LITR 5431 American Romanticism 2010 Student Midterm Samples #2 short essay

midterm assignment

Veronica Ramirez, Byronic Hero to White Bed sheets: Gothic Elements in Jane Eyre

While writing about the Romantic elements in The House of Mirth, snippets of Jane Eyre kept intruding into my thoughts, the gothic, the dark, the Byronic hero, morality, gothic color scheme etc.  It became obvious that if I wanted to explore the Romantic elements in a novel not read during this course, I had to stop what I was doing and discuss Jane Eyre.  The Romantic elements, mainly Gothic, in Jane Eyre are in the setup of the novel, in the characters, in the settings, and in the details.   This British Gothic novel contains many of themes used in American Romantic texts by dealing with family matters in a Gothic setting. There is so much in Jane Eyre that I will do a quick flyby of the major themes and then settle in the “Red-room” scene.

By taking a broad perspective in the novel we see several romantic themes such as Objective 1a. Romantic spirit or ideology.  Jane Eyre is a romantic narrative of Jane’s life as she strives to fulfill the desire of an orphan to have a family, to be loved and be independent. One of the main themes of the novel Jane Eyre is “desire and loss”, and we can compare this to The Wide, Wide World.  Jane being sent away from Gateshead by her abusive family, leaving Lowood and then her flight from Thornfield all are uprootings and breaking up of the family dynamic.  This loss of the family unit, the upheaval and journey of starting in a new place, can all be compared to Ellen. We get the insight to the turmoil of Jane as a child just as we get Ellen’s in the The Wide, Wide World.  Jane Eyre fulfills the description of a romantic narrative, but the Gothic Elements in Jane Eyre is what makes it a perfect example of a Romantic novel.

The Gothic characters and the gothic setting in Jane Eyre involve almost every Gothic element discussed in our course.  Mr. Rochester is clearly a Byronic hero, a dark, brooding, rude character that the idealistic heroine is attracted to.  Mr. Rochester indeed has a secret sin, by which he is literally haunted by, which is his previous marriage to Bertha, a stock character of “mad woman in the attic”. Thornfield is a haunted physical space with supernatural startling sounds as Bertha screams and “haunts” it. One important detail to note is that Thornfield as a haunted manor in European gothic contrasts with the gothic wilderness in American Romantic novels such as The Last of the Mohicans where the darkness and the supernatural sounds come from the wilderness in the forest.  While the characters and the setting are typical European gothic, there are other Gothic elements used in American Romanticism that Charlotte Bronte employed in Jane Eyre that have the same meaning and impact.

One scene in Jane Eyre that is a common scene in Gothic works, not just European, is the red-room scene where Jane is thrown into the red-room by Mrs. Reed for “hitting” John Reed. The Gothic elements used here, were discussed in class, such as isolation and gothic colors. This was a forced isolation, but we see isolation whether self-inflicted or not, in American Gothic works such as the Roderick Usher’s self-inflicted isolation and Madeline’s forced isolation in “The Fall of the House of Usher.”  The red-room was “chill” because it has hardly used, it was “silent” because it was remote from the rest of the house, and solemn due to it being where Mr. Reed died and where he lay in state. The impact that this room has is clearly present in that it is the “largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion” and yet it is hardly used.

 The Gothic color interplay of light and dark with red that is present in the “The Fall of the House of Usher” is also present in the red-room in Jane Eyre.  The red-room was full of dark furniture that was “darkly polished old mahogany” or was covered in “crimson cloth”, the carpet was red, and the curtains were “deep red damask.” The only other prominent color in the bedroom was white, as the bedcovers “rose high, and glared white” and also a white chair that looked like a “pale throne”(16). The contrast between the dark red room with a dark stately almost pyre-like bed with white bed sheets is as dramatic and gothic as Madeline standing in the doorway “blood upon her white robes.” There is also a sublime element to the room in terms of the size of the room and the furniture as “massive pillars of mahogany” where the bed “stood out like a tabernacle in the centre” in comparison to locking a small child within this room.

Jane Eyre, a British Gothic novel that shows the sentimental side of a young scared orphan and the accompanying horror of her adult life at Thornfield, employs many European unique elements, such as homes and rooms as a haunted setting, and many general Gothic elements such as dark/light contrasts.  It has every aspect of a Gothic novel that we have discussed this semester, such as the Byronic hero, forced isolation or self-inflected isolation and a physical haunting and a psychological haunting.