Helen gives Jane a lot of support and sympathy; she helps to give Jane the stamina to carry on and get through the miserable life at Lowood. It is from Helen that Jane learnt about friendships and relationships with other people. Before she met Helen she had never had a proper friend of her own age and Helen was of great intelligence, someone Jane really admired and in some ways she was Jane’s role model. Helen was much more patient and she was able to suffer in silence. Helen has a miserable life at Lowood but she is a very passive person and endures her punishment without complaint. This is where she is different to Jane. Jane believes in equality, Helen does not stick up for herself, but instead suffers in silence. When Jane is at Lowood, we first learn what a great passionate girl she is and how she sticks up for her rights.
When Jane starts to work as a governess in Thornfield, she falls in love with Mr. Rochester, the owner of Thornfield. There is another woman after him as well, she is Blanche Ingram. Blanche’s feelings of Mr. Rochester are made clear, but the fact that she is only after him for his money is also made clear. We know this for certain when Blanche hears he has lost all his money and she is no longer interested in him. Jane’s love for Mr. Rochester is very different from Blanche’s. Jane has true love for him, she cares for him but she is guided by moral reason. She knows it will be wrong of her to marry someone of an upper class when she’s only his mistress. Because of this Jane is so discreet about her feelings. Her passion for Mr. Rochester is against her reason. She is committed to him, but also thinks her love for him is unrequited. She knows Blanche is after him and they are of the same class so perhaps they might be a perfect match. This does not stop Jane’s love for him though. She has noticed, however, that Blanche is the one doing the chasing and although he lets her do this, he does not appear to love her. Jane is upset because she almost convinces herself they are to marry each other.
Even though these two women are after the same man, everything possible about them is different Jane is plain looking, often sits quietly in the corner, whereas Blanche has to be the centre attention; she lives for pleasure, enjoyment and loves going to parties. Jane knows life is about more than just parties. Jane is of no birth, no beauty, her only gift is her own intelligence. On the other hand, Blanche is born of wealthy parents, She is able to play the piano and sing perfectly. She is beautiful, always splendidly dressed, elegant, lady like and graceful. Or so it seems. When we read into what Blanche says, and what she does we can see her true character. She is vain, arrogant, cold, teases and mocks people; she is self centred, spiteful and malicious. Evidence of this is when she speaks of governesses as if they are not even humans by saying they are incompetent, insolent and immoral. She thinks very low of Jane by saying she doesn’t deserve notice, she even has the nerve to say this in the presence of Jane herself. It could be possible that Blanche feels intimidated by Jane, perhaps she knows Mr. Rochester feels highly of Jane and realises she has competition.
Whilst reading through chapter 17, I wondered if Charlotte Brontë had perhaps exaggerated Blanche’s manner to an extent that it was almost unbelievable. Charlotte Brontë may dislike people of this class and she feels this is a way to let out her anger, by describing Blanche and her sisters so harshly.
One main and important difference to me is that Jane gives her opinions, but Blanche is just an echo of what other people say. She has no real thoughts for herself, she is just a conventional woman of the 19th century and nothing more. She has no integrity or values, Jane feels she might have been able to accept it if Mr. Rochester loved a woman who was sincere, “tenderness and truth were not in her”. It also seems obvious to her that if he were to marry Blanche, it would be a marriage of convention and social convenience, not of love.
Blanche and Jane are very obviously different characters, and have a very different relationship with Mr. Rochester but they are both after him for different reasons. Marriage to Jane would be a deliberate rejection of convention or he could marry Blanche who has both money and beauty but a phoney personality. If you were Mr. Rochester who would you chose to marry?
Eventually Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester are engaged. They agree to have a private wedding. This seems very odd, as Mr. Rochester is rich and can afford a large celebration. When the priest who is marrying them asks if any impediment is known to exist, a stranger reveals himself to be a solicitor called Briggs. He says the wedding cannot go on as Mr. Rochester is already in a previous marriage to a woman called Bertha Mason. Richard Mason then comes forward (we learn that he is Bertha’s brother) and confirms that Bertha lives in Thornfield Hall.
Rochester insists that the minister, the church clerk, Mr. Briggs and Mr. Mason return to his house with him and Jane to see Bertha, his wife, for themselves. He takes them into the hidden locked room on the third floor and at once, the madwoman leaps for Mr. Rochester and tries to strangle him. She is a large woman and maniacally powerful, but Rochester manages to control her with some gentleness. "That is my wife," he informs us bitterly.
Bertha Mason used to be exotic looking, pure wise and modest and Mr. Rochester married her recklessly in his youth as she was an heiress and he would inherit her money. He now regrets marrying her, as she is mad.
‘What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, 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.’
In her deranged and diseased state she is no longer a human woman but an animal, even a vampire, and, so much so that she has no sympathy from Jane. Her laughter is described as "demonic"; her figure "hideous". Bertha is referred to as a goblin possessed with a devil, a mocking demon, a carrion-seeking bird of prey, a tigress, a vampire and a wild animal. The reason Charlotte Brontë may have likened Bertha to an animal is to let Mr. Rochester off the hook a bit. She may want us to forgive him for trying to commit bigamy; she wants the reader to like him, as he is to end up marrying Jane Eyre.
The reason I chose to compare these two women is because they both have married Rochester, but are both very different women. Perhaps he married Jane as a contrast to Bertha, she is everything that Bertha isn't. Bertha had a huge impact on him but he hated her evil, devil possessed side. He believed Jane was not evil, that she was good and pure. He may have thought that if he were to marry Jane, it would make up for him doing wrong by marrying Bertha.
Victorian women had a much harder life than we do now. They were treated by men as objects, as possessions to them. It would have been difficult living in a society where no females would have any rights and were not equals to men. Our freedom would be restricted. If our husband was treating us badly, we would have to go through a great deal to divorce him. Women would have no professional status, even if we had more intelligence than our husbands, our brothers or our fathers. We would be pressurised into keeping quiet, being passive and being unequal. The only alternative would be to become an old maid and die alone.
By writing Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë has created a heroine, a woman who can stand up for her rights, yet still manages to marry into money with the man she loves! Throughout the novel Jane stands up for herself, as she wants freedom. This is something which both men and women in the 19th Century could not understand. She may not have been everyone’s heroine but the chances are Jane Eyre is everything that Charlotte Brontë ever wanted to be, and the only way she could fight for her rights was through this book.
