4 pages-Symbolism in Jane Eyre- Research Paper

Rice University

Speech and Silence in Jane Eyre Author(s): Janet H. Freeman Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 24, No. 4, Nineteenth Century (Autumn, 1984), pp. 683-700 Published by: Rice University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/450486 . Accessed: 03/05/2014 18:35

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SEL 24 (1984) ISSN 0039-3657

Speech and Silence in Jane Eyre JANET H. FREEMAN

Jane Eyre's first words are addressed to Mrs. Reed. She asks her a direct question, which is taken by Mrs. Reed to be impertinent. Jane is told to remain silent and she obeys, but the question is surely to the point: "What," the child inquires, "does Bessie say I have done?"' Mrs. Reed ignores her, unaware that this moment signals the tentative beginning ofJane's own version of her conduct, a version she speaks for herself. Jane's dependence, a word John Reed taught her, is brought about by her linguistic inexperience as much as her class and her sex. It will not last forever.

That question to Bessie comes from a need Jane Eyre herself does not yet recognize - the need to put her experience into words. That they be her own words Jane will eventually come to understand - so that, for example, on the journey back to Rochester many years after the child's timid inquiry, Jane will refuse to listen to the local inn- keeper talk about "'that midge of a governess"' (XXXVI, 376). Her silence will turn into speech. Readers of Jane Eyre also understand, once the novel is nearing its end, that Jane's true history is her own property and that no one else has the right to tell it. Their agreement that the narration ofJane Eyre is rigorously exclusive in its "compelling surge"2 has been nearly unanimous.

Janet Freeman is Assistant Professor of English at Denison University. She is currently working on a study of Charlotte Bronte's Shirley.

1I, 5. Charlotte Bronte,Jane Eyre, ed. RichardJ. Dunn (New York: Norton, 1971). I will refer to this edition throughout, citing chapter and page.

9M. A. Blom, Charlotte Bronte (Boston: Twayne, 1977), p. 104. Virginia Woolf, writing in 1916, says that "The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, makes us see what she sees, never leaves us for a moment or allows us to forget her" ("Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights," The Common Reader (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1925), p. 160). In 1935 David Cecil wrote of being swept away "with the compelling force of [Charlotte Bronte's] genius," whose fictional world was alive with the "char- acter and energy of her own personality" (Victorian Novelists (1935; rpt. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 133, 117). G. Armour Craig, in 1956, asserts that "the movement of [Jane Eyre's] vision towards realization is so rapacious that no terms are left in which to account for it" ("The Unpoetic Compromise: on the Rela- tion Between Private Vision and Social Order in Nineteenth Century English Fic- tion," Society and Self in the Novel, ed. Mark Schorer (New York: Columbia Univ.

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684 S P E E C H AND SILENCE IN JANE EYRE

Yet, though no one else in the novel possesses the authority to tell Jane's story truly, it is told again and again. Repeatedly the child hears about how she is perceived by those around her: "'You are a dependent,"' saysJohn Reed (I, 8); "'You are less than a servant,"' says Abbot (II, 9); "'You are a baby after all,"' says the apothecary (III, 19); "'You have a wicked heart,"' says Mr. Brocklehurst (IV, 28); "'You are a strange child,"' says Bessie (IV, 33). "I was termed," says Jane herself, remembering all that, "naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night" (II, 12). And those perceptions often expand into narratives. Thus Mr. Brock- lehurst tells the inmates of Lowood Institution his version of Jane's history (VII, 57-58). Bessie sings of the wanderings of "the poor orphan child" (III, 18). Mrs. Reed finally breaks her silence and reveals the story of Jane's burdensome infancy (XXI, 203-204). It should come as no surprise that Rochester, of all those who tell Jane about herself, is the most fluent and expressive, as when he recounts the story of their first meeting (XXVII, 275-76); and that St. John Rivers is more succinct, as with characteristic force he insists on being the one to tell the sequel of the tale Jane had left incomplete- "converting" Jane, as he says, into a listener (XXXIII, 334).

Rochester prefers to have Jane keep quiet, too, at least at the begin- ning. "'It is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen,"' he says to her during their first prolonged conversation (XIV, 119), a conversa- tion which consists largely of his perceptions of Jane's "stainless" nat- ure as compared to his own pollution. Perhaps Rochester is right, for Jane scrupulously hears, remembers, and reports to her readers one account after another of who she is taken to be. How are we to under- stand this attentiveness? Is it merely the solution to a technical problem - a way for us to learn what Jane herself could not have been able to tell us? Or is it that Jane, totally self-absorbed, loves to hear herself talked about? Is that pre-eminent self not so independent after all?

Both the young Jane Eyre who, as she grows up, trains her ear to hear well all that is said to her, and the adultJane Eyre whose voice her

Press, 1956), p. 37). Margot Peters, writing in 1973 of specific stylistic qualities of Charlotte Bronte's prose, notes that its "relatively short series of independent clauses in combination with first person narrative effectively keeps the subject/author-the '1'-constantly before the reader. The result ... is a subjective prose, heavily concen- trated upon the immediate sensations of the narrator, ... an insistent prose" (Char- lotte Bronte: Style in the Novel (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1973), p. 42). And in 1976, Helene Moglen writes as follows of Jane Eyre's journey to self-definition: "The allegorical quest follows a necessary and irreversible path. In its victories, the ego absorbs those components of reality which it has successfully confronted, negat- ing their existence as objective form" (Charlotte Bronte: The Self Conceived (New York: Norton, 1976), p. 144). Thus, generation by generation, readers of Jane Eyre agree that its power to move them is the product of its singleness of vision.

