Topic > The Double in Jane Eyre - 2193

The use of the “double”, or “second self” in literature is a tool often used to represent hidden or repressed aspects of the main character's identity. “The figure of the literary double proceeds from the Romantic period to the present day. It developed from supernatural origins, harbingers of evil and death, to an element of individual psychology and a domestic characteristic” (Miller 416). Examining the doubling between and within characters in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, I consider the various representations of the female gender and the way in which Jane's doubles, Bertha Mason, Helen Burns and Mrs. Reed, contribute to the construction of the gender of Jane. love can be seen as a measure to establish her identity as a woman in a society where women are expected to be submissive. To maintain her autonomy Jane must explore her true inner self. Karl Miller argues, in his book Doubles: Studies in Literary History, that “the double may appear to come from without as a form of possession, or from within as a form of projection” (Miller 416). Although Bertha Mason appears in the book only as a minor character, the figure of Bertha has acquired a variety of meanings through numerous analyzes of Jane Eyre. It has often been argued that Bertha is actually Jane's double expressing Jane's repressed anger against the restrictions of gender and patriarchy in the Victorian era. Claire Rosenfield says that “the novelist who consciously or unconsciously exploits psychological doubles can juxtapose or duplicate two characters; one represents the socially acceptable or conventional personality, the other externalizes the free, uninhibited, often criminal self” (Rosenfield 328). For example, the disti...... middle of paper ......y, love and independence.Works CitedBrontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. London: Penguin Books, 1996.Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. The madwoman in the attic: the writer and the literary imagination of the nineteenth century. New Haven: Yale Nota Bene, 2000. Lerner, Laurence. “Bertha and the critics” Nineteenth-century literature, vol. 44, no. 3 (December 1989), pp. 273-300 Miller, Karl. Double: literary history studies. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985. PrintRosenfield, Claire. Daedalus, vol. 92, no. 2, Perspectives on the Novel (Spring, 1963), pp. 326-344Thomas, Ronald CHAPTER The Jane Eyre advertisement. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: a case book. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.Worhol, Robyn R. “Double Gender, Double Gender in Jane Eyre and Villette.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 36, no. 4, Ottocento (autumn 1996), pp. 857-875