İstanbul Üniversitesi
Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü
Batı Dilleri ve Edebiyatları Anabilim Dalı
İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı Bilim Dalı
Yüksek Lisans Tezi
The Depiction of Orphans as a Threat in
Victorian Novel: Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre
Zehra GÖREN
2402313808
Tez Danışmanı: Yard. Doç. Dr. Canan ŞAVKAY
İstanbul, 2010
Viktorya Dönemi Romanında Yetim Karakterlerin Tehdit Unsuru Olarak Betimlenmesi: Uğultulu Tepeler, Jane Eyre, ve Büyük Umutlar Zehra GÖREN
ÖZ
Bu çalışma, yetim karakterler üzerine odaklanan üç Viktorya dönemi romanının – Emily Brontë’nin Uğultulu Tepeler, Charlotte Brontë’nin Jane Eyre, ve Charles Dickens’ın Büyük Umutlar adlı romanlarının – analizinden oluşmaktadır. Yetim çocuklar gerçek hayatta kolayca incinebilmelerine rağmen, bu romanlarda ataerkil tolpumun geleneksel değerlerini tehdit eden bir karaktere sahip olarak betimlenmişlerdir ve bu da onların Viktorya döneminde orta ve üst sınıfları tehdit eden işçi sınıfıyla özdeşleştirilmelerine yol açmıştır. Toplumda kendine bir yer edinmeye çalışan yetim figürünün bu arayışı, işçi sınıfının üst sınıfları devirmeye çalışmasıyla paralellik gösterir. Otoriteye meydan okumanın yarattığı korku ve yetim figürünün bastırılmış öfkesi bu romanlardaki Gotik unsurlar aracılığıyla ifade edilmiştir. Romanlarda simgesel bir tehlike olarak görülmesine rağmen, aslında korumasız bir birey olan yetim karakter, toplumun çürümüşlüğünü ve acımasızlığını ortaya koymayı amaçlayan yazarlar için bir araç olmuştur. Yetim figürü, zor kullanan, ahlak değerleri çökmüş ve zalim olan toplum tarafından dışlanmış ve mağdur edilmiştir. Sonuçta da dışlanan ve baskı altında tutulmaya çalışılan yetim karakter hem onu ezenlerden öcünü almış hem de kişilik gelişimini tamamlayarak en sonunda toplumda kendine bir rol ve yer edinmiştir.
iii
The Depiction of Orphans as a Threat in Victorian Novel: Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Great Expectations Zehra GÖREN
ABSTRACT
This study consists of an analysis of the three Victorian novels – Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations – that centre on the figure of the orphan, who is a vulnerable being in reality. The orphan figure in these novels is depicted as a threat to the conventional values of patriarchal society, which also makes him or her a symbol of the working class people, who pose a threat to the middle and upper classes. In his or her search for a place in society, the orphan figure parallels the attempt of the lower classes of overpowering middle and upper classes. The fear invoked by his or her potential of challenging authority and the repressed anger of the orphan are expressed through Gothic elements. The novelists who are also bent on revealing society’s corruption and cruelty employ the figure of the orphan, who, in fact, is an unprotected individual although he or she is symbolically regarded as dangerous in fiction. The orphan figure is excluded and victimized by society, which is violent, corrupt and cruel. As a result, the excluded and repressed orphan not only takes his or her revenge on his or her oppressors but also completes the formation of his or her self and eventually finds a role and place in society.
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PREFACE
This study aims to explore the reasons why the orphan figure in Victorian fiction is portrayed as a threat to social conventions and old-established beliefs, and what this comes to represent. The painstaking process of writing a thesis from abroad has been made much easier for me thanks to the invaluable help and guidance I received from my thesis supervisor Assist. Prof Dr. Canan Şavkay. I am greatly indebted to her for her expertise, understanding and patience. I would also like to thank Prof. Esra Melikoğlu, who has been of great importance during my undergraduate and graduate academic life. Words will not be enough to express my gratitude to my dear friend and colleague Özlem Boyd, for her encouragement, support and valuable comments throughout the process of writing this thesis. I owe special thanks to my dear friend Şafak Gündüz for her usual support. Last but not least, I reserve my deepest thanks to my mother, father and sisters for their constant love, support and encouragement.
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CONTENTS
Öz …………………………………………………………….. iii
Abstract …………………………………………………………….. iv
Preface …………………………………………………………….. v
Contents …………………………………………………………….. vi
Abbreviations …………………………………………………………….. vii
Chapter I: Introduction …………………………..………………….. 1
Chapter II: Wuthering Heights …..……………….……………….. 14
Chapter III: Jane Eyre ……………………………………………….. 35
Chapter IV: Great Expectations …………..……………………….. 56
Chapter V: Conclusion ……………………………………………….. 74
Bibliography …………………………………………………………….. 81
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ABBREVIATIONS
WH: Wuthering Heights
JE: Jane Eyre
GE: Great Expectations
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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
Victorian literature is full of orphans, who also filled the streets in real life. There are a number of reasons for the popularity of the orphan in Victorian novels and these can be categorized under two groups. On the one hand, the orphan figure is employed in order to reveal the corruption of society as shown by the abuse of the orphan in novels. There is a great sentiment and sympathy in Victorian novels for the homeless, abandoned and orphaned children, who are in fact vulnerable to the corruption of society. Victorians, who were orphaned of their traditional values due to social and industrial changes, were interested in the figure of the orphan in fiction to understand their origins and to explore the formation of the individual‘s identity. While showing the process of the orphan‘s self formation, Victorian novelists exposed the cruelty of society to orphans through their maltreatment and abuse at the hands of Victorian society. On the other hand, the orphan figure is depicted in novels as a threat to society‘s values and conventions. Orphans physically remind society of its debt, i.e. society‘s unfulfilled duty to protect orphan children. As society is supposed to take over the role of the parent, orphans represent the failed responsibility of society. Hence, they stir people‘s conscience and therefore represent what society has to repress in order to see itself as good. This disturbing position of the orphan brings about his or her association with the working class, which the middle and upper classes were trying to repress. The subordinate position of the working class to the middle and upper classes parallels that of the orphan in relation to society itself. Hence, both the orphan and the working classes disturb the society‘s conscience by embodying those responsibilities it has failed to fulfil, which results in the orphan‘s depiction in fiction as a threatening figure, needing to be repressed. Also, such children do not have a role or place in the Victorian family ideal or the concept of domesticity and thus they are portrayed in fiction as dark characters with destructive powers.
In the Victorian novel, orphans ―posed a threat‖ to the Victorian notion of the family because they had no families, being ―displaced‖ as ―outsiders‖, who did not belong to any place. For the Victorians, the orphan figure represented, at worst, dangerously liberated ―pure selfhood, i.e. the orphan had nothing but his or her self;
1 no social identity, no property, no defined role or no past to fall back on in his or her struggle for survival‖ (Auerbach, 1975: 404). The Victorian imagination hence associated orphans with other outsiders, ―[g]ypsies, criminals, and colonized subjects, none of whom were thought to be properly rooted within English society‖ (Cunningham, 2003: 737-738). Heathcliff, the protagonist of Emily Brontë‘s Wuthering Heights (1847), is an orphan who is constantly associated with gypsies; Bertha Mason in Charlotte Brontë‘s Jane Eyre (1847) is Edward Rochester‘s wife from the West Indies and she is also depicted as Jane‘s dark double; and Abel Magwitch in Charles Dickens‘s Great Expectations (1861), who is portrayed as Pip‘s surrogate father, is a convict. Bereft of a familial or social identity, property, and especially a defined role, all of which are qualities essential for being acknowledged as a respectable member of Victorian society, the orphan cannot be integrated into the system, and turns into lawless energy that is out to overthrow this very system. In Victorian age, family background and descent from a preferably wealthy family were very important for the individual to be acknowledged as a respectable member of society, which made the orphan‘s position in society uncertain, and thus identified him or her as an anarchic element bent on undermining the status quo.
The Victorians‘ love of orphan children in literature can be partly explained by the similar situation they found themselves in, namely the rapidly changing ideas and industrial developments which caused the Victorians to feel as if they had been orphaned of the strong traditional values they clung to:
Industrialism, religious conflict, and scientific discoveries had orphaned the Victorian age of its sense of its own past; the other side of the orphan‘s freedom was his fear, his need of guidance in a world without maps. (Auerbach, 1975: 410)
As well as feeling orphaned of their values, the Victorians had become concerned about their origins after Charles Darwin‘s theories on the evolution of mankind began to circulate ―from the 1840s onwards‖ shaking people‘s beliefs about their origins. His ideas influenced man‘s view of himself as the centre of all God‘s creation. Darwin‘s theory changed ―the way human beings are defined‖:
No longer products of special divine acts of creation, no longer heroes and heroines in a providential universe, human beings take their marginal place in Darwin‘s
2 millennial process, resting in unvisited tombs and even discovering hereditary ties with apes. (Ermarth, 1997: 103-104)
This totally new approach to man‘s origin caused people to question their former beliefs, and in religion, the Victorians ―experienced a great age of doubt, the first to call into question institutional Christianity on such a large scale‖ (Golban, 2003: 99). All these developments prompted the Victorians to question their origins, which made the child, in particular the orphan, who represented pure selfhood, the centre of attention for most writers:
Many writers, therefore, turned to the portrayal of the child and the child‘s experience of growing up as a means of interpreting themselves, of understanding their own origins, development and relationship to the world about them, especially after Darwin‘s theories on evolution rocked previously held beliefs. (Brown, 1993: 65)
Adults started to examine the child in order to understand their origins. They started to ask themselves questions about the nature of the child. Therefore, the orphan figure, which had no parents or a social definition, but was out to find some surrogate parents or a place in society for himself or herself, became a symbol for the Victorians of their similar situation in their quest for their own origins and by extension identity. In the Bildungsroman, the character formation novel that was especially popular in the nineteenth century, the protagonist begins life usually without parents in a provincial area, and if the father or a father figure exists, he is ―hostile to the hero‘s or heroine‘s creative instincts‖, and then the protagonist leaves home (―and also relative innocence‖) to go to the city or its equivalent, a great house, where his or her real education begins, to gain experience and define his or her place in society, at the same time completing his or her process of character formation, leaving adolescence behind and entering maturity (Golban, 2003: 110- 111):
[…] the growing child, more often than not, appears in Bildungsromane as orphaned, at least fatherless or bereaved of the father (like Jane, Heathcliff, David, Pip, Pen, Jude). But if his father is alive (as in The Way of All Flesh), or he appears to have a stepfather (as in David Copperfield), the child will almost certainly be repelled by a parent who seeks to suppress his strongest desires, thus proving antagonistic to his creative drives and imaginative ambitions.‖ (Golban, 2003: 124-125)
Patriarchs try to suppress children‘s desires or obstruct their ambitions due to their fear of being overthrown by the younger generation. The orphan‘s instincts and desires for acknowledgement and power are consequently feared as disruptive to
3 the existing order, which is related to why Victorian writers preferred to represent the orphan figure as a threat in their novels; that is, they associated the orphan with the rebellious working classes, which resulted in his/her perception as a threat.
