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“I AM A FREE HUMAN BEING WITH AN INDEPENDENT WILL”: A JOURNEY TOWARDS FREEDOM WITHIN THE SPACES OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË’S JANE EYRE By CLAIRE BETH KARNAP A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2018 © 2018 Claire Beth Karnap To my Mom, Dad, and Katiebug ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Sometimes tasks appear impossible, and you need specific people in your life to provide encouragement throughout the journey. Similar to Brontë’s Jane Eyre, I often search for corner spaces where I can create safe environments for myself—a place to become intellectually stronger, resilient, and free. When I read British literature from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the corner spaces appear within the stories, providing a refuge where I can use my own creativity to interpret the texts. This is what makes me happy and I thank my parents for their unwavering support throughout my education and for their belief in my abilities. I thank Dr. Judith Page, my professor, committee chair, and advisor, who always offered guidance through this process and assisted in the revisions. I thank Dr. Roger Maioli for his encouragement and advisement, as both my professor and reader. Lastly, I would like to thank Dr. Leah Rosenberg who encouraged me to complete my thesis and continues to provide advisement with my studies. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................8 2 GATESHEAD ........................................................................................................................13 3 LOWOOD SCHOOL ..............................................................................................................23 4 THORNFIELD HALL AND THE MOORS ..........................................................................30 5 CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................47 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................................56 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .........................................................................................................57 5 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts “I AM A FREE HUMAN BEING WITH AN INDEPENDENT WILL”: A JOURNEY TOWARDS FREEDOM WITHIN THE SPACES OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË’S JANE EYRE By Claire Beth Karnap May 2018 Chair: Judith W. Page Cochair: Roger Maioli Major: English Despite scholars’ thorough account of the third-floor space and Bertha Mason as Jane’s Doppelgänger within Jane Eyre, fewer studies address how Charlotte Brontë uses other spaces that contribute to the main character’s development. Brontë uses architectural and metaphysical spaces and spaces of nature to prove that these environments can shape a character, in this case towards developing her maturity and reaching independence. To support my claims, I incorporate Gaston Bachelard’s concept of “the corner” and Yi-Fu Tuan’s discussion of children using corners for safe spaces; I argue that Jane uses corner spaces to maneuver through patriarchal spaces, as she also achieves freedom through her self-created enclosure. Gillian Rose’s text describes how women experience confinement and exile by different classes and genders, which will bolster my argument concerning Jane’s feelings of inferiority within certain spaces of the upper class; Mona Domosh and Joni Seager’s analysis of the Victorian armchair and the confines within the domestic space inside Victorian homes will contribute to the discussion of Mr. Rochester’s armchair and control over physical spaces at Thornfield Hall. The diverse spaces contribute differently to Jane’s development, but each environment tests the character’s ability to withstand oppression within a patriarchal society. Within her journey, Jane 6 searches for corners of safety in both physical and metaphysical settings, which provides the character with freedom from the oppressive environments. In addition to the corner, Brontë uses nature to provide a second form of freedom—the protagonist often searches for the horizon and yearns for the freedom she believes it can offer. The different spaces that Jane encounters contribute to the shaping of her character’s development and assists her with obtaining freedom from oppression and in reaching maturity—she must encounter each of the spaces to reach autonomy. 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre (1847) is widely studied by scholars for its exploration of abandonment, female development, gothic romance, imagination, and as a travel narrative. In fact, a common theme within the novel is the heroine’s journey from childhood to adulthood. When speaking of Charlotte Brontë’s writing method in The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, scholars Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar describe how “the young novelist seems here definitively to have opened her eyes to female realities within her and around her: confinement, orphanhood, starvation, rage even to madness” (Gilbert and Gubar 336). Gilbert and Gubar closely analyze the significant influences, such as female characters that Jane encounters in her journey. Instead of only analyzing significant characters and their influence on Jane during her pilgrimage towards adulthood, this paper analyzes the places and spaces with particular attention to Gaston Bachelard’s concept “the corner” in The Poetics of Space (1958) that the heroine encounters. I demonstrate that Brontë uses the locations to develop Jane’s character in hopes of contributing to the ongoing debate of Jane Eyre as a female Bildungsroman. Jane’s ultimate goal is freedom and she can only obtain freedom from the oppressive patriarchal environments once she reaches a point in her life of independence and maturity. The physical and metaphysical spaces within the architectural spaces and the spaces of nature contribute to shaping the character. Jane’s metaphysical spaces that she encounters often reside within her mind as psychological environments, while the physical spaces include environments, such as architectural spaces and nature. Each of these spaces results in a different outcome, and Jane’s character development results in her obtaining freedom and witnessing a shift in positions from the dependent lonely child into an independent and nurturing woman. 8 Within the novel Jane encounters architectural spaces from her childhood through adulthood, that contrast with the spaces of nature. The varying environments she encounters contribute to her Bildungsroman, and attempt to prove that these spaces affect Jane's development into adulthood in both negative and positive terms. Although the heroine often searches or creates a corner space that provides security and comfort for the character, the space does not negatively affect her development. Instead, the small environment provides Jane with a secure area to avoid the oppressive nature of the patriarchal foundation found within the prominent settings of Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield, and Moor House. In addition to Bachelard’s concept “the corner,” which establishes Jane’s method of maneuvering through the different environments towards her development to independence, other scholars, such as John Sung Han and Deanna K. Kreisel, analyze Bertha's space of confinement within the third floor and its impact on both Bertha and Jane. This paper contributes to the conversation by addressing the other spaces, specifically the exterior and interior spaces that affect Jane—her development from adolescence to independence. Since the heroine is often perceived as Bertha's doppelgänger it is equally important to analyze the spaces that confine the heroine and the spaces that enable Jane's character development within the novel. Through her encounters with architectural spaces and spaces of nature, Jane develops into her womanhood. Clearly, Brontë uses specific physical and metaphysical environments to shape the heroine and portray her development. Recent critics address the significant use of space within Jane Eyre. Charlotte Borie effectively argues that the heroine’s progress throughout the novel leads to the character’s self- identity. When she uses the curtain to describe a veiling of Jane’s inner thoughts Borie describes both a symbolic and literal curtain of space, which contributes to the notion of the physical and metaphysical spaces within the novel. In addition to Borie’s close analysis of space, John Sung 9 Han addresses that Charlotte Brontë and Samuel Richardson employed the same type of eighteenth century “symbolic associations” and “deployed the lumber-room as a symbolic space of storage, liminality, and transformation” (Han 529). While these critics spend a considerable time analyzing the “lumber-room” or third floor attic space and its influence on the development of the heroine and the novel form, scholars provide less attention to other spaces within the novel, such as the corner