Rochester's Sexuality example essay topic

Socialites by day, Deviants by night Charlotte Bronte is a product of her own time, thus, much of what Lawrence criticizes her for is applicable. However, as much as Bronte may have relegated her direct support of the discussion of sex to subtlety and shadows, she was in fact a proponent of the discussion of sexuality and its analysis. In Pornography and Obscenity Lawrence is criticizing Bronte for allowing the sense of pornography to enter her writing. Pornography is defined as: "the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement" (Merriam-Webster).

When I think of pornography it seems to have an innate negative ring to it, one of indecency or undesirability. Lawrence explains that this definition was created by the puritan relics of the past the ones Lawrence termed the old grey ones who he adamantly maintained belonged "to the last century, the eunuch century, the century of the mealy-mouthed lie, the century that has tried to destroy humanity, the nineteenth century" (Lawrence, 83). Lawrence's new definition for pornography is: "the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it" (Lawrence, 74). It is this quality that is unpardonable in his eyes, and it is this type of portrayal of sexuality that he is attributing to Charlotte Bronte's writing in Jane Eyre. So, does Bronte treat sexuality in this degrading way? There certainly are plenty of harsh portrayals of sex and sexuality in general throughout the book.

However, one must not fail to take into account the time period and audience to which Bronte wrote. Victorian England was a time and place very far removed from the human emotional and physical reality, it was a land of hypocritical idealism, a land that condemned sexual relations and simultaneously upheld that masturbation was unhealthy and dangerous. In this light one comes to interpret things differently. Charlotte Bronte wrote to an audience that was entrenched in a belief system that to Lawrence would have been entirely pornographic. Sex was a dirty force to be kept secret and hidden away; women were to be chaste and unknowledgeable of its pleasures. As such I will analyze the novel from this perspective as well.

In the book we see harsh penalization of sexuality, this is most prominent in the characters of Edward Rochester and Bertha Mason. Bertha Mason and Edward Rochester are prominent sexual figures in the novel that suffer due to their obviously increased sexuality. Bertha Mason is the image of a woman from the foreign territories of Jamaica a land seen as tropical and wildly outlandish. From what we learn of her from Rochester's recollections Bertha was unchaste and intemperate. It is this sexual deviancy that is ascribed to be the reason of her madness "my wife was mad - her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity" (Bronte, 314). This association of madness and sexuality is re-enforced later by Jane while struggling with her passion and the decision of how she must respond to the discovery of Rochester's previous marriage, "I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad -- as I am now" (Bronte, 339).

Jane is equating her sensation of passion and sensuality with madness and will not allow herself to decide based on the affects of this madness. So unlike Bertha Jane rejects sexuality as a basis for her decisions and saves herself from Bertha and Rochester's fate. Furthering the negative portrayal of Bertha and her sexuality Rochester describes his repulsion of Bertha and describes her as his "Indian Messilina". This comparison is quite a powerful one. Messilina is a name from Roman history that is known for hyper sexuality and adultery, her name is virtually synonymous with evil, as such we may gather that he is repulsed primarily by her insatiable sexuality. To the people of Victorian culture, Bertha was a wild animal, an incarnation of raw sexuality, a woman unrestrained by the diamond chain and circlet, which had become the feminine stamp of nobility.

In this sense Bertha was free, free of Victorian sexual repression and it was this that relegated her to animal hood, to imprisonment; it was also this that so repulsed Rochester. Bertha's ensuing Insanity can be seen as a result of her encounter with Victorian England, starting from her marriage to Edward in Jamaica and ending in his attic in Victorian England. In this light can be seen as a symbol for the suppressed Victorian sexuality, the half of one's being that was forced into the closet, like many dirty little secrets of our own time. I can see this portrayal as being a rebellion against societal norms and a social commentary on the treatment of sex rather than support of that treatment as Lawrence may suggest. Rochester's life has been led in the shadow of his past sexual capriciousness, in deciding to "love" Jane and desiring to marry her is essentially repenting, and desires a more traditionally accepted woman.

He tells us of how he chose to marry Bertha despite his failure to detect even "one virtue in her nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or manners" (Bront?' 326). His judgment was founded primarily in sexual motives", "I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited"; (Bront?' 325), as such Rochester must bear the burden of choosing sexuality, he has been condemned to forever encountering mistresses in secrecy, adhering to the discreetness mandated by the Victorian society at large. Rochester is repenting, however there is nobody in England, no Victorian God or Priest that will release him from his bonds, only a bailiff to usher him back into his cell. In turn Rochester rebels, attempting to seize Jane the first real opportunity of redemption he has encountered and feels he rightly deserves. This attempt is foiled and relegates Rochester back to loneliness, as Jane cannot bring herself to compromise her moral integrity by staying with him and submitting entirely to her passion. Jane leaves Rochester and in so doing maintaining his mandated punishment of loneliness and emptiness.