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JANET H. FREEMAN

readers have paid close attention to for many generations, believe in listening. To refer to the narration ofJane Eyre as "compelling" (a word often used in discussions of the novel) is to suggest being compelled to hear it told. Surely we too are expected to listen well. What else are we to make of the thirty times3 Jane Eyre-for all her concentrated vision -turns away from her story and addresses us directly? Is this suggestion of conversation, of speaking and being heard, gratuitous,4 an expression of mistrust,5 or only literary convention? Why, in a narrative said to be completely self-possessed, must our presence continually be acknowledged?6

While the child Jane is learning to be silent and listen, she is at the same time finding the voice by which to tell her own story, as if the two skills were inseparable, two sides of the same precious coin. She tells a little of it in answer to the apothecary's questions; she tells it "without reserve" - in fact, too unreservedly, to Helen Burns (VII, 50); she tells it again to Miss Temple, but this time with restraint; she tells it to Rochester just before she returns to Gateshead, so as to explain her relationship to the Reed family; she tells it (while preserving her anonymity) to Diana, Mary, and St. John Rivers; and she tells the story of her flight from Thornfield, though "softened considerably" (XXXVII, 387), to Rochester at Ferndean.

All these narratives are noticeably limited in scope and intention,7 only partial versions of the complex narrative we ourselves are taking in as we listen to them; but they stand in even more vivid and explicit contrast to Jane's first real effort to tell about herself-her outburst to Mrs. Reed. Here, she will tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth; here, the truth is simple. "'What more have you to say?"' Mrs. Reed asks her, already daunted into granting Jane an unheard of, adult, freedom of speech. Jane replies that she will never forget her aunt's harshness and her own hatred:

"If anyone asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that

3I use the number given by Sylvere Monod, "Charlotte Bronte and the Thirty 'Readers' of Jane Eyre," Jane Eyre, ed. Richard J. Dunn, pp. 496-507.

4Karl Kroeber, Styles in Fictional Structure (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971), p. 46.

5So argues Sylvere Monod. 6Rosemarie Bodenheimer ("Jane Eyre in Search of Her Story," PLL 16,4 (Fall

1980):389) argues thatJane Eyre's "progress in the novel ... has to do with finding a fit audience for whom she can give a proper shape to her own story."

7The tale Jane tells to Rochester of her encounter with Bertha Mason on the night before her wedding, though given in the fullest detail, is incomplete for a different reason: Jane does not know what it means.

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686 SPEECH AND S I L E N C E IN JANE EYRE

you treated me with miserable cruelty. ... I shall remember how you thrust me back-roughly and violently thrust me back-into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, 'Have mercy! Have mercy, aunt Reed!' And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me -knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions this exact tale."

(IV, 31)

That promise made to Mrs. Reed is kept: the novel to come answers all the questionsJane can imagine herself being asked. Jane's declara- tion marks a necessary transformation from the child who remains silent, isolated behind the curtain with escape literature in her lap, to a child with her own story to tell to anyone who asks her, a child in possession of her own memory and able to speak. InJane Eyre, the power of speech is supreme. It enables Jane to take more and more control of her life as the years pass and in the end to tell it to us. The gift of speech - and silence, its counterpart - of uttering words and hearing them spoken, dominates the world ofJane Eyre absolutely. It is the subject of this essay.

Jane's soul expands and exults as she commits herself to uttering fearlessly the exact truth, "as if an invisible bond had burst, and I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty" (IV, 31). The first thirty pages of the novel record that struggle in detail, a journey well worth tracing step by step. At the beginning, having been told not to speak until she can speak "pleasantly" (I, 5), Jane retires in silence to the window-seat to look alternately at the November landscape and the History of British Birds, each picture of which tells her a mysterious yet "profoundly interesting" (I, 6) story. John Reed's voice interrupts her: "'What do you want?' I asked, with awkward diffidence" - for the sec- ond time, an inquiry. "'Say, "what do you want, Master Reed?""' demands the boy, dissatisfied like his mother with her questions; notice how he then repeats her wording: "'I want you to come here"' (I, 7). Jane once again obeys silently, musing inwardly on his "dis- gusting and ugly" appearance: "Accustomed to John Reed's abuse," she tells us, "I never had an idea of replying to it" (I, 8). Jane's position at Gateshead is clear-both her silence and her questions show it.

Her next speech, made right after she is hit by the same book that had earlier consoled her, is different: "'Wicked and cruel boy! . . . You are like a murderer-you are like a slave driver-you are like the Roman emperors!'7 (I, 8). Jane's three similes-drawn "in silence" from her reading, which she "never thought thus to have declared aloud" (I, 8)-exhibit both nerve and inexperience: she returns John

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Reed's gesture, imitating to his face his own words as she tries to tell him who he is, just as he had told her ("You are a dependent"); but she cannot quite equal his predicates. She cannot quite say who he is, only who he is like.

