Madness In Jane Eyre And Lady Audley's Secret

Madness is a common theme in literature from the Victorian Age and its relation to gender roles has a signification affect on society’s expectation and portrayal of women. The characters in Charlote Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret explore this theme of madness. Victorian society places rigid gender constructions of femininity and it is these novels that challenge the societal restraints designed to keep women constrained. When comparing the two novels, it is evident that there are different representations of madness as well as different fates of the characters that are accused of being mad, Lady Audley and Bertha. It was seen as though if one was unable to engage in a certain behavior expected of them, then

there must be something psychologically or physically wrong with that person. It is this inability to follow the rules set by society, particularly the rules set by men, that one is labeled as being mad.
Female representation of madness in the context of Victorian society was rooted on the idea of female sexuality and how those who went against the ideals of purity were condemned as being mad.

F. W. Mackenzie’s article, “On the Pathology and Treatment of Puerperal Insanity: Especially in Reference to its Relation to Anemia,” explores the theory that women during the Victorian time period became mad as a result of reproductive instability, which was thought to be inherited by daughters from their mothers. This theory holds true for both Braddon’s and Bronte’s novels as both Lady Audley and Bertha have mothers who went mad. In Lady Audley’s Secret, for example, Lady Audley’s strange actions are thought to have begun during the birth of her son, who she later abandons. The question of whether she is actually mad is somewhat alluded to towards the end of the novel in which she is imprisoned in a maison de santé in Belgium to die alone. It is because she goes against the society’s ideals of how women should be pure and pious, ideals that are held so righteously during this time period, that because she cannot be contained within the boundaries of proper femininity, that she is placed into asylum. In Jane Eyre, Rochester’s first wife Bertha is considered to be the ‘Mad Woman in the Attic’. She is described as impure, sexual, and rebellious and refuses to conform to codes of acceptable feminine behavior. It is for this reason that she is locked away and sentenced as being ‘mad’.

When analyzed, Bertha’s madness is seen as a result of her confinement against her will.
Bertha’s insanity could serve as a warning to Jane of what marriage and the possibility of surrendering her freedom to Rochester could bring about. Jane Eyre challenges the Victorian societal restrictions designed to keep women enclosed. Brontë examines the ideology of the "angel in the house." It is this idea that is explored in the second article I am referencing. Elaine Showalter’s “The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture,” refers to women who exhibit the ideals of femininity as “angels” of the house. The stereotypical Victorian "angel" was a beautiful and innocent woman. Lady Audley is all this, but still a treacherous murderer and bigamist who goes against the Victorian beliefs about women being passive and submissive. In this article she also refers to insanity as a result of a woman’s “instability of their reproductive system.”