Can Jane Eyre be Happy?: More Puzzles in Classic Fiction by John Sutherland

Published in 1997, this book is actually a follow-up to Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Can Jane Eyre Be Happy offers a number of short essays on questions in classic fiction and their possible answers.

The title essay, Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? reveals that Bluebeard was a commonly collected fairy tale for children in the Victorian era. The author states that Jane Eyre contains several references to the Bluebeard tale and is a kind of re-telling of it. As a self-avowed vacuous reader of fiction, the questions raised here about Rochester's character and motivations, and Jane's future happiness, had never occurred to me before.

Sutherland's essay on Jane Eyre begins by noting that editor Margaret Smith, in her critical introduction to the Oxford University Press World Classics edition of the novel, correctly notes the influences of the Bible, Bunyan (author of The Pilgrim's Progress, less known today in this country although it is mentioned in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women), Shakespeare, Scott and Wordsworth. He goes on to note that an omission in her list is the tale of Bluebeard, a fairy tale retold by French fairy tale collector Perrault and well known to Victorian children. (Interestingly, Bluebeard did not appear in my Andrew Lang book or my Signet The Twelve Dancing Princesses.)

Bluebeard marries a young woman and when he has to go on a trip, he gives his wife the keys to the house and instructs not to enter a specific room. Curiosity gets the best of her and she enters the room only to discover the corpses of Bluebeard's former wives. Her husband returns and a drop of blood on the key for the forbidden room betrays the wife's secret. In mortal peril, the bride is saved by the arrival of her brothers, who kill Bluebeard.

Sutherland argues that the loss of Rochester's first wife Bertha in the fire at Thornfield Hall is convenient for him and even that the innkeeper's testimony that he saw Bertha fall is "clearly" a reiteration verbatim of his testimony at the coroner's inquest, with the implication that his role as a businessman in the community gives him a motive for exonerating Rochester. Sutherland asks why Rochester didn't commit his wife to one of the new, much more humane sanitariums then already in existence in England. He sees Grace Poole's alcoholism as impairment of her fitness for her role as keeper and as casting further doubt on Rochester's true motivations. He explains Blanche Ingram's visit as a sign that Rochester has determined to marry again despite the fact that it is bigamy and opines that Rochester's interest in Jane is due to a proposed match with Ingram being thwarted by the arrival of Bertha's brother.

Further, Sutherland sees Mrs. Fairfax's role as that of a wise protector of Jane, and her dismissal by Fairfax as evidence of his desire to hide his criminal intent to commit bigamy.

Given that Rochester may have murdered his first wife and Mrs. Fairfax is gone, is Jane Eyre safe with Rochester and likely to be happy? Sutherland mentions that Rochester is blinded by his accident during the fire and argues that his disability and reduced agency may transform him from bigamist to more suitablem or at least, less threatening, husband for Jane.

Sutherland concludes, "But what if, like Edward Rochester, after years of marriage, his sight were to return and -- barring the blemish of a missing hand (common enough, and even rather glamorous in these post-war years) -- Bluebeard still cut a handsome figure. Could one be entirely confident that his wife-killing way would not return?"

Sutherland's conclusion really surprised me because I had always thought of the story of Jane Eye as a woman's empowerment story: Jane is (eventually) able to marry the man she loves despite the fact that she is: plain, an orphan, and poor. Seeing Jane Eyre as a re-telling of the Blackbeard story turns my vision of the meaning of the Jane Eyre story on its head.

If this idea Jane Eyre as a retelling of the Blackbeard story intrigues you, you might enjoy reading this well-supported student essay on this theme:   http://bit.ly/2hzbCfX.

There are a lot of other essays on favorite novels here: an essay on the vulgarity of Mrs. Elton in Emma, the paternity of Tom Jones in Tom Jones (it never occurred to me to wonder), how Mrs. Dalloway gets home so quickly from her excursion to get flowers the day of her party, the gender of Lady Bertram's pug in Mansfield Park, Tristram Shandy, Fanny Hill, The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede, Barchester Towers, Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes (I'd never even heard of this).

Postscript: After I'd read this book, including its essay on Mill on the Floss which concludes that George Eliot was no sailor, I thought of that essay again when I was reading When We Were Yours.
There's an exciting scene where the houseboat of the family in the story is unmoored, drifts out on the river, and breaks up. I found it hard to follow the action, even though it was exciting, and it reminded me of this essay; I wondered if perhaps the fact that I am no sailor made it more difficult for me to understand.