Still, she has said enough. "'What! What!' he cried, 'Did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won't I tell mamma?"' (I, 9). The question of whose words are more potent, Jane's to John Reed or John Reed's to his mother, is not at issue, whatever John Reed may threaten. The power itself is the lesson being taught. Mrs. Reed has only to speak ("Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there" (I, 9)), and Jane is removed.

Jane Eyre, at the end of Chapter One, has much to learn. She must work at it one word at a time. John Reed told her to call him "Master Reed," and Miss Abbot uses the same term: "'What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress's son! Your young master."' "'Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?"' (II, 9) asks the child, searching for what the word itself really means and how it might apply to her. The perpetual reproach of dependence, "a vague sing-song in my ear; very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible" (II, 10), must now, as the power of speech becomes clear to her, be understood word for word. "Benefactress" is another term Jane plucks from the stream, thinks about, and relates to herself.8 She hears it from Abbot first, in the rebuke just quoted; but Mr. Brockle- hurst's use of the work ("'I hope . . . that you repent of ever having been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress"') prompts her to say, inwardly, "'Benefactress! benefactress! They all call Mrs. Reed my benefactress; if so, a benefactress is a disagreeable thing"'(IV, 27).

This private definition is subtly endorsed a little later in the same interview, by a voice the child has never heard, the voice of her adult self. Mrs. Reed is being particularly ruthless: "I shall wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects," continued my benefactress; "to be made useful, to be kept humble: as for the vacations, she will with your permission, spend them always at Lowood" (IV, 29, my italics). The child struggles with the word's meaning. Mr. Brockle- hurst uses it purely to flatter. The irony with which the adult who is narrating these formative conversations utters it is a sign of her ease and control. The striving child, who suffers, and the adult who nar- rates that suffering meet in these opening chapters of Jane Eyre, show-

'Jane continues to think about what words mean-the word "institution," for instance, as it appears on a stone tablet over the door of the schoolroom and dormi- tory of Lowood (V, 42), and the word "servitude," as she figures out how, eight years later, to get away from there (X, 74-75).

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688 S P E EC H A N D S I L E N C E IN JA N E EYR E

ing usJane's destination - the power to tell her story truly - before we know the path by which it must be reached.

The child, whose vocabulary is limited, "could not answer the ceaseless inward question- why I thus suffered"; the adult, on the other hand, sees no hesitation: "Now, at the distance of- I will not say how many years, I see it clearly. I was a discord at Gateshead Hall" (II, 12). She tells us this very skillfully, withholding one piece of infor- mation while in the same breath she offers another. The child has no such poise. At the moment the narrator is analyzing that discord, the child is working up to the scream - uttered out of fear of the "preter- natural voice" of the dead Mr. Reed -that brings Bessie, Abbot, and Mrs. Reed running to the red-room. That inarticulate sound comes out of her from so far below the level of words that it cannot be nar- rated, even in retrospect; only its effects remain in the memory:

My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.

"Miss Eyre, are you ill?" said Bessie. "What a dreadful noise! it quite went through me!"

exclaimed Abbot. (II, 14)

Simple noise, however, is not strong enough to save Jane Eyre. "You cannot succeed in getting out by these means," says her aunt-more meaningfully than she knows-and locks her in again. At this point the child has a "species of fit"? and the second chapter of the novel closes. As soon as she comes to, Jane is forced to speak, so as to reveal her physical and mental condition-firm speech, in Jane Eyre, is always a sign of vigor, and the child's experience is teaching her this principle every day. It will lead to her survival.

"Well, who am I?" asks the apothecary (III, 15). It is a remarkable question, for anyone familiar with the many timesJane - once she has emerged from Gateshead - is asked its opposite. "Who are you?" "Are you Jane Eyre?"' are questions Jane answers with increasing fluency, but she is not ready just yet. The next day is soon enough: '^Come here, Miss Jane; your name is Jane, is it not?"'5 asks Mr. Lloyd, and the child is now able to answer. The questions that follow mark the first time Jane Eyre has ever had a sympathetic listener; and her speech is awkward, interrupted by Bessie, alternately timid ("I should not like to go a begging" (III, 20)) and assertive ("I never cried for

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such a thing in my life [as not being allowed to go for a drive with her cousins]: I hate going out in the carriage. I cry because I am misera- ble" (III, 19)) - an accurate expression of the child's fluctuating state: how Jane speaks, one comes to see, is how Jane is.

When asked what makes her miserable -Jane's first opportunity to tell her own story - she pauses ("How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was to frame any answer"), and ends up contriving only "a meagre, though, as far as it went, true response" (III, 19). Yet even meagre truth is effective, given the right words to the right ear: this conversation with Mr. Lloyd eventually leads to Jane's departure from Gateshead. The truth implicit in the child's wordless scream did not serve to free her from bondage: only words, in the world of this novel, have that kind of power.

During the weeks that follow, Jane's education continues. She is deliberately prevented from speaking, isolated in her small sleeping closet, her solitary meals, and the upstairs nursery. Her cousins are forbidden to talk to her or even to talk about her to their mother, as if Jane's store of word-power were already dangerous. In time, this enforced silence causes Jane to make a passionate - yet instructive- protest to Mrs. Reed, a protest so deeply felt that "it seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utter- ance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control" (IV, 23). Jane herself is sensing danger. Mrs. Reed boxes her ears and leaves without replying.