The figure of the orphan himself or herself is comprised of different aspects, which result in his or her depiction in fiction as a threat. On the one hand, the authors, who were looking for order, realize that this kind of society does not provide spiritual shelter, and they start to feel orphaned and therefore criticise society. On the other hand, the authors themselves look for order and shelter, which is reflected in the orphan‘s search for shelter. The orphan feels unprotected and therefore threatens society because he or she is looking for shelter and a place in society. Thus, the orphan becomes a threat. Moreover, the authors generally belonged to the middle class and although they criticise society for victimizing orphans, they mainly fear the lower classes. Thus they share the fear of the society they vehemently criticise, for the lower classes represent the threat of overturning the whole order. The fear of chaos is reflected in these authors‘ portrayal of the orphan as a threat.
An army of orphans out in the streets means ―undirected‖ children left without ―guidance‖, similar to the illiterate working class who looked like the mob (Brown, 1993: 150). As the orphan has no one to identify with, he or she wants to change his or her social class, which becomes threatening for the rest of society, mainly because this will disrupt the order of society and the status quo. The revolutionary aspect of the orphan links him or her with the rebellious working class. The orphan will try to make room for himself or herself in society, which causes his depiction as a destructive force in novels. While trying to find himself or herself a place, the orphan figure will have to displace some existing values, i.e. start a revolution to change the existing order, at ‗worst‘ or, at least, create temporary upheaval, until he or she is finally integrated into the system. This displacement of existing values is likely to create chaos and uncertainty, which is why the orphan is regarded as a symbolic threat in fiction.
The estranged element at the bottom of society also troubled the conscience of the middle classes, who feared retaliation. Since the relationship of a child to adults always included ―subordination and dependence‖, which also implies repression, the
4 child was very likely to avenge himself or herself on his tormentors. Moreover, he or she was also very likely to ―challenge adult definitions‖ in the course of becoming an adult, which helps explain why children want to defy their parents, or adults in general, who represent authority (Davin, 1999: 28, 33). Moreover, every child is destined to replace his or her parents, or the older generation, a process that adults strongly resent and fear. Indeed, Banerjee explains Mr Earnshaw‘s austerity to his children as the adult‘s ―inner horror of ungoverned, elemental energy‖ (Banerjee, 1984: 487). In the patriarchal society in Victorian fiction, the orphan was the rebellious child defying society, trying to undermine some values to replace them with his or her own. On the part of the patriarch, this rebellion is met with resentment.
Consequently, the orphan, who is feared for overthrowing the conventional values represented by the patriarchs, is associated with working class people, who were regarded as a threat by the upper and middle classes. With the presentation of the Chartist petition demanding that the right to vote be given to working class people in 1848, a working class revolution was barely avoided. However, the possibility of the working class achieving the vote appeared threatening for the upper and middle classes. Hence, the fear of upper and middle classes of being overthrown came to be represented through the figure of the orphan, who is both potentially a member of the working class since he or she has no money, and who possesses a rebellious nature and a potential to change his or her social class.
Still another reason why Victorian novelists preferred orphaned protagonists is the importance given to domesticity by the Victorians. For the Victorians, family was the central principle on which society was based, especially for the middle classes. It was significant economically, spiritually, socially and personally. The rise of the middle classes brought about ―strong ideologies of domesticity‖, where the home is regarded as ―a haven of peace, a source of stability, security, virtue and piety‖. The home was ―held together by moral and emotional bonds‖ (Brown, 1993: 92).
For the Victorian middle- and upper-class families, who had little or no financial worries, domesticity was a way of life which meant that the father worked and the mother ruled within the house, ―surrounded by her offspring, managing the complex
5 running of the home, organizing the servants, carefully keeping the accounts and educating her children‖. This was the ideal image of a typical happy Victorian family (Walvin, 1984: 14). The father, who had all the power and authority, controlled the family. Being economically dependant on the father, women, children and the servants were to be obedient to their husbands, fathers and masters respectively (Jackson, 2000: 10, 11). The ideal of obedience to elders or superiors has its roots in Christianity, where as his subjects or children, everyone has to obey God, the Father, and disobedience is a sin. Significantly, even the relationship of wife to husband, or servant to master was presented as ―analogous to that of children to parents‖. The inferior subject had to surrender their rights in return for ―protection and material care‖ (Walvin, 1984: 184-187). The prevalent ideology of domesticity thus presented the home, inhabited by parents, children and servants, as a fortress of sacred values that shut its gate upon a world tainted by philistinism as well as revolutionary upheaval. However, the home was often a deeply troubled place.
Contrary to the idealized notion of domesticity, there was suffering at all social levels. Middle-class and upper-class children were exposed to corporal punishment at school, and less fortunate working class children had to enter the adult world at a very young age, engaging in ―backbreaking labour‖ for long hours. Still less fortunate ones were the orphans, most of whom died (Banerjee, 1984: 482). Hence, the happy family myth was only make-believe.
The orphan figure, as an embodiment of the other, is, therefore, necessary for the family ideal, which is falling apart, to define itself and regain its integrity:
Although one would expect that the orphans needed a family, in short, the reality was that the family needed orphans. The family and all it came to represent – legitimacy, race and national belonging – was in crisis: it was at best an unsustainable ideal. In order to reaffirm itself the family needed a scapegoat. It found one in the orphan figure. (Peters, 2000: 1)
The family can reaffirm itself by excluding the element that does not belong to it. Hence, by excluding the orphan, who embodies the difference within, the family can maintain its existence. The orphan, therefore, symbolizes both a ―poison‖, which is threatening because it embodies the ―loss of the family‖, and a ―cure‖, because the family can reaffirm itself ―through the expulsion of this threatening difference‖ (Peters, 2000: 2). Peters further defines the orphan as a ―pharmakon‖, which
6 contains the ―threatening difference‖ as well as its cure, which is the process by which it is ―expelled‖ (Peters, 2000: 22). Hence, the description of the orphan as a disruptive figure shows that the Victorians need the family in order to prevent chaos on a social scale. This unhomeliness of the orphan in Victorian fiction is conveyed through Gothic elements.
Gothic literature, which presents the ―uncontrollable release from restraint, and thus allows for a disruption of social order and ―stable identities‖, proves to be peopled with orphans, who emerge as the agents of such horrific disruption or are involved in some determined or unconscious crime‖. The Gothic novel makes this ―uncontrollable release‖ of ―deeply hidden‖ and ―long suppressed‖ images, desires and feelings seem more dangerous and frightening (Morris, 1985: 306). This frightening release is usually caused by the orphan, who is thus considered to be uncanny.
In his essay called ―The ‗Uncanny‘‖ (1919), Sigmund Freud argued that what causes human beings to feel terrified is coming across the uncanny. However, for him the uncanny, which scares people, does not derive its horrific nature from something unfamiliar, ―external, alien or unknown‖ to them; on the contrary, it derives it from something familiar and well-known and moreover ―defeats our efforts to separate ourselves from it‖. Freud summarizes the uncanny thus:
[…] ‘this uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression‘. (Wolfreys, 2002: 15)
These supernatural elements, the ghosts and spectres that haunt people are in fact what is ―repressed‖, ―hidden‖, ―forgotten‖ and ―invisible‖. They return from where they have been repressed, namely their unconscious, to haunt them. The effect of haunting comes from the feeling of displacement it gives people. The ―unhomely‖ hence appears in the ―homely‖. As a consequence, people are displaced in a place ―where [they] feel most secure, most notably in [their] homes, in the domestic scene‖ (Wolfreys, 2002: 5, 18). The orphan, in fact, makes people feel the same way. The orphan, a figure that does not belong in the Victorian ideal family picture, disrupts this very picture because as an innocent child he or she stands out as an emblem of
7 society‘s guilt for failing to protect the orphan. This makes people feel uncomfortable in their homes, their shrines of domesticity where they retreat to feel safe.
