that none of the characters in this novel truly fit the Victorian ideal of the perfect woman. They are either too intelligent and honest like Helen Burns and Miss Temple or too rude and arrogant like Blanche Ingram. Jane is too honest and outspoken and not physically beautiful enough. Bertha is nothing like a lady. The role of an upper class or middle class woman in society in Victorian England was as Day’s quote says “to cheer, to refine, to beautify, to bless.” A true lady also had to get married (an economic necessity as well as a social assumption) and bear her husband children. Charlotte Brontë herself tried to be a good Victorian lady. The image that we are given of her is of a woman who pursued a life of teaching, that being the only job acceptable for a middle class woman, even though she disliked it before finally writing her own novel and being famous and having success through another name, a male name. Charlotte Brontë wrote in a letter to Robert Southey about becoming a female writer the idea of which he distained “I have endeavoured…to observe all the duties a woman ought to fulfil…I don’t always succeed, for sometimes when I am teaching or sewing, I would rather be reading and writing; but I try to deny myself.” Brontë married one year before her death fulfilling another part of the image of the Victorian woman.
Brontë’s female characters explore a spectrum of behaviours and she is interested in analysing the good and bad qualities in each. However, Charlotte Brontë is not focusing upon society’s ideals. She is much more interested in whether her characters conform to her image of godliness and goodness in order to fulfil Christian ideals.