Notice the steps Jane has taken, in order to reach this perilous lin- guistic fluency. The child, who hid herself away to read in silence about far distant places, uses words from her reading to try to defend herself against a very near enemy; on being severely punished, she can only scream and faint; on being sympathetically questioned, she can only come up with a "meagre" version of the truth; on being silenced, she finds the words inside her erupting uncontrollably - and so the struggle goes on, meticulously recorded by a narrator whose equilibrium (she even argues that Mrs. Reed ought to be forgiven (III, 16)) never falters. The Gateshead phase of that struggle is almost over; there only remains the most severe test of Jane's nascent ability to speak for herself that she has ever had-the interview with Mrs. Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst.

Jane's powerlessness, in the presence of those two, is conveyed by the way they dominate her speech. When they are not talking about her as if she were absent ("'Her size is small: what is her age?"' (IV, 26)), Mr. Brocklehurst is putting her through a catechism whose answers prove that she has a "wicked heart" (IV, 28) or Mrs. Reed is taking over the conversation and describing the child's deceitful nat- ure, while Jane stands mutely listening. The worst thing that can

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conceivably be said about Jane Eyre -whose wish to speak truly is becoming more and more important -is said by Mrs. Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst: they tell her she is a liar.

GivingJane the story of Martha G -, "a naughty child addicted to falsehood and deceit" (IV, 30) is the last straw. She has her own story to tell, and tell truly, if only she can; and so she talks back once again, more fiercely than ever, promising to tell her story to anyone who asks. Jane's soul rejoices over the effect on Mrs. Reed of her righteous words ("Deceit is not my fault!" (IV, 32)). But that exultation does not last long-Jane's education in self-expression has only begun. "I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking," she soon says to herself (IV, 32), though she cannot even give that faculty a name. So she turns back to her old consolations: she tries to read and she cannot concentrate; she goes out for a walk, and finds no pleasure there, either. She leans against a gate, and sees that the field beyond is empty. What will her future beyond Gateshead hold? All she has is the sound of her own voice, a mere whisper: "I stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to myself over and over again, 'What shall I do?-what shall I do?'

All at once I heard a clear voice call, "Miss Jane! Where are you? Come to lunch!" (IV, 33).

Bessie's words-like other more supernatural summonses Jane will someday hear-rescue her, this time from her fear of the future; and Bessie's presence encourages her to speak freely, in the last recorded conversation Jane has before leaving Gateshead, she thinks, forever. That conversation is so frank ("'What does Bessie care for me? She is always scolding me"' (IV, 33)), so truthful ("'I don't think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Bessie"' (IV, 34)), and yet so controlled ("I was going to say something about what had passed between me and Mrs. Reed; but on second thoughts I considered it better to remain silent on that head" (IV, 34)), that Jane follows Bessie into the house "quite comforted." Besides, Bessie has given her a very significant compli- ment: "You little sharp thing! You've got quite a new way of talking" (IV, 34).

Jane's "new way of talking" is the most precious possession she car- ries with her on the long journey to Lowood. The last words we hear are her own ("Goodbye to Gateshead!" (V, 35)), spoken as if the child had suddenly grown up, were composing her own history, and had come up with the perfect phrase, complete with alliteration, for that particular point in the narrative.

Words have power, in Jane Eyre. They also bestow power. They are the instrument by which Jane Eyre learns to understand and master the world. When her mastery seems in doubt-for instance, when

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Bertha Mason enters her room the night beforeJane expects to marry Rochester, or when the marriage itself is interrupted by the voice of Mr. Briggs-Jane is completely silent, wordless. When her mastery seems secure - for instance, when she and Rochester meet in the eve- nings during the weeks just before they expect to marry, or when she is trying to convince St. John Rivers to honor his passion for Rosamond Oliver-Jane is fluent. Speaking is the equivalent of self-assertion, for Jane Eyre, the assertion of her most intimate, essential self, the self that even in secret takes the form of a "still, small voice" (XIX, 177).

Jane may call herself "disconnected, poor, and plain" (XVI, 141) when she decides to draw her own portrait as a way to curb her imagi- nation; but her capacity to be truthful - to find the right words and hang on to them - is far more essential to her nature than her plain appearance. It is fitting that she habitually disclaims paradox (XVIII, 160), irony (XXIV, 227), charades (XVIII, 160), riddles, and enigmas (XIX, 173)- that she prefer "the plain truth" (XII, 96), the word that means what it says. Such truthfulness serves her well, and she claims to speak nothing else. Those plain words, however, are only part of the story: everywhere in the novel people besides Jane Eyre are talking-often in ways quite different from hers. In fact, the best way to know anyone in Jane Eyre is to pay attention to how he or she speaks, and we are never deprived of that information.9 Long before we are told anything about what Mrs. Reed looks like, we know her by her peremptory speeches; so too John Reed's ugly talk precedes the description of his ugly person, as if those hostile words were all that mattered. And this precedence is not true only of vil- lains. Rosamond Oliver's "gay voice, sweet as a silver bell" (XXXI, 319) is heard-with an electrifying effect of St. John Rivers-well before her graceful form appears on the scene. Even Rochester's puz- zling way of speaking ("You cannot always be sure whether he is in jest or earnest, whether he is pleased or the contrary," says Mrs. Fairfax (XI, 92)) is described long before the man himself gallops into view. Who will he turn out to be, one wonders, if his speech is so hard to figure out?