 

Cold Comfort Farm (1996)

This 1995 movie has a wonderful cast and is very funny. In fact, 71% of those who rated it on Amazon.com gave it five stars; Rotten Tomatoes gave it an 83% rating. My favorite scene is when Seth, the movie-mad farm laborer played by Rufus Sewell, agrees that he would very much like to be a star of the silver screen. I'm still laughing about it.

Kate Beckinsale plays a young woman, Flora Poste, who has recently been orphaned; having learned that she has only 100 pounds a year to live on, and having a desire to become a writer, she thinks she will try bunking in with whichever interesting relative will agree to host her. Judith Starkadder (Eileen Atkins) writes her a cryptic letter in which she refers to some wrong done Flora's father in the past, and which also contains a reference to Flora's "rights," without any further explanation. As decidedly rural as Judith's home, Cold Comfort Farm must be, Flora thinks that these mysterious references hold out the greatest promise of a grand adventure, and accepts her cousin's invitation. As she tells her confidante, Mrs. Smiley, she's quite sure she will encounter some cousins that will be named Reuben and Seth; sure enough, her cousins are named Reuben and Seth.

With a cast that includes Ian McKellen as a fire and brimstone preacher, this comic send-up of novels about women coming-of-age is very amusing.

Middlemarch (BBC, 1994)

I watched the 1994 BBC production of Middlemarch on DVD. (My library didn't have it, but was able to borrow it from another library through interlibrary loan.) Middlemarch was wonderful, and it captured the spirit of the novel. I did think that the story suffered from being compressed into six hours or so.  Although it is clear that Ladislaw and Dorothea love each other by the end of the series, they met so infrequently that I felt I couldn't see that their behavior was sufficiently motivated. I recall that when I read the novel I felt that Ladislaw and Dorothea had some sophomoric conversations. That's absent here. I'm not sure that it matters: that sense of wistfulness and compromise about the end of Lydgate and Dorothea's stories has been preserved.

Dorothea and Ladislaw, from a 1910 edition of the novel by Jenkins Publishing

On the other hand, the performances of Casaubon (Patrick Malahide) and Rosamund Vincy (Trevyn McDowell) were so fine that I felt that they really enhanced my understanding of the issues in the novel. Perhaps the actors were kinder to these characters than George Eliot was - I'm not sure, because it's been years since I read the novel. Almost certainly I have changed since I read the novel.

There's only one "special feature" on the DVD. It's a "Reader's Guide to Middlemarch," and I loved it. David Lodge, Howard Jacobson, A.S. Byatt and Clare Tomalin, Kate Flint, screenwriter Andrew Davies, as well as some members of the George Eliot Fellowship, talk about the novel in a very thoughtful way. The ladies and gentleman of the George Eliot Fellowship have some things to say which I think student readers will find helpful: Eliot's portrait is realistic, not romantic, and reflects our real lives (and gives us an opportunity to recognize ourselves); Eliot's realism includes writing about the real jobs that people have; Eliot not only offers realistic portraits but tremendous psychological insight into why people behave the way that they do.

Mary Garth and Fred Vincy, from the same edition

Rosamund and Tertius Lydgate, from the same edition

Davies' enthusiasm is charming and infectious, opining that watching the TV series will inspire viewers to read the book: he says that he hopes viewers will become "George Eliot buffs." Kate Flint tells a wonderful story about being on a bus, reading Middlemarch, coming upon the passage in Middlemarch where Dorothea realizes that her husband has emotional needs just as she has, and suddenly realizing that all the people on the bus sitting around her all had emotional needs too. Terry Eagleton explains that the novel is set in a time of political tumult, in which the reform bill of 1832 promised reform of the parliamentary electoral system and to extend the franchise to people in cities, reducing the influence of the aristocracy and the landed class. Howard Jacobson warns against reading the novel for its romance and promises that if he sees a woman reading the novel in a vacuous way on a train, he will seize the novel and throw it from the train. Since reading novels in a vacuous way is the only way I ever do it, I am quite grateful for the many miles between us. In Mr. Jacobson's defense, being a caretaker of culture is a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

I think that the "Reader's Guide" provides excellent answers to the question, "Why is Middlemarch important?" and I think students will find its discussion enlightening and helpful.