Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: A reconsideration

Few have looked into the different shades of "visibility" and "invisibility" and the "power of the gaze" in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. A brief look at some of the critical literature on Jane Eyre shows that there has been more focus on the personal than on the textual aspect of the novel. Moreover, "visibility," and "invisibility" as well as "the power gaze" have rarely been the target of rigorous academic research. A number of earlier studies used "The Brontes" as a part of their titles.1 Others have busied themselves with matters of "plot," "too much melodrama" and "coarseness of language."2 In this study I propose to focus on some textual aspects that have been less at the center of critical attention. However, this is not the only vantage point that characterizes this research work. Indeed, the very selection of these textual aspects may shed some new light on the possibilities of future critical reception of Bronte's text.

This study makes use of certain terms that draw the reader's attention to a new way of reading Bronte's Jane Eyre. The three key terms are "visibility," "invisibility," and "gaze." While "visibility" here stands for notions such as the "presence," "ability to see or to be seen, felt or noticed," "invisibility" stands just for the absence/lack of "visibility." By "the power of the gaze" I mean how most of the characters in this text fashion the world around them and are themselves fashioned by different ways of looking at things (i.e. in both the literal as well as the metaphorical senses of the word "looking": A more brilliant example here is Brocklehurst's accusations against Jane at Lowood). Indeed, the term "gaze" as I use it here is meant to subsume all senses of gazing, glancing, looking at,...

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...slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit (Ch. 7, p. 63)

Despite her claim to have "mastered the rising hysteria," Jane's pain, to borrow her own words, "no language can describe." This girl's particular "gaze" seems to have surpassed all other gazes.

The most pivotal incident in Bronte's text where the title of this study is evidenced is what Jane experiences in the red-room introduced as early as Chapter Two of the text. This is more likely an indication of the significance of the relationship between the power of the gaze and the question of visibility of petrifying scenes for such a young child like Jane. Of this experience, Jane tells us that she "never forgot the … frightful episode of the red-room." For it was in this room her aunt locked her in the dark and even Jane's "wild supplications for pardon" were not listened to (Ch. 8, p. 67).