Some typical Gothic elements can be listed as: ―vast cataracts, raging storms, lofty towers, dark nights, ghosts and goblins, serpents, madmen; mountains, precipices, dazzling light; low, tremulous, intermittent sounds, such as moans, sighs, or whispers; immense, gloomy buildings; tyranny, incarceration, torture‖ (Morris, 1985: 301). Most of these elements can be seen in Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Great Expectations that centre on orphan characters. In Wuthering Heights, the portrayal of a wild nature, the appearance of Heathcliff‘s and Catherine‘s ghosts, and the tyrannical treatment of children by adults help create a Gothic atmosphere. The incarceration and screams of Bertha, her madness, and the appearance of Jane‘s mother‘s ghost are some of the Gothic elements in Jane Eyre. Miss Havisham herself, her house where time has stopped, Pip‘s nightmares and hallucinations, and the atmosphere of criminality surrounding the characters in the novel, constitute the main Gothic imagery of Great Expectations.
Another theme that invokes fear in Gothic fiction is death. It is one of the most horrific phenomena that human beings choose to repress but that keeps haunting them. ―Death and supernaturalism are closely linked for Freud because they both derive their ultimate terror from a return of the repressed‖. Death is something human beings are familiar with in their minds but, at the same time, they have ―estranged‖ themselves from it, trying to keep it away (Morris, 1985: 310). Indeed, death is one of the central recurrent themes in Gothic novels. Human beings fear death because it is the ―ultimate degree of personal injury‖, and they know that it will cause ―physical pain or will excite idea of physical pain‖ (Morris, 1985: 308). Getting people to think about and fear the possibility of death and pain is the essence that creates the element of terror in Gothic fiction. And death has a very important role from the very beginning in the orphan‘s life, too. The orphan‘s life ―emerges out of death‖. His or her first mental activity is a ―synthesis of death and life‖. The very first lesson the orphan learns about life is death, and an ―apprehension of these elements as one of life‘s dichotomies, along with others: feeling and thought, good and evil, truth and falsehood, human and non-human, and so on.‖ At the beginning of the orphan‘s developmental process, a ―negative energy‖ is formed (Golban,
8 2003: 127). This negative energy results from the close association of the orphans in fiction with death, giving them symbolic powers which, in turn, are destructive as well as revolutionary since, in order to revolutionize, it is necessary to destroy first.
The obscurity of the orphan‘s past, present and future, and his or her association with death, in turn, leads to his or her identification with the other world, the mystery of which causes no little anxiety in the Victorians:
Haunted as they were by their fears and dreams of another world which seemed rapidly evaporating, obsessed with possible mysterious connections between God and man, it is not surprising that the Victorians emphasized the supernatural nimbus surrounding the orphan‘s loneliness. (Auerbach, 1975: 410)
With the obscurity of the orphan mingled with his or her angelic, demonic, and/or otherworldly qualities, a ―transcendentaliz[ed]‖ and destructive image of the orphan was formed (Auerbach, 1975: 409).
The Gothic, with the chaotic atmosphere it creates, allows for a disruption of social order and challenges reason and ―stable identities‖. In that respect Gothic fiction can be called revolutionary, which makes it appropriate for the expression of the orphan‘s equally disturbing quest, because the orphan in fiction tries to find a place for himself or herself by displacing the old system (Wolfreys, 2000: xvi)
The orphan figure in fiction is demonized and stigmatized by the system because of his or her often rebellious nature. However, it is a conservative system that demonizes and stigmatizes the orphan as destructive and threatening. The orphan figure, on the other hand, possesses a symbolic revolutionary energy that can revitalise a fossilized order.
In order to survive, the orphan figure is, and has to be, changeable and adaptable to new places and circumstances, and should develop his or her character, ―mutability, becoming an important facet for his or her survival‖. He or she can stay alive only in this way (Auerbach, 1975: 396). Moreover, since the orphan begins life without a past, on his or her journey, he or she can ―shuck off the past and begin life anew‖ at any point when necessary. Therefore, a ―capacity for perpetual rebirth‖ is important for the orphan (Auerbach, 1975: 398).
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The orphan figure, to undergo his or her transformation, enters a ―great house‖, – a term used by Auerbach in her article called ―Incarnations of the Orphan‖ (1975), which comes to signify the houses of patriarchs that stand as a microcosm of Victorian society representing its class system and values or function at least as a symbol of social authority or patriarchy. The orphan ―has the power to transform at a touch the decaying houses that he enters, to dispel their lingering pasts, to destroy and recreate‖, therefore, usually changes every great house he or she enters, catalyzing a social revolution (Auerbach, 1975: 396). Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights transforms the Earnshaws‘ house from the traditional patriarchal house dating back to the Middle Ages with a long line of descendants, into a new house where the master and servant have changed roles and the new master is an orphan with obscure origins. Jane in Jane Eyre enters Thornfield, the great house representing patriarchy, as a governess and after the house is burnt down, in the new order she has initiated, she becomes the mistress. Pip in Great Expectations, too, enters Satis House as a kind of servant and figuratively causes the falling down of the house into ruins. Hence, the orphan figure causes changes in the great houses he or she enters.
Out of the orphan‘s ―whirlwind‖, a ―calmer society‖ is created (Auerbach, 1975: 409- 410). First, the orphan in fiction destroys the old great house with its traditional values, and then creates a new system out of the ‗ashes‘ of the old house, trying to find himself or herself a place in society. The order displaced by the orphan, during his or her struggle for self formation, can again be restored by the very same orphan, but with some changes in the order.
By using the orphan figure in literature, the Victorian novelists were able to ―reveal‖ the corruption of the world. The orphan as a child was used ―to expose the essential imperfections‖ of the nineteenth century (Pattison, 1978: 110). In reality, the nineteenth century orphan is the innocent, homeless, parentless child who needs protection and affection from society, but who may turn against it by becoming a criminal if left uncared for. The literary orphan figure, however, as a reflection of the writer‘s anger at society, and at the same time, as an innocent child, reflects the shortcomings of this cruel system. Wanting to survive, the orphan seeks for a place,
10 and how and to what extent the orphan succeeds in his or her quest for an identity, and place in society and what this signifies – in Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Great Expectations – will be the focus of this study.
Instead of a thematically comparative approach, each novel will be discussed in a separate chapter to keep the individual qualities and integrity of each novel. The main focus of Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and Chapter 4 will be Heathcliff in Emily Brontë‘s Wuthering Heights, Jane in Charlotte Brontë‘s Jane Eyre, and Pip in Charles Dickens‘s Great Expectations respectively. My choice of these novels depends on their similar treatment of the orphan figure. In all the novels, the orphan figure is regarded as a threat and excluded from the domestic ideal. The excluded orphan then endeavours to create a place for himself or herself in society and meanwhile avenges himself or herself on his or her tormentors. However, the means the three orphans use differ although they produce a similar effect in the end. While Heathcliff uses physical violence and deceit which he has learned from society, Jane employs her words and her alter ego, personified in Bertha Mason, in order to express her repressed anger. Pip, who can be considered the most passive of the three, takes revenge for his exploitation by society through his alter egos. However, in the end the three orphans who are regarded by society as evil or dangerous, manage to find a place for themselves in the new order they have created, reflecting society‘s fear of the threat posed by the working class to overthrow the middle and upper classes.
In each chapter, after focusing on the significance of being an orphan with no family, the perception of the orphan in fiction as a symbolic threat, his or her exclusion from the familial sphere and association with socially unacceptable and evil characters will be analyzed. The way Victorian novelists reveal the corruption and cruelty of society through their depiction of the orphan as persecuted by society will also be examined. Then the use of Gothic elements as a medium for revealing the repressed emotions of the orphan will be pointed out. The orphan‘s revolutionary aspect and the new system created in the end will also be focused on in each chapter. At the end of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff dies as a rich man, having obtained property, which represents power according to society. However, the new system requires Heathcliff‘s death to purge the new order of the violence he has
11 taken over from society and the new generation is orphaned, too. Hareton is brought up by Heathcliff in a similar way to his own upbringing, i.e. being exposed at a lot of violence instead of love and protection, and he is ―a personification of [Heathcliff‘s] youth‖ (WH, 353). However, although his influence remains alive through Hareton, unlike Heathcliff, he is not violent, so his influence remains subdued. Hence, the house is again taken over by its rightful owner, but the new generation will not be violent and cruel. In this way, the orphan‘s revolutionary side and society‘s traditional aspect are reconciled. Before Jane marries Rochester at the end of Jane Eyre, she bridges the social gap between them by symbolically causing his ancestral mansion to be burnt down and causing him to receive wounds, which make him dependant on her. In Great Expectations, Pip, too, punishes those who wrong him, sheds off the false notions of gentility imposed upon him by society and finds peace and hope in his final union with Estella. The wronged orphans manage to threaten and replace the existing system with a new one in which there is a place for them.
In the three novels that this study focuses on, the figure of the orphan, who is a vulnerable being in reality, is depicted as a threat due to his or her potential for challenging patriarchy represented by the middle and upper classes. The orphan, therefore, is associated with the working class which threatens to overthrow the middle and upper classes. In his or her search for a place in society, he or she parallels the attempt of the lower classes to overpower middle and upper classes. The fear invoked by his or her potential of overthrowing authority is conveyed through Gothic elements. The novelists who are also bent on revealing society‘s corruption and cruelty employ the figure of the orphan, who is symbolically regarded as dangerous in these novels, but who, in fact, is an unprotected individual. The orphan figure is excluded and victimized by society, who is violent, corrupt and cruel. As a result, the excluded and repressed orphan not only takes his or her revenge on his or her oppressors but also completes his or her own character formation and eventually earns a role and place in society.