In contrast to Bertha and Rochester Jane turns her back on sexuality and finds a place on the other end of the spectrum, with St. John. With Singin Jane comes to learn of self-sacrifice for higher purposes and finds herself to be very capable in this realm. Teaching the school of orphans is very close to what she once described as her dream and doubtlessly maintains her integrity. Finally it is only upon being proposed to by St. John and being confronted with a lifetime devoid of sensuality or love that Jane recoils and suddenly hears Rochester's voice on the wind. Jane returns to Rochester and in so doing is choosing her sexuality.

However, this desire to submit cannot be achieved, as things were when she left, Thorn field has burned and Bertha has thrown herself to her death, thus purging Rochester of his previous marriage and removing bigamy from the picture. But to purge Rochester of his previous sinful existence Bronte strikes him blind and takes his hand. Now as a cripple, Rochester's sexuality is finally permitted, and Jane may submit to it completely, they can now live on equal terms, as Jane had always wanted. This element reflects negatively on sexual desire and its costs, it seems as though Rochester's sexuality must be heavily penalized and diluted before it can be "righteously" partaken in. It all these elements at which Lawrence is pointing a finger at, telling Bronte that she has sullied the name of sex. All these elements comes to show the society in which Bronte was writing and for whom she was writing, how the Victorian mentality served to drive all of its peoples underground common people and artists alike.

Men who had wed proper Victorian wives who were properly frigid and as is told would all make a heroic sacrifice and lay still, trying to think of England (Maynard, 1), came to realize a horrifying truth. When nightfall arrived and sexual urges stirred these men would look over at their frigid wives and be disturbed, for they found themselves not next to a woman, but a Victorian lady and never the two shall meet. This was the same in the case of women; both were in a sexual prison. This was true for the artists of the time as well, expression of sexuality was something that could not be done openly, and so all references were made through imagery and allusion, indirect means to avoid awakening the mob.

It was for this society that Bronte wrote and ironically enough her book was immensely successful and tremendously criticized simultaneously. This reflected the hypocritical split personality of the Victorian mentality. Although there are many negative representations of sex throughout the novel these translate to me as commentaries on the social reality and its absurdity. The exaggeration of Bertha into a maddened wild animal of sexuality to me is an obvious parody of the mentality that could believe such a thing. As such Lawrence's criticism does hold true in the respect that many dirty representations are found for sex in Jane Eyre, however any representation in the time was bold in itself. Lawrence was an extreme proponent of open sexuality and abhorred its negative treatment; in his own time Lawrence had much more freedom to write openly on the subject despite the remaining existence of much prudishness.

From his vantage point it might be easier to criticize such things. Finally, I conclude that Bronte was a sexually aware individual who partook in the exploration of complex socio-sexual issues in her novel that were not commonly open to discussion and in this sense I feel that she had a natural respect for sex and saw it as clean and natural. Additionally I believe that the negative portrayals of sex in this novel are forms of social criticism not sexual criticism. However, on the whole Lawrence criticism holds true according to his own definition of pornography Jane Eyre contains dirty treatment of sex and in this sense would fall under his categorization of pornography. If Bertha is a representation of what Victorian England viewed as a sexual being then Blanche Ingram must be the opposite extreme, a non-sexual Victorian lady of class and culture. Blanche however is entirely false and unreal, her smiles and interest are all perverse frauds for the real thing.

She knows not how to smile in truth or to exude sexuality; she is frigid as any proper Victorian lady. It is in between these two extremes that we find Jane trying to find herself, Jane is the opposite of the prominent traits found in both Bertha and Blanche, where Blanche and Bertha are beautiful, Jane is plain, where Blanch is false, Jane is true, where Bertha is unchaste and uncultured, Jane is both. As such Jane seems to be Charlotte Bronte's attempt to find some type of middle ground between the values of Victorian England and the natural inner being, in so doing she is accepting that humanity is flawed but not that sexuality is dirty necessarily. In her search Jane is warned by Bertha not to enter into a Victorian marriage, that in so doing she would be killing off a part of herself that was vital, characterizing the marriage as a lobotomy of the personality.

This lobotomy creates a lacking one that burns away like a buried passion at one's innards, never relenting. This warning re-enforces the first allusion of marriage as a prison made by Rochester in his game of charades in which he depicts "Bridewell" a house of correction by enacting a marriage. Rochester is commenting equally on his own imprisonment in this depiction and is sending a message that both genders have been equally imprisoned in the Victorian age.