Jane Eyre Lady behind the Mask
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront clearly demonstrates the relationship between
sexuality and morality in Victorian society through the character of Bertha Mason,
the daughter of a West Indian planter and Rochester's first wife. Rochester
recklessly married Bertha in his youth, and when it was discovered shortly after
the marriage that Bertha was sexually promiscuous, Rochester locked her away.
Bertha is called a "maniac" and is characterized as insane. Confining Bertha for her
display of excess passion reinforces a prevalent theme in Jane Eyre, that of
oppressive sexual Victorian values. Bertha's captivity metaphorically speaks on
the male-dominated Victorian society in which women are inferior and scorned for
acts of nonconformism.
For the first half of Jane Eyre, Bertha is only known to the reader through her nearly
phantasmal presence&emdash;the peculiar laugh, and the mysterious incident in
which Rochester's bed was lit on fire. Only after the foiled wedding of Rochester
and Jane, in which Mr. Briggs and Mr. Mason appear unexpectedly declaring that
the wedding should not proceed, does Rochester explain to Jane that he has a
living wife detained on the third floor of Thornfield Hall. "He lifted the hangings
from the wall, uncovering the second door: this, too, he opened" (327)...