The puzzle of Rochester's speech will eventually be solved, of course. Jane Eyre becomes very adept at understanding how people talk. She notices it without fail, obsessively-a sure sign of its signifi- cance. Getting to know little Adele is easy, for example: after convers- ing freely in French (to Adele's satisfaction), Jane listens to the little

9Margot Peters, in Charlotte Bronte: Styles in the Novel, devotes a chapter to the omni- presence of courtroom language inJaneEyre (pp. 131-54). Of course the power of the spoken word is particularly evident in court.

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girl's singing and recitation. Her verbal facility, her attention to voice and gesture, are sufficient introduction, soJane stops her from danc- ing. How Adele uses words tells us who she is. The inmates of Lowood Institution are known first by the hum of their many voices; their "whispered repetitions" (V, 37) of tomorrow's lessons symbolize their bondage. Jane's students at Morton are also known first by their speech - the "broadest accent of the district," a languageJane has "dif- ficulty in understanding" (XXXI, 315)-a clear indication both of their deprivation and their teacher's dismal situation (which, inciden- tally, is not so dismal as it was a few weeks earlier when, starving and exhausted, looking through the window of Moor House, Jane over- heard Diana and Mary Rivers speaking German, a language she did not understand at all).

In timeJane crosses the language barrier between her and her Mor- ton scholars. She has also set about learning German, her daily lan- guage lessons signifying her gradual entrance into the Riverses' family circle. Learning new languages, begun with her early French lessons at Lowood, representsJane's widening knowledge of the world and her effort to know the world more fully -that is, until St. John Rivers requires her to give up German and study Hindostanee under his stern tutelage, day after day. Then the new language means not liberation, but suppression. It is clear that Rivers's supremacy-the moment it takes the form of imposing his choice of what language to study-is not to be endured. Indeed Jane's fundamental resistance to him is shown early in their relationship by her resistance to his speech: "'Do you hear, Jane?"' he asks her, as he tries to persuade her to renounce the "ties of the flesh." "'Yes,"' she replies swiftly, "'just as if you were speaking Greek"' (XXXIV, 344).10

In Jane Eyre, language study is the formal version of an endless, continuous process begun when Jane first asked to hear what Bessie had said about her."1 Spoken words, whatever language they come from, surroundJane Eyre every moment of her waking life - even her dreams, even her most private thoughts, speak. Spoken words carry with them the only truth Jane will ever know: the truth of her own

"Another suggestion of the unalterable difference between Jane Eyre and St. John Rivers occuts the first timeJane ever hears him preach: "I wish I could describe that sermon," she confesses, "but it is past my power. I cannot even render faithfully the effect it produced on me" (XXX, 309).

"Jane Eyre's study of drawing makes an interesting subtext to her increasing lin- guistic fluency. She turns from rendering "pale portraits" (XIII, 110) of subjects rising vividly, as she says, out of her own mind to portraits of real people. Her drawings - of herself, of Blanche Ingram, of Rochester, of the Reed sisters, and of Rosamond Oliver-are striking for their accuracy of representation, as if to authen- ticate the word-portraits Jane Eyre also learns to produce.

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self-assertion ("I am Jane Eyre" is said so often in this novel it comes to resemble a refrain), the truth about other people (Rochester's ambiguous speech is surely a reliable signal), the truth about relation- ships between one person and another (Jane's many conversations with St. John Rivers are full of hesitation, aggression, forced silences, and pretense, and are accurate expressions of the gathering tension between them), and the truth ("My Daughter, flee temptation!" (XXVII, 281)) from on high. Speech inJane Eyre always says more than it says. It is always emblematic, always suggestive of the whole human situation out of which it is uttered. Notice the speech, it seems, and you can figure out the real.

To observe the speech between Jane Eyre and Edward Fairfax Rochester is to grasp the equivocal nature of their relationship long before the groans and laughs of Bertha Mason are truly named. Jane, though she does not know it, is in the presence of a master prevarica- tor. The first words they say to each other-spoken moments after the dark stranger has fallen from his horse - consist of a series of ques- tions and answers controlled by Rochester, in which Jane is required to tell all she knows about the absent master of Thornfield Hall and her place in that establishment while the master himself keeps his identity a secret. Jane's straightforward speech ("I am the governess") and Rochester's misleading questions ("Whose house is it?" he asks (XII, 100), as if he had never seen Thornfield before in his life) fore- shadow the deceptions to come. Jane, still learning, is being intro- duced to a new meaning for the word "master."

Rochester makes much of the quality of their early conversations, especially noting his own abrupt manner ("Excuse my tone of com- mand" (XIII, 109)) or his own garrulity ("I am disposed to be gregari- ous and communicative tonight" (XIV, 117)) and Jane's "frank and sincere' (XIV, 118) and "grave and quiet" (XIV, 122) responses. They play an interesting verbal game, here at the beginning, and Rochester knows it well. Jane, still loyal to her idea of the plain and simple truth, is no match for the slippery ironist who insists on telling her that she is a good listener (XIV, 119), that she was "made to be the recipient of secrets," and that the more they converse the better, "for while I cannot blight you, you may refresh me" (XV, 126). Will she accept these definitions of herself and agree to keep the biggest secret of them all?Jane does not realize what the stakes are: "To speak truth, sir," she tells him with characteristic simplicity, "I don't understand you at all: I cannot keep up the conversation because it has got out of my depth" (XIV, 120-21).

Their conversations nevertheless continue during the weeks that follow, Rochester telling about the big world andcJane listening-as if his definitions were coming true-and putting on weight. "I, indeed,

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talked comparatively little; but I heard him talk with relish" (XV, 128-29), she confides comfortably, blind to the imbalance between them. When Jane puts out the mysterious fire in Rochester's bed- room, her capacity for silence assists her master fully as much as the water she throws on him: "You are no talking fool: say nothing about it" (XV, 132), he tells her, just after leading her to believe that Grace Poole was behind it all.

Rochester, not Jane Eyre, is the liar. He specializes in partial truths, in half-said exclamations of love or despair, in obscure refer- ences to nameless horrors out of a past only dimly revealed. Jane is most acceptable to him when she holds her tongue-for example, when she obeys his absurd orders to sit locked in the attic sponging blood from the shoulder of Mr. Mason and saying not a word. When, on the day after the fire, Jane wishes urgently to ask him questions about Grace Poole in order to unravel the mystery (XVI, 138), Roch- ester disappears altogether and the questions remain unspoken. In fact, Rochester, the liar, is most himself when he is in disguise as the old gypsy woman, reading palms and telling fortunes - giving out to one woman after another his privileged version of her past, present, and future.

Jane's resistance to the old gypsy is like her other efforts to hang on to the plain truth when talking to her master. His speech is typically oblique-hers, direct:

"If you knew it, you are peculiarly situated: very near hap- piness; yes; within reach of it. The materials are all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them. Chance laid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss results."

"I don't understand enigmas. I never could guess a riddle in my life."

"If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm." (XIX, 173)

She shows him her palm. The contest between them is painfully une- qual, though Jane doesn't know it. She decides, in the end, that she has not made a fool of herself, that though Rochester was "talking nonsense" in order to make her do the same, she has been sufficiently on her guard. But Rochester's love of deceit subverts Jane's innocent vigilance every time. Jane prefers the plain truth; but she does not know what it is.

As Rochester's manipulations become more and more hectic, Jane's responses become more and more earnest. Her eloquent speech of love and sorrow ("I am not talking to you now through the

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medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh - it is my spirit that addresses your spirit" (XXIII, 222)) is often taken to be one of her most impressive statements of self-determination. None- theless, it is the expression of a misapprehension on her part: Roches- ter has told her he will marry Blanche Ingram, and she has believed him. Her conclusion, the announcement that "I have spoken my mind, and can go anywhere now" (XXIII, 223), takes us far back in Jane's history to the truth-filled words the child flung at Mrs. Reed, words which ushered in her release from Gateshead Hall. If you speak your mind, she learned then and she still believes, you can go free.

Once this point is made and Jane stands "erect" before him, motivated - she thinks - by the guiding principle of her life, Roches- ter is ready to propose marriage. That Jane does not believe him at first seems sensible enough. "'Am I a liar in your eyes?"' he asks, "passionately" (XXIII, 223), moved no doubt by the risks he has been taking.12 In time he becomes exactly that-a liar in her eyes. But not quite yet.

Jane's happiness during the weeks before her intended marriage is exemplified by her nightly conversations with Rochester, in which she adroitly cools his passion and, like Scheherazade, uses her skill at speech to keep herself safe. This word-game (surely a debasement of the plain speechJane so often espouses) entertains them both, we are told. Rochester's private game with words, on the other hand, is sub- tler, and only he knows it is being played. Jane's ignorance is made known to us - not to her - by the many times she confesses her inabil- ity to find words for her feelings ("I loved him very much - more than I could trust myself to say-more than words had power to express" (XXIV, 231)).13 Words, to Jane Eyre, are the vehicles of truth, and during this period she is living in the dangerous shadow of a lie. Words, as Jane Eyre defines them, can play no part in Rochester's game.

Rochester tells the plainest lies of which he is capable, given his skill at dissembling, on the night before the wedding. The circumstances are extremely interesting. Jane Eyre has been narrating this phase of her life with very little restraint-we are never in doubt, for instance, about her private thoughts as she goes about keeping Rochester in line-and with no narrative distance-that is, Jane's responses are

2Adele calls Rochester a liar to his face not long after his proposal of marriage to Jane has been accepted (XXIV, 235).

'3Other instances are found on the following pages: XXIV, 240; XXIV, 246; XXVI, 261; XXXVIII, 398.

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thoroughly assented to by the narrator who is recalling them.14 That night Jane is anxious about the great change shortly to take place in her life - but about something else as well, something she could not comprehend, she tells us, something that happened the night before. Rochester at the moment is not at home: "I waited now his return; eager to disburthen my mind, and to seek of him the solution of the enigma that perplexed me. Stay till he comes, reader; and, when I disclose my secret to him, you shall share the confidence" (XXV, 242).

It is worth waiting for, since we will witness not only the story of Jane's premonitory dreams - all "preface" (XXV, 249), as she puts it, but also the tale itself: the awful visit of the unknown woman who tries on Jane's wedding veil, tears it in two, tramples on it and looks at Jane close up, neither of them uttering a word. And we witness these events, not as they happened, but as a story postponed so as to be told in the presence of the man committed to lie. The truth-loving story- teller and the liar are face to face.

Jane Eyre has told about her experience before, and she will do so again; but never before has she told a tale she could not herself under- stand, trusting her listener to explain what it meant. She is therefore at her most vulnerable, her most confidential, and she calls on her readers to witness what happens. At last, Jane has a direct question to ask: "Now, sir, tell me who and what that woman was?" (XXV, 250). Rochester's "solution of the enigma"-Jane has always disliked enig- mas, we may remember-is to take possession of her story, tell it again, and cover it with falsehood:

He drew his breath short, and strained me so close to him I could scarcely pant. After some minutes' silence, he contin- ued, cheerily: -"Now, Janet, I'll explain to you all about it. It was half dream, half reality: a woman did, I doubt not, enter your room: and that woman was-must have been-Grace Poole. You call her a strange being yourself: from all you know you have reason so to call her - what did she do to me? what to Mason? In a state between sleeping and waking you noticed her entrance and her actions; but feverish, almost delirious as you were, you ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own: the long dishevelled hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated stature, were figments of imagination; results of nightmare: the spiteful tearing of the veil was real: and it is like her. I see you would ask why I keep such a woman in my house: when we have been married a year and a day, I

'4This closeness is quite different from the narration of the opening chapters of the novel, in which the adult narrator and the child are carefully distinguished.

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will tell you; but not now. Are you satisfied, Jane? Do you accept my solution of the mystery?"

(XXV, 251)

No sin could be more serious, in the world of this novel, than this deliberate debasement of Jane Eyre's own words. When the truth comes out at last, it is unequivocal- a simple assertion of fact ("Mr. Rochester has a wife now living") spoken from the back of the church in the firm voice of "Mr. Briggs - a solicitor of- -Street, London" (XXVI, 255). This bit of plain truth exposes Rochester's many lies at a single stroke. Whatever he says in his own behalf-and as always words do not fail him - cannot alterJane's realization that "the attrib- ute of stainless truth was gone from his idea" (XXVI, 260). Roches- ter's sin, that is to say, is not that he was going to marryJane Eyre even though he already had a wife, but that he did not tellJane Eyre the truth.

Rochester has ignored a law that, though it is never cited, is in effect throughout the novel. All along, Jane has been learning to speak truly and to value true speaking. At Thornfield Hall, that learning is at risk. But when Mr. Briggs's voice is heard reasserting the power of the spoken word, the truth has once more been told. In Jane Eyre, truth is known more in its telling than in itself; the only way to know the truth in this history is to be able to say it or hear it said. Truth, in Jane Eyre, is a word. That Mr. Briggs come forward and speak the truth is therefore a necessary act - the unavoidable conse- quence of all that has gone before. The truth can and must be told- indeed, the truth can only be told.

That Jane Eyre herself is one of those truth-tellers has been her destiny, her calling, from the beginning, and the word that calls her has always been her own name. It is uttered with more and more authority as Jane matures-from her first response to Mr. Lloyd the apothecary ("'Your name is Jane, is it not?"' "'Yes, sir, Jane Eyre"' (III, 18)) to her arrival at Lowood ("'Is there a little girl called Jane Eyre here?" (V, 36)) to her journey to Thornfield Hall ("'Is your name Eyre, Miss?>" (XI, 82)), to her return to Mrs. Reed's bedside ("'Are you Jane Eyre?'" (XXI, 203)) to her arrival at Moor House, when her name must be suppressed ("'My name is Jane Elliott"' (XXVIII, 297)), to St. John Rivers's exposure of the subterfuge ("'You own the name LJane Eyre] and renounce the alias?"' (XXXIII, 336)), to the calling out of the repentant, newly-truthful, Rochester, his voice-like Jane's ear-invested with superhuman power: "Jane! Jane! Jane!" (XXXV, 369). Her reply is instantaneous. She makes her way to Ferndean - where she finds her formerly talkative master standing "mute in the rain" (XXXVII, 380).

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Their meeting givesJane Eyre her ultimate opportunity to say who she is, and she takes full advantage of it, as if all her previous self- identifications had been in preparation for this one. Rochester, in his blindness, asks her again and again: "'Who is this? Who is this? . . . Answer me - speak again! . . . Who is it? What is it! Who speaks? Is it

only a voice? . . . Is itJane? What is it? This is her shape-this is her size-"'

"And this is her voice," I added. "She is all here: her heart, too. God bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again."

"Jane Eyre-Jane Eyre!" was all he said. "My dear master," I answered, "I am Jane Eyre:

I have found you out - I am come back to you." "In truth? - in the flesh? My living Jane?"

(XXXVII, 381-82)

Jane Eyre, having found him out, has come back in truth-and first of all, as a voice. "'All the melody on earth is concentrated on my Jane's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one)"' (XXXVII, 387), Rochester tells her the next morning, forgetting how he used to call her a born listener. "'I ever like your tone of voice,"' he says a little later in the same conversation; "'It still renews hope, it sounds so truthful"' (XXXVII, 390). Thus Rochester learns at last what Jane has known since she was nine years old-the power and significance of words, truthful words, words spoken and listened to. Especially words spoken byJane Eyre herself. AndJane has found her home, a place where she has the authority to keep on talking forever.

All day long, they converse. Rochester sees both nature and books by means of his wife's voice. Never does Jane grow tired of reading to him, of "gazing on his behalf, . . . of putting into words the effect of field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam . . . and [of] impress- ing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye" (XXXVII, 397). Jane Eyre's vocation is obvious. But her response to it is not yet complete. Her name must be uttered once more be- fore she lays it aside to become plain Mrs. Rochester-it must become the title of her autobiography. Her voice must vibrate in our ear as well as in Rochester's, her word-pictures crowd our imagina- tion, her name echo in our memory, her truth become our truth, before Jane's destiny is fulfilled. The re-creation of her own life in her own powerful words completes Jane's history much more fundamen- tally than does her marriage to Rochester: the inevitable outcome of Jane Eyre is Jane Eyre.

This imperative may explain the gradual increase, toward the end

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of the novel, of the narrator's direct addresses to her reader.'15 TheJane Eyre who undergoes her life is approaching the Jane Eyre who, look- ing back "through the quiet medium of time" (XXXV, 368), tells about it; and as they coalesce, as the past moves into the present- when all that remains forJane is to tell her story and tell it truly - the audience for that final enterprise requires explicit acknowledgement. Just talking to Rochester, whichJane calls "a more animated and . audible thinking" (XXXVIII, 397), is not enough. Jane tells us - but not Rochester - that the moment he asks her to forgive him, she does so (XXVII, 262). She tells us-but not Rochester - of all the desper- ate circumstances of her flight from Thornfield (XXXVII, 387). She tells us - but not Rochester - how she had heard his own "mysterious summons" and he had heard her own words in reply (XXXVII, 394). Only her reader is privy to the contents of what Rochester calls Jane's "unpolluted memory" (XIV, 119) or has heard the words of the secret voice Rochester calls Jane's "inward treasure" (XIX, 177). Only her reader is allowed to know whatJane Eyre is really thinking; and so her reader must be addressed.

On one point, however, Jane's silence is never broken. We who have been reading her words page by page even as Rochester has listened to her conversation day after day know nothing about how Jane went about putting her history down on paper.16 Her considerable skill at written narrative, as far as we know, blossomed in total secrecy: when she learned to talk and to listen, Jane somehow learned to write. Not one of those narratives told to her, told of her, or told by her was ever written down, as if mere inscription were unnecessary, even irrele- vant. Writing, it is assumed, is a skill that need not be studied or practiced-so long as one pays attention to speech; in Jane Eyre, to know the world is to hear the world speak and to speak the world oneself, the truth is in words not in things, and the words are spoken. With the gift of speech, Jane is also given her story, for as she comes to understand the power of human utterance to represent human reality, so she is enabled to tell her life, to say to us, in effect, listen to my words, Reader-for the truth is in them.

Thus the utterances within Jane Eyre and the utterance that is Jane Eyre obey the same law. They must be listened to for the same reason. Not a word spoken in the novel goes unheard-even when Jane, in

5Monod, p. 498. '6Samuel Richardson's Pamela is often taken to be a primary source for Jane Eyre

(see Jerome Beaty, "Jane Eyre and Genre" (Genre 10 (Winter 1977): 619-54)). Pamela's ability to record her experience on paper is so important to her story that it prompts Ellen Moers (in Literary Women: The Great Writers (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1977), p. 175) to call the novel's moral "Writing Rewarded." Jane Eyre, however, does not inherit Pamela's constant attention to pen and ink.

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total isolation, talks to herself about what to do next, her voice is audible to her own ear. When her sorrow overwhelms her just after Rochester has been exposed, and she lies alone in her room longing to be dead (XXVI, 261), it is not that Jane's prayer for help is unheard, but that she has no words to utter it. Speech, in Jane Eyre, is powerful in its effects, and those effects - one may recall Mrs. Reed's flinching at Jane's outburst, for example-are always noted. The transaction between speaker and listener is always closely observed.

Jane Eyre speaks to her reader by the same necessity. Currer Bell, named "editor" on the title page of the first edition of Jane Eyre, is indispensable to the internal logic of the novel, the readerJane Eyre must have in order to come into print. Only our presence, listening, can endorse her truth-telling after that. Rochester does not- cannot - know enough, no matter how much he loves the sound of her voice. ForJane Eyre's truth to be fully told, we are the ones who must hear it. "The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator" (XIX, 175), Jane said to the mysterious gypsy fortune-teller. She might well have been addressing us; for though she does not know who we are, Jane Eyre must believe that we are eager to listen. She promised Mrs. Reed to tell her "exact" tale to "anybody who asks" (IV, 31): she must believe that we are asking.

The silence of Jane Eyre's anonymous, unseen readers-the most significant silence in the novel - is countered by the constant pressure of her wish to be conversant with them. Jane Eyre must persuade her readers to consent, by their eager listening, to the proposition that reality can be well and truly conveyed in words, in her words, or else those words are reduced to nothingness. Jane Eyre may have her his- tory firmly in her own possession when she comes to tell it, but she needs to possess her silent readers as well. It is natural to feel "compel- led" when reading about Jane Eyre, but so is she.

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