As the orphan in fiction represents the repressed side of society, when the suppressed aspect is revealed, it loses some of its power, purging the new system of the evil effects of the old system, indicating a search for reconciliation on the part
12 of the author. At the end of these novels, the system is purged of the evil effects. In Wuthering Heights, the violence Heathcliff has taken over from society is eliminated by his death in the end, and in Jane Eyre, after Rochester is blinded and maimed, the oppression of patriarchal society no longer exists for her and Jane can enjoy a marriage based on equality. In Great Expectations, after Miss Havisham‘s death and Pip‘s decision to cast off his false social image, the effect of Miss Havisham‘s selfishness is purged, offering a possibility of union for Pip and Estella. Hence, in the three novels that this paper will analyze, a final purging of the evil effects of society and a reconciliation of the old system with the new one are achieved.
13 CHAPTER II
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Heathcliff, the protagonist of Emily Brontë‘s Wuthering Heights, is an orphan with obscure origins, which renders him unrestrained by parental authority. At the same time, he is regarded as an outsider to the domestic ideal, symbolically threatening its values and usurping others‘ places and possessions, echoing the threat posed by the working class to the middle and upper classes of overthrowing them while claiming their rights. Hence, he is associated with evil and socially unacceptable characters to emphasize his otherness and Gothic elements are employed to demonstrate society‘s fear. The orphan figure, who is helpless and vulnerable in real life, is excluded and victimized by society in order to expose the cruelty and corruption of Victorian society. Heathcliff takes revenge for his exclusion and rejection by using the means he learns from society, i.e. violence and corruption. As the orphan also represents the unshaped self of the individual, and Heathcliff‘s self is shaped by society‘s maltreatment of him, Emily Brontë also reveals the extent of society‘s evil by depicting Heathcliff as a demonic figure and as a reflection of society.
Wuthering Heights is full of orphan characters, yet the origin of most of them is known. The word orphan means ―a child deprived by death of one or usually both parents‖ (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). The reader comes across different kinds of orphans throughout the novel. Examples of some of the characters orphaned by losing either one or both parents during childhood or the teen years are Catherine (Catherine the mother will be referred to as Catherine, and her daughter Cathy), Hindley, Edgar, Isabella and Heathcliff‘s son Linton. Hareton and Cathy, however, are orphaned due to the death of their mothers during childbirth. Although these characters lose one or both parents at some point in the novel, the identities of their parents are very well known. The novel, on the other hand, gives no substantial clue as to the parentage of Heathcliff. Nelly, a servant first with the Earnshaws and then with the Lintons, tells Lockwood, a London gentleman, that she knows all about Heathcliff‘s life ―except where he was born‖ and ―who were his parents‖ (WH, 76). All we learn about him is that he is found ―starving‖ and ―houseless‖ by Mr Earnshaw in the streets of Liverpool, then Mr Earnshaw inquires about ―its owner‖ and finding ―it‖
14 doesn‘t ―belong‖ to anyone, he decides to adopt ―it‖ (WH, 78). Unlike most other novels about orphans (including Jane Eyre and Great Expectations), the origins of Heathcliff are never explained, not even at the end of the novel. Goetz states that what makes Wuthering Heights different from other orphan novels is the fact that ―the lack of knowledge concerning Heathcliff‘s origins will never be filled in‖ (Goetz, 1982: 366). The reader never learns who Heathclif‘s biological parents are.
The obscurity surrounding Heathcliff is so dense that, as well as his origins, the reader never gets to learn where he had been during the course of his three years of absence and what he did to achieve all that wealth. His disappearance and return as well as his parentage are mysterious.
As an orphan with no known parentage, Heathcliff is also devoid of and at the same time free from parental guidance. According to Brown, ―the orphaning of the children means that they remain largely undirected and unrestrained in their language and behaviour by parental authority and guidance‖ (Brown, 1993: 150). Hence, there is no force that can restrain or restrict Heathcliff, and this equips him with great potential and energy, which he will use for destruction.
Unlike the other orphans of the novel, Heathcliff is orphaned and abandoned more than once. First, he is abandoned in the streets, and later, after Mr Earnshaw adopts him, he is orphaned a second time due to the death of his adoptive father. As Homans puts it, ―Heathcliff himself was left to starve by his own parents, and, orphaned again by Mr.Earnshaw‘s death‖ (Homans, 1987: 105). With his double orphaning and the obscurity of his origins, Heathcliff is at the utmost point of orphanhood, free from all restraint, which makes him all the more threatening in the eyes of society.
It is no coincidence that Catherine gets Heathcliff as her gift instead of the whip she asks for. The orphan will act as a whip, threatening the social order using violence. Gilbert and Gubar describe Heathcliff as Catherine‘s whip (Gilbert and Gubar, 1979: 264). Another critic, Cohen, also puts forth the same argument (Cohen, 1991: 112). By bringing the orphan, an outside element, from another city into his well-stratified society, where everyone‘s role and place in society is defined as masters or
15 servants, Mr Earnshaw is also bringing chaos into his home. According to Stevenson, by bringing Heathcliff from the city, Mr Earnshaw introduces into his ―stable‖ society, a figure who is ―doubly alienated from it‖ (Stevenson, 1988: 67). Heathcliff‘s dark skin and disruptive nature suggest he brings chaos because he comes from ―the devil‖ as Mr Earnshaw explains on Heathcliff‘s arrival (WH, 77). Heathcliff, with his dark skin, eyes and hair, is ―a plausible emissary from the prince of darkness and of chaos‖ (Thormahlen, 1997: 192). He brings disorder into a well- organized family and disrupts domestic order:
Demonised and dehumanised from the onset, and embodying, in his dark features, the mark of difference, Heathcliff disturbs the family narrative […]. (Peters, 2000: 31)
Mr Earnshaw favours Heathcliff more than his son Hindley. Hindley suffers a ―sudden fall from grace‖ and Heathcliff is ―embraced by Mr Earnshaw as the son after his own heart‖ (Melikoğlu, 1998: 53). Thus, Heathcliff, by being the usurper of the position of the son of the house (Hindley) and disrupting family relationships, brings chaos into this well-organized family.
Throughout the novel, to find a place for himself, Heathcliff usurps others‘ places, roles and possessions. In that respect, Peters associates Heathcliff with the cuckoo, which ―makes his home in the nest of other birds‖ (Peters, 2000: 49). Vine, too, emphasizes Nelly‘s definition of Heathcliff‘s story as that of a ―cuckoo‘s‖ (WH, 76) (Vine, 1994: 342). Heathcliff first takes the name of a dead son; then, takes Hindley‘s place as the favourite of Mr Earnshaw, and finally takes the possession of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange from their rightful owners. Therefore, he keeps taking the places of others, like the cuckoo that builds its nest in the home of other birds, which also indicates the possibility of upward mobility for the orphan. Heathcliff‘s comparison to the cuckoo, as usurper of others‘ places, suggests his association with the working class people, who threatened to usurp the privileges of the middle and upper classes.
Heathcliff has the potential to change social classes, and his mobility is due to his uprootedness as an orphan, who has no fixed place with which to identify. From being a poor orphan, after three years of disappearance, he is a rich gentleman, who eventually becomes the master of the two houses. Stevenson emphasizes ―the
16 way that [his] mobility seems tied to his absolute lack of origin‖ (Stevenson, 1988: 68). All these different social roles from different classes which he embodies show his potential for change, his adaptability to new situations and his flexibility in the social class system as an orphan. His potential to change classes and his flexibility, however, is threatening to the Victorian middle and upper classes due to their fear of being overthrown by the working class represented through the figure of the orphan. Also, as the lower classes were regarded as brutal by the upper classes, Heathcliff‘s use of force is more brutal than that of society and Heathcliff becomes a reflection of society‘s fear of the mob. Heathcliff, by possessing the two houses, shows that he has the capacity to realize Nelly‘s visualization of his family as rich enough to buy Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange (WH, 98). Vine argues ―Heathcliff […] literalizes Nelly‘s narrative by ―buying up‖ […] the Heights and the Grange and inventing himself as propertied patriarch in the process‖ (Vine, 1994: 348). Hence, Heathcliff sets an example for the orphan‘s flexibility and his potential to change classes, which is considered such a threat by society.
Besides posing a threat to paternal love, to family relationships and to the social class system in the novel, the orphan figure also symbolically threatens the marriage system of society in two ways. First of all, Heathcliff upsets the symmetry of the two families. Goetz explains the marriage system with his use of the term ―circulation‖. In a society, families marry their sons and daughters off to another family‘s sons and daughters. Thus a circulation is produced. However, Heathcliff, who possesses ―no family of his own, has no woman whom he can offer up for the general circulation‖ (Goetz, 1982: 366-367). Consequently, having no surname and by extension no lineage/ancestry, Heathcliff can never be acknowledged as a part of that system. Yet he is out to threaten that system by first trying to marry Catherine and then marrying Isabella, Edgar Linton‘s sister. The two families, who were ―compatible‖ in terms of social class, could have their children married (Stevenson, 1988: 76). Cohen, too, argues that the appearance of Heathcliff as an outsider complicates the marriage organization of the two families (Cohen, 1991: 91). As a result, Heathcliff upsets that symmetry.
Another way in which Heathcliff threatens the marriage system of society is by being both the brother and the other. As Stevenson argues, in a society, according to
17 marriage customs it is forbidden to marry an outsider, so in that respect, Heathcliff poses a threat as the potential suitor of Catherine because he belongs to a different race with his dark skin and probably comes from a different country. Stevenson further states that it is also forbidden to marry someone who is a member of your family, so again Heathcliff poses a threat as Catherine‘s brother. Catherine and Heathcliff are raised as brother and sister, which makes them family and hence their romantic relationship is considered to be incestuous by many critics. Stevenson refers to Kavanagh, Daiches, Eagleton, Eric Soloman, and Q. D. Leavis, who all regard the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff as incest (Stevenson, 1988: 74). Besides, Goetz argues that the structural position of their relationship ―demands that it be interpreted in just this way‖ because ―Heathcliff‘s adoptive place in the family turns him into a brother of Catherine‖ (Goetz, 1982: 363). Stevenson points out that Mr Earnshaw‘s naming Heathcliff after his dead son shows his wish that Hindley, Catherine and Heathcliff are ―raised as siblings‖ (Stevenson, 1988: 74- 75), which raises another issue, that is, the suggestion that Heathcliff may actually be Mr Earnshaw‘s illegitimate son. Among the critics who affirm this are Stevenson and Vine (Stevenson, 1988: 67; Vine, 1994: 341). Stevenson and Vine further regard Heathcliff‘s emerging from under Mr Earnshaw‘s coat as a representation of childbirth, making Heathcliff his son. Therefore, Heathcliff poses a double threat as ―the forbidden outsider‖ and ―the forbidden brother‖ (Stevenson, 1988: 73-74). Heathcliff‘s position as the brother and the other ―demonstrates the dangers of both incest and excessive exogamy‖ (Stevenson, 1988: 75-76). Either way, the orphan figure poses a symbolic danger.
The orphan figure also threatens the position of the servant as well. As Melikoğlu explains, Nelly, who was taken into the house before Heathcliff, is not adopted and loved by the patriarch as a daughter whereas Heathcliff is. If someone was to move from being a servant to being a family member, it should have been Nelly because she was there before Heathcliff:
It is, after all, she who has almost always been at the Heights, which should have earned the right to call herself a member of the Earnshaw family, but it turns out to be this newcomer‖. (Melikoğlu, 1998: 61)
As a result, by coming into the house, Heathcliff threatens and obstructs Nelly‘s prospective position as adopted daughter. On the night when Heathcliff is first
18 brought to Wuthering Heights, Nelly puts him outside because nobody wants him in the house, as a result of which she is punished with banishment from the house (WH, 87). The orphan, hence, disrupts the order of the people in the house, including that of the servant, which results in his being rejected by the household thus reflecting the current social outlook.
―Nelly, make me decent, I‘m going to be good […] I cried last night, […] and I had more reason to cry than she […] I wish I had light hair and a fair skin and was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be […] I must wish for Edgar Linton‘s great blue eyes and even forehead […]‖ (WH, 96-98)
The lines above are uttered by Heathcliff shortly after Catherine returns from her 5- week stay at Thrushcross Grange, having been taught how to become a lady in manners and attire. He begs Nelly to help him look like Edgar, who is a respectable member of society with his socially acceptable manners and his physical appearance as opposed to Heathcliff‘s obscure origins and his brutish appearance and manners. These words mark Heathcliff‘s last efforts to be accepted by society. Brown argues that ―his shame at the contrast between his appearance on [Catherine‘s] return to the Heights causes him to seek Nelly‘s help in making him presentable‖ and ―it is clear that his desire to resemble Edgar is an acknowledgement of his essential and unalterable difference from the socially acceptable‖ (Brown, 1993: 155). Every time Heathcliff tries to be accepted by society, he is rejected.
When Mr Earnshaw first brings Heathcliff home, the boy is disliked by everyone in the house. As Allott argues, from the beginning, Heathcliff is ―inseparably associated with discord and distress‖ (Allott, 1958: 170). The children don‘t like him because while Mr Earnshaw carries Heathcliff in his coat, the boy causes the children‘s toys to be broken and lost (WH, 78). Referring to the scene in which Heathcliff is expelled from the children‘s bedroom on the night of his arrival, Vine argues that Heathcliff‘s ―introduction‖ to the family is his ―expulsion‖ from it; ―when he is incorporated he is also excluded‖ (Vine, 1994: 343). Mrs Earnshaw and Nelly do not like the boy either, and Nelly puts him on ―the landing of the stairs‖ (WH, 78). They do not want to accept him into their house because there is no room in their society for someone without a family or a defined place in society. That they do not even see him as a human being can be understood from their frequent referral to him as ―it‖, treating
19 him as if he was not a human being but some property. Even Mr Earnshaw, who was benevolent enough to bring an orphan home, speaks of Heathcliff like a possession. He says he asked who ―it‖ belonged to, but he couldn‘t find ―its owner‖ and brought ―it‖ home. ―[S]eeing it starving, and houseless, and as good as dumb in the streets of Liverpool, where he picked it up and inquired for its owner‖ but no one knew ―to whom it belonged‖ (WH, 78). By naming Heathcliff after a dead Earnshaw son, which is supposed to be an act of recognizing Heathcliff as a family member, the family actually marks him as an embodiment of the difference within (Peters, 2000: 46).
Another scene in which Heathcliff is rejected by society because of his lack of family, name and property is the scene when Catherine and Heathcliff are caught by the Lintons in their garden. The Lintons welcome Catherine into their house, introduce her into their civilized world, and treat her like a lady. They wash Catherine‘s feet, comb her hair and give her slippers (WH, 92) because she belongs to a known family with property whereas they do not let Heathcliff in, exclude him from their civilized world and call him a ―thief‖ (WH, 90) simply because he has no family or name. Mrs Linton thinks Heathcliff is ―a wicked boy … quite unfit for a decent house‖ (WH, p.91). As Peters puts it:
It is a combination of Heathcliff‘s racialised difference, orphanhood, and unknown origins that leads to him being identified by Mrs Linton as both ‗wicked‘ and ‗quite unfit for a decent house‘ […]; the orphan has no place within the family economy. (Peters, 2000: 50)
The different treatment of Catherine and Heathcliff initiates their ―social awareness‖; one, being ―a neighbour‘s daughter, is pampered‖ and the other, seen as a ―gypsy and potential thief‖, is ―dismissed‖ because of his ―obscure origins‖ (Brown, 1993: 153). Hence, it is clear that the orphan is not accepted into any kind of ‗decent‘ social structure.
Moreover, Hindley, especially after his father‘s death, starts to torture Heathcliff more than before because he is jealous of his father‘s love for Heathcliff. He calls Heathcliff the ―usurper of his parent‘s affections, and his privileges‖ (WH, 79) and tries to humiliate him by reducing him to a servant and leaving him uneducated by depriving him of ―the instructions of the curate‖ (WH, 87). Hindlley, as the new
20 patriarch, tries to exclude the nameless orphan from his community and house. Since Heathcliff has no real family and by extension no real name, he originally doesn‘t have a social identity. Although he is like an adopted son, he ―must be exiled from culture‖ since he is a ―socially nobody‖ (Gilbert and Gubar, 1979: 268). Especially after the death of Mr Earnshaw ―the torture accelerates‖ and Heathcliff receives no education or culture since he doesn‘t have a place in society (Nussbaum, 2003: 400).
Catherine also rejects Heathcliff by believing that marrying him would ―degrade‖ her although she later admits that she loves him. In the scene where Catherine confesses to Nelly her love for Heathcliff, she says ―[i]t would degrade me to marry Heathcliff‖ (WH, 121). Hence, according to Catherine, who is another orphan corrupted by society‘s false notions, the materialistic outlook is more important than love, which is why she rejects Heathcliff.
The orphan as a figure that does not belong to the family is the personification of otherness. According to Peters, the difference and otherness of orphans are demonstrated in three ways, the first of which is to portray the orphan as a ―mysterious foundling with seemingly no known origins‖. The second is associating the orphan with ―travelling peoples (gypsies), who, by their lifestyle, disrupt certain notions of rootedness, family, home, Christianity and nationhood‖ and the third is the portrayal of the orphan as a ―criminalised‖ figure (Peters, 2000: 31-32). Heathcliff can be seen as an embodiment of all three of these ways:
[…] it is possible to read in Heathcliff the three central narratives identified in the popular narratives. Like the popular orphan narratives, this narrative constructs Heathcliff‘s difference through both the lack of known origins and the association of Heathcliff with travelling peoples (gypsies) – whose presence on the margins of Victorian society poses problems for the society‘s self-identity as rooted in family, place and Christianity. (Peters, 2000: 46)
Heathcliff embodies difference in Victorian society and most strikingly he is different from the others in appearance, being a ―dark skinned gypsy‖ (WH, 47) and ―black- haired child‖ (WH, 77). Apart from his appearance, the social class he belongs to, though indefinite, is certainly different from that of others. He is also described as ―unmannerly‖ (WH, 58) and ―vulgar‖ (WH, 107), emphasizing his want of manners. Being described as dark, cannibalistic – ―his sharp cannibal teeth‖ (WH, 212) – and
21 savage, Heathcliff represents ―a racial otherness within Victorian society‖ (Peters, 2000: 41). They regard him as a cannibal, who is a representation of someone who is totally alien to the rules and values of civilized societies, which shows society‘s hatred and fear of the unknown and the other as personified in the figure of the orphan. Society tries to repress what it fears and projects it onto the others. Hence, Heathcliff‘s description as a cannibal also symbolizes the cannibalism of upper classes, which exploit the lower classes and treat them inhumanely.
He is an outsider in the social class system because, being a poor orphan, he doesn‘t have a fixed place in society. Most of the characters he encounters try to give him a name or define his role in society, emphasizing the possibility that he can become anybody since he has no defined social role at birth. Stevenson argues that ―every character he comes in contact with (and every reader) is forced to mark him with a meaning they give‖ (Stevenson, 1988: 69-70). Mr Earnshaw names him after his dead son. He christens him Heathcliff, and, hence, presents him with the possibility of becoming the son of a landowner, and a place in society. Nelly also tries to console him by making him believe that he has oriental and exotic ancestry. She gets Heathcliff to imagine that he is a ―prince in disguise‖, his father is the ―Emperor of China‖, and his mother is ―an Indian queen‖, rich enough to buy Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange‖ (WH, 98). The different roles Heathcliff is offered are closely related with money as being a landowner‘s son implies wealth. Similarly, while the possibility of having some oriental parents emphasizes Heathcliff‘s otherness, Nelly‘s suggestion that they might be an emperor and a queen also implies a close connection with being wealthy in order to be accepted and respected by society. The act of naming Heathcliff also signifies how easily the orphan can be influenced by society, since naming someone is also giving him or her an identity.
However, not all the qualities attributed to Heathcliff are positive. Hindley wants to reduce him to a servant by driving ―him from their company to the servants‖ and forcing him to ―labour out of doors‖ (WH, 87), and Edgar calls him a ―gypsy‖ and a ―plough-boy‖ (WH, 134). Throughout the novel, names denoting people from lower classes are used for him. Hindley calls Heathcliff, ―a vagabond‖ (WH, 64), ―gipsy‖
22 and ―beggarly interloper‖ (WH, 80) and the Lintons call him a ―young ruffian‖ (WH, 107) and ―plough-boy‖ (WH, p.134).
The constant referral to Heathcliff as gypsy serves to emphasize his racial otherness and the disruption he causes in social structures. Peters explains how gypsies embody difference and disruption of the family ideal:
The existence of the gypsies within (albeit on the margins of) Victorian England and the racialised difference they embody poses uncomfortable problems for the construction of Victorian society as a family. Homelessness and a travelling lifestyle disrupt a family narrative and established social structures. (Peters, 2000: 36)
She further argues that the ―nomadism‖ and ―the travelling lifestyle‖ of gypsies ―disrupts the notion of rootedness understood to characterise the family and the home‖ and Heathcliff, as an orphan, causes disruption of notions of the home and domesticity by his presence (Peters, 2000: 49). Thus he is seen as a disruptive agent in society.
In addition to disturbing the social order with their uprootedness, the gypsies, ―in popular orphan adventure narrative‖, are given the role of ―stealing‖ children and property, disrupting lineage and destroying families (Peters, 2000: 53). Heathcliff also enacts this role by literally stealing Cathy and annexing the Earnshaw and Linton properties through deceit.
Heathcliff has dark hair and a dark skin, which also suggests a servant‘s ―black uniform‖, hence making the appropriate place for him the cellar, where servants spend their time, as Isabella Linton also finds fit for Heathcliff when she says ―[p]ut him in the cellar, papa‖ (WH, 91). It also shows his place ―at the bottom of society‖ (Melikoğlu, 1998: 62-63).
Heathcliff, as an embodiment of the other and of difference, also represents racial difference. Eagleton argues that Brontë uses ―stereotypical nineteenth-century British images of the Irish‖ to describe Heathcliff:
He is described as ‗a dirty, ragged, black-haired child‘ who speaks a kind of ‗gibberish‘. The novel will later portray him as savage, lunatic, violent, subversive and uncouth – all stereotypical nineteenth-century British images of the Irish. (Eagleton, 2005: 125)
23
According to Peters, Heathcliff representing the Irish poor, symbolizes ―the difference within Victorian culture‖ (Peters, 2000: 31). By describing Heathcliff in this fashion, Brontë obviously tries to emphasize his strangeness and alienness to Victorian society. His association with the Irish also reinforces his threatening aspect because, just like the British working class, the Irish were considered a threat by Britain and their ―suppression‖ was deemed ―absolutely necessary‖, since they were rebelling against Britain, who wanted to ensure its ―continued rule‖ in Ireland (O‘Brien, 1996). Also, as an orphan with no family, he is associated with the ―myth of the changeling of folklore who brings bad luck‖. We learn from Nelly that ―from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in the house‖ (WH, 79) (Brown, 1993: 151). As a result of this, he is also constantly associated with the demonic due to his dark skin and bad manners and numerous references attributing a demonic side to him. Van Ghent also comments that ―[h]is daemonic origin is always kept open, by reiterations of the likelihood that he is really a ghoul, a fiend, an offspring of hell, and not merely so in behaviour‖ (Van Ghent, 1952: 195).
Some of the various dark and evil names used when referring to him are ―diabolical‖ (WH, 55), ―as dark almost as if it came from the devil‖ (WH, 77), ―imp of Satan‖ (WH, 80), ―devil‖ (WH, 173), ―hellish villain‖ (WH, 175), ―a lying fiend, a monster, and not a human being‖ (WH, 188), ―incarnate goblin‖ (WH, 208), ―a most diabolical man‖ (WH, 255-256), and ―a ghoul, or a vampire‖ (WH, 359). With these denominations Heathcliff is portrayed as the embodiment of evil in the eyes of society. Just like the devil or the vampire, he is not allowed to enter the homes of Christians unless he is invited. Thormahlen argues that ―[l]ike other agents of evil, he has to rely on well- intentioned people for admission to Christian homes‖ (Thormahlen, 1997: 192). He can enter Wuthering Heights for the first time when he is carried by Mr Earnshaw, and he can enter Thrushcross Grange after he returns as a rich man when Edgar consents to invite him in by telling Catherine to ―[b]ring the person in‖ (WH, 134). However, although society regards Heathcliff as evil and dangerous, they still invite or accept him in, and inviting the evil agent in one‘s house shows an alliance with it, which may suggest the role of society in the destruction brought about by the orphan.
24 Society considers the orphan as evil but the real evil originates from society itself, which is corrupted and violent. Heathcliff, with his dark skin and lack of a name and property and unknown origins, is regarded as an alien in the world of ―good Christians‖ with known lineage and a considerable amount of property. This Christian community should have been benevolent and sympathetic towards an orphan considering their moral principles, but they are cruel to him and they exclude him from their community, giving him demonic names and attributes. Joseph, the representative of Christian community, is very cruel towards everyone, especially to children. He tells Cathy to ―go to the devil‖ like her mother did (WH, 57), boxes Catherine‘s ears (WH, 63), he ―thrash[es] Heathcliff till his arm ached‖ (WH, 87), he ―ransack[s] a Bible to rake the promises to himself, and fling the curses on his neighbours‖ (WH, 83) and he ―spread[s] his large Bible on the table, and overla[ys] it with dirty bank-notes […] the produce of the day‘s transactions‖ (WH, 346). He does not respect his religion. His Bible is no different for him than his business or his banknotes. To him, there is no distinction between the material and the spiritual and he is far from benevolent. Another example of the cruelty and corruption of Christianity in the novel can be observed in Lockwood‘s dream about Jabes Branderham, where he will be ―publicly exposed and excommunicated‖ for committing one of the sins mentioned in the manuscript written by Reverend Jabes Branderham (WH, 65). Nussbaum charges ―institutionalized Christianity […] with supporting a world of social hierarchy that excludes the poor and the strange, the dark-skinned and the nameless‖:
For the Linton world, Heathcliff‘s dark looks and lower-class manners must keep him apart from a Cathy who is taught that to marry him would ―degrade‖ her. The good Christians are too prompt, we feel, to baptize Heathcliff as fiend and devil; it is an all too convenient way of repudiating a look that they do not like […] (Nussbaum, 2003: 404)
Hence, it‘s not Heathcliff, who initiates violence throughout the novel, but rather the source of violence is the Christian/Victorian society.
In the novel, society projects its own corruption, evil and violence on the orphan by excluding and repressing him or her and attributes negative and socially unacceptable qualities to him or her because the orphan who is looking for a place in society is regarded as a threat. In order to create a place for himself or herself,
25 the orphan has to create chaos, that is, he or she has to replace the old order with a new one, and this causes fear and anxiety in society. Also, because the orphan represents the unknown, he or she evokes the subconscious fear of the unknown which may disrupt the existing order. For example, a poor orphan (Heathcliff) starts off as a waif and ends up as a rich landowner, and he causes other landowners to lose their property (Hindley), and be raised as farmhands (Hareton). This provokes middle and upper classes‘ fear of social mobility and stirs their subconscious fear of being overthrown by their subordinates, namely the working class represented by the orphan. Therefore, because of the orphan‘s capacity for change, he or she is considered to be an element of fear by society, which is partly why Gothic elements – namely, death, supernatural elements, violence, incarcerations and incest – are employed throughout the novel. By presenting an alternative reality through the intrusion of the other, the chaotic atmosphere of the Gothic helps defamiliarize the familiar and disrupts the unity of particular structures such as family relations and social class.
One of the Gothic elements that inspires fear in the novel is death. Death, as the unknown and the point of extreme injury, constitutes a source of great terror. To begin with, the orphan is closely related to death because he or she lost one or both parents at an early age and his or her life springs from death. In the novel two babies (Cathy and Hareton) cause the death of their mothers during childbirth. The loss of the mother also symbolizes the absence or death of values that are associated with the mother such as compassion, love and security. Sternlieb describes the novel as ―a landscape of childhood grief and loss‖ and ―an orphaned earth‖ (Sternlieb, 2002: 41). Death can be perceived throughout the novel through the presence of orphans and dying of parents, which can also stand for the orphaned state of the Victorians of their traditional values.
Heathcliff himself is also associated with death. First of all, his name is the name of a dead boy (WH, 78). Besides, he brings about the death of his own son, Linton. His words to Cathy – ―[n]one here care what becomes of him‖ – show his indifference to the illness and subsequent death of his son (WH, 323). He also threatens to kill other people. His contemplation of killing Edgar is reflected by his words: ―[t]he moment her [Cathy‘s] regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drunk his
26 blood‖ (WH, 185). He also kills Isabella‘s dog, Fanny, by hanging it (WH, 167), and plans to ―murder‖ Hindley ―some time‖ (WH, 154). Also, Hareton and Cathy are orphaned mostly due to Heathcliff‘s intervention. Peters argues that losing his property to Heathcliff brings about Hindley‘s death, leaving Hareton an orphan and Catherine‘s death is triggered by Heathcliff‘s return, just as Cathy‘s abduction by Heathcliff and marriage to Heathcliff‘s son contributes to Edgar‘s death, leaving Cathy orphaned. Causing or quickening the death of others can be regarded as a ―reproduction of his own orphan state‖ (Peters, 2000: 55). Again, Heathcliff is closely related to death. His love, too, is closely associated with death. He remains in love with a dead woman for almost two decades and yearns for death in order to be reunited with her (WH, 320). The recurring theme of death, therefore, accommodates the element of fear necessary for the Gothic plot.
The association with another world is also emphasized in the supernatural elements in the novel. Ghosts, for example, continually appear or are mentioned in the novel. At the beginning of the novel, the ghost of Catherine as a child appears in Lockwood‘s dream (WH, 66-67), which makes Lockwood think that ―the place was haunted […] swarming with ghosts and goblins‖ (WH, 68). Later on in the novel, Nelly thinks she sees the child Hindley‘s ghost and says that her eyes are ―cheated into a momentary belief that the child lift[s] its face and stare[s] straight into [hers]‖ (WH, 147). Heathcliff, immediately after Catherine dies, becomes obsessed with seeing Catherine‘s ghost and begs Catherine‘s ghost to haunt him: ―may you not rest, as long as I am living … haunt me … I know that ghosts have wandered on earth‖ (WH, 204). Finally, after Heathcliff dies Nelly talks to a crying little boy who says he has seen Heathcliff and a woman under the Nab, ―the country folks […] would swear on their Bible that he walks, and the ―old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on ‘em looking out of his chamber window‖ (WH, 366). According to Allott, recurrent image-patterns such as the oak-panelled bed, ―the opened window letting in ice-cold wind‖, and the fir-tree contribute to the ―feelings of savagery and supernatural awe‖ and ―notions of exile and imprisonment‖ (Allott, 1958: 171). They all contribute to the Gothic elements in the novel. The Gothic atmosphere of the novel is also reinforced through the implication of incest, which is another theme that provokes fear. Although it is not openly stated, there is an
27 implication of incest in the novel, and it contributes to the Gothic atmosphere. In this way, the orphan is seen to disrupt the family values of the patriarchal family.
In addition, the atmosphere of violence is prevalent throughout the novel. Not only do parents use violence towards children, but there is violence between adults and between children as well. Nussbaum describes the violent atmosphere using these words: ―[e]nvy and retribution dominate the novel, in scene after scene of brutal and uncontrolled physical violence in which every character partakes‖ (Nussbaum, 2003: 400). There are numerous scenes where Hindley is cruel towards Catherine and Heathcliff. Especially after the death of Mr Earnshaw, when ―Hindley bec[omes] tyrannical to Heathcliff‖, he ―dr[ives] him from their company to servants‖, and ―order[s] Heathcliff a flogging and Catherine a fast from supper‖ (WH, 87). Hindley beats Heathcliff, who throws hot apple sauce at Edgar (WH, 99-100). In addition, Hindley threatens Nelly with a carving knife, tries to cut Hareton‘s ears and drops him down as he leans forward on the first floor rails (WH, 114-115). When Cathy and Nelly are incarcerated in the house by Heathcliff, Cathy ―applie[s] her teeth pretty sharply‖ on Heathcliff‘s hand, for which she receives ―a terrific shower of slaps on both sides of the head‖ (WH, 302). Cathy slaps Nelly on the hand when Nelly discovers her love letter to Linton (WH, 258). Cathy is also violent towards Linton. She gives the chair ―a violent push, and cause[s] him to fall against one arm‖ (WH, 272). Cathy whips Hareton: ―I gave him a cut with my whip, thinking, perhaps he would murder me‖ (WH, 284). Joseph ―tears down [Catherine‘s] handy work [and] boxes [her] ears‖ (WH, 63). Catherine spits at Heathcliff when she learns her father lost her whip and her father gives her a ―blow‖ (WH, 78). The Lintons release their dogs, which attack Catherine and Heathcliff (two children) and bite Catherine‘s leg (WH, 90). Mr Earnshaw, a Victorian father, buys a whip for his daughter. Lockwood, a Victorian gentleman, in his dream, rubs a little girl‘s hand across the broken window pane (WH, 67). Hence, all kinds of violence prevail in the novel, which emphasizes the cruel side of the Victorian society.
Since the two houses in Wuthering Heights represent Victorian society, the atmosphere of violence influencing the lives of these characters represent the unacknowledged side of Victorian social and family life, which was obviously dominated by violence and cruelty to those weaker than themselves. Heathcliff, as
28 an orphan with no parental guidance, comes to represent the self, which is vulnerable and is yet to be shaped by society. As he has no real family to guide him and teach him moral values, he can be seen as a true product of Victorian society. Peters refers to Alexander Thomson, who argues that the family is ―one great institution for training children‖ and regards the role of Victorian society as a ―parental one‖ (Peters, 2000: 38-39). Therefore, society acts like parents to the orphan, being responsible for all the good and evil he or she performs. Consequently, in Heathcliff‘s case, society becomes responsible for Heathcliff‘s unacceptable and disapproved behaviour.
Heathcliff is adopted by a family, which represents Victorian society, and in the hands of whom he learns violent behaviour. He uses the means he learns from Victorian society to take his revenge on them. He resorts to violence very often, because he was exposed to it as a child, it was the first lesson he learned from society. Also, in order to take over Hindley‘s property, he seizes the opportunity of profiting from his gambling, which can be regarded as the corruption of a Victorian gentleman. Had society taught Heathcliff to be virtuous and had they been kind to him, he would probably not have acted so violently and destructively towards them. Heathcliff‘s very existence is the proof and confirmation of the cruelty of the Victorians. Nelly also admits this by saying that Hindley‘s treatment of Heathcliff ―was enough to make a fiend of a saint‖ (WH, 106). According to Peters, most orphans are destined to become criminals as a result of ―the abuse and lack of care they received‖; hence, it is the society who is ―producing and criminalising orphans‖ (Peters, 2000: 37).
When Heathcliff becomes a patriarch himself by possessing the two great houses, he becomes oppressive just like the other patriarchs in the novel. Because Victorian society was based on injustice, the middle and upper classes appear to be afraid of the power of the working class. They were afraid that if the working class or the weak gained power, then one day the middle and upper classes would be oppressed or overthrown by them, which was probably why the upper classes were tyrannical towards the lower classes. Due to their fear of being overthrown, the upper classes were trying to suppress the lower classes or the weak by resorting to violence, which is similar to what Heathcliff also does, being a reflection and product
29 of Victorian society. Heathcliff remains at the centre of the violence in the novel. Being the uneducated and uncultivated orphan of the novel, he is portrayed as more prone to committing violent acts (threatening to kill people, etc), which could also be taken as a sign of the Victorian prejudice against the orphan, which Heathcliff comes to prove right by the violent deeds he learns from society. Although the other characters commit as many acts of violence as Heathcliff, it is Heathcliff who becomes a monster because being a monster would be a probable ending for most Victorian orphans. In the Victorian age, there was a multitude of orphan children in the streets who either ended up as criminals or died due to exploitation.
The exploited and rejected orphan retaliates against society. Heathcliff‘s rejection by Catherine and society brings about his determination to take his revenge by using the power of money, that is, by becoming rich in order to dispossess his oppressors and meet the financial standards that Catherine expects from a husband. Catherine explains these standards to Nelly while trying to justify her decision to marry Edgar, saying that he will be ―rich‖ and she then will be ―the greatest woman of the neighbourhood‖ (WH, 118). Heathcliff also punishes Hindley and Edgar by using money as a weapon, namely by dispossessing them. In order to achieve his ―dual purpose‖, Heathcliff must get rid of his ―handicaps‖ or ―impediments to a union with Catherine‖, which are ―his poverty, his ignorance, and his low social status‖ (Thormahlen, 1997: 191). Hence, at last, Heathcliff turns against his oppressors.
The following critics agree that Heathcliff is not the initiator of violence and revenge in the novel. As Heathcliff tries to find a place for himself in society, the society keeps rejecting him, thereby causing him to turn against it and seek revenge and bring destruction. According to Brown, Heathcliff decides to seek revenge and become destructive because of his rejection by society (Brown, 1993: 155). Similarly, Melikoğlu argues that believing Catherine has rejected him, Heathcliff turns back to his obscure origins and then comes back for revenge, so, just like the monster in Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein, he is turned into a monster because of society‘s ―brutalization and disownment‖ (Melikoğlu, 1998: 68-69). Nussbaum also states that because they humiliate Heathcliff for his colour, poverty and unknown origins, he devotes his life to taking revenge on his tormentors by dispossessing and disinheriting them of their property (Nussbaum, 2003: 401). Eagleton also sees
30 Heathcliff as a victim of society, who, after being rejected by society, uses its weapons (property, contracts, etc) to take his revenge:
[I]t is the society which refuses Heathcliff human recognition which drives him in the end to hijack its property and cultural capital, and outdo it in its own exploitative techniques. (Eagleton, 2005: 137)
Finally, Sternlieb also looks at Heathcliff‘s case from a Marxist perspective and regards Heathcliff as an individual with no resources to fall back on, trying to find a place for himself within the social system but is rejected because of his ―class, race, or ethnic identity‖, until he uses the society‘s weapons to take vengeance on it (Sternlieb, 2002: 45). Thus, it can be concluded that Heathcliff, as a victim of society, encounters rejection by society, which drives him to take revenge by trying to destroy it.
Heathcliff effects some changes in the two ―great houses‖ of the novel (Auerbach, 1976, 405). Levy presents a list of various descriptions of the two houses by famous critics, each one showing the distinct characteristics or ―polarities‖ they stand for:
[…] ―the land of storm‖ and ―the home of calm‖ (Cecil), Hell and Heaven (Gilbert and Gubar), ―the Sexual‖ and ―the Spiritual‖ (Prentis), classless society and hierarchical society (Winnifreth), disappearing farm culture and emerging Victorian gentility (Q. D. Leavis), savagery and civilization (Reed), patriarchal society and negated feminine authority (Lavabre) (LEVY, 1986: 158-159)
Although there are various ways of looking at the two houses, both houses, no matter how dissimilar they are, represent patriarchy. Both are ruled by patriarchs, and both have servants – although the ones at Thrushcross Grange ―know their place[s]‖, the ones at Wuthering Heights sometimes do not (Melikoğlu, 1998: 65). Besides, both houses are considered ―respectable‖ as ―[t]he Gimmerton Band go to all the respectable houses every Christmas‖ (WH, 100). On the other hand, Thrushcross Grange is undeniably more typically Victorian than Wuthering Heights, as can be seen in the scene where Catherine and Heathcliff peep through one of the windows at Thrushcross Grange. It is ―a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre and shimmering with little soft tapers (WH, 89). Peters describes this scene as a ―contented domestic scene‖ (Peters, 2000: 54). Although everything, at first glance, seems peaceful, the
31 reader soon learns that the children of that house are screaming and weeping over a puppy and some other dogs of the house attack little children (WH, 89-90).
Heathcliff rejects the role of servant that society tries to mould him into and destroys both houses to take his revenge on his enemies and reverses social roles. He ―pursues a murderous revenge against patriarchy‖ (Gilbert and Gubar, 1979, 296). He achieves his aim by ―appropriating‖ Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and ―destroying them‖ (Miller, 2003: 373). At the beginning of the novel, Heathcliff was dispossessed. However, following his re-appearance after three years of absence, he reverses this. In the second half of the novel, the reader observes ―an inversion of his position of dispossession‖ in economic terms (Vine, 1994: 353). He takes possession of Wuthering Heights by taking advantage of Hindley‘s gambling, and he owns Thrushcross Grange by forcing his son Linton to marry Cathy. As an orphan, he poses a threat to the social order by usurping the great house from its legitimate owner and becoming its master instead of its servant, echoing the attempt of the working class to overthrow the middle and upper classes. Melikoğlu states that ―Heathcliff has, then, reversed the social hierarchy that would have placed him, as the former servant of Hindley, below Hareton‖ (Melikoğlu, 1998: 74). According to the role imposed on him by society, he should have been the servant of Hareton, who is the legitimate owner of the house, and this would not render him dangerous. However, he makes Hareton his servant, reversing the social roles between master and servant. Similarly, he makes Cathy his servant and forces her to work in the kitchen.
Heathcliff also strives to end the ―line of descent‖ of the two families by attempting to kill some members of these families (Isabella, Hindley, and Linton) during his struggle to take his revenge against patriarchy. He desires to ―dis-continue‖ the ways of this world and to ―get at the heart of patriarchy by stifling the line of descent that ultimately gives culture its legitimacy‖ (Gilbert and Gubar, 1979: 297). Peters argues:
Heathcliff desires that which belongs to the rightful heir and desires the annihilation of the family privilege which marginalises him. In the process he destroys the social position that the family occupies previously. (Peters, 2000: 55)
32 By possessing the two houses and reversing the roles between master and servant, he cuts the bonds between family and land. According to Eagleton, Heathcliff also tries to ―destroy the old yeoman settlement‖ by ―dispossessing Hareton‖ and employs the weapons of the world of the Lintons – property deals, arranged marriages etc – while doing this (Eagleton, 1976: 209).
The two houses which were different at the beginning have become similar in the end because of Heathcliff‘s intervention. Wuthering Heights used to be violent, agrarian, and less civilized, whereas Thrushcross Grange used to be more civilized and more typically Victorian. Flowers are planted in the garden of Wuthering Heights in the end. Cathy persuades Hareton ―to clear a large space of ground from currant and gooseberry bushes‖ and they plan together ―an importation of plants from the Grange‖ (WH, 347). Also, Cathy teaches Hareton how to read, civilizing him, so Wuthering Heights is like Thrushcross Grange now, and Hareton, a representative of farm culture, will live in Thrushcross Grange after he and Cathy, the two remaining heirs of the two families due to Heathcliff‘s intervention, get married. Besides, in the end, patriarchy and hierarchy are not as clear-cut or sharply defined as at the beginning of the novel. Throughout the novel, the men were the ones who were educated (Hindley goes to school, Catherine stays at home) and men were given the privilege of reading (Edgar can spend his time in his library, but Cathy, after she is abducted by Heathcliff, is deprived of her books and is not allowed to read). At the end of the novel, however, Hareton, the new patriarch-to-be, is learning how to read from his future wife, which, according to Victorian conventions, was unusual. There is a similar scene at the end of Jane Eyre, in which Jane reads for Rochester because he cannot see clearly. In both cases, it is the woman who instructs the male. Middle- and upper-class Victorian women did not usually get formal education and were engaged in needlework, playing the piano, etc, and men were the educated ones, whereas at the end of Wuthering Heignts as well as at the end of Jane Eyre, these traditional roles are also reversed. In this way, a more balanced and calmer society appears at the end of the novel as a result of the orphan‘s interference.
Heathcliff starts off as a poor orphan, he is adopted by a family, and he is exposed to violence and rejection by society because he is regarded as an embodiment of
33 difference within family and society, repressed and wronged, representing the working class struggle for overthrowing the upper and middle classes. As he is tyrannized, he takes his revenge on his oppressors by destroying their system and creating a new one in which there is room for him. He ends up and dies as a landowner, having possessed the houses, from which he was previously excluded. Emily Brontë reveals the corruption and cruelty of Victorian society through the victimization of the orphan by society, but the victimized orphan turns against society using the society‘s violence and cruelty against itself. Consequently, after all the cruelty of society is revealed and after the repressed cruelty is dead, there is a kind of purging and reconciliation. From the atmosphere of chaos created by the orphan, a calmer and more peaceful society is produced at the end of the novel.
The new system created by Heathcliff, however, requires his death because Heathcliff is an embodiment of society‘s cruelty and violence. Hence, since he retains the evil characteristics of that society, he should not be a part of the new system. The evil effect should be purged from the new system. The family, which was disintegrated by the orphan, is regenerated with the final union of Cathy and Hareton in an atmosphere of domesticity, when they are practising reading. A new concept of domesticity, which is free from pretensions and violence, and is based on equality, is displayed at the end of the novel and it differs considerably from the seemingly happy atmosphere of Thrushcross Grange and the violent atmosphere of Wuthering Heights.
34 CHAPTER III JANE EYRE
Jane, in Charlotte Brontë‘s Jane Eyre, is another orphan and she will be the focus of this chapter. Her obscure social class and her orphanhood places Jane in the position of the other, without a place in the domestic ideal or society as a whole. Hence, she is depicted as a threat to these, because of her unconventionality and her attempt to create a place for herself in society. Gothic elements are used in order to convey Jane‘s repressed feelings and to symbolize society‘s fear of change. Also, the violence and cruelty of Victorian society is revealed through the victimization and abuse of the orphan, who is in fact a defenceless being whose self is yet to be formed by society. Jane, who is excluded by society, takes her revenge, through her repressed anger and by using the methods dictated to her by patriarchal society. Charlotte Brontë shows not only how an orphan girl finds a place and identity for herself in society, but also delineates a thorough picture of Victorian cruelty through the oppression of a helpless orphan.
Like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, the protagonist of Jane Eyre is an orphan without a fixed social class. Jane‘s mother is of the upper class and she marries ―a poor clergyman […] against the wishes of her friends, who considered the match beneath her‖ (JE, 58). After the death of her parents, Jane is ―brought up a dependant‖ at Gateshead, where she is left under the care of her maternal uncle Mr Reed, who dies shortly after telling his wife to take care of Jane (JE, 373). However, Mrs Reed fails to do this and Jane‘s position at Gateshead, especially after her uncle‘s death, becomes lower than that of a servant, as Abbot, one of the servants at Gateshead, tells her: ―you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep‖ (JE, 44). Also, Jane is employed by Bessie, another servant at Gateshead, ―as a sort of under nursery-maid, to tidy the room, dust the chairs, &c.‖, which makes her social status ambiguous (JE, 62):
Jane‘s social status is […] destabilized by the fact that she is […] an orphan, disengaged from the social structure and adrift. At Gateshead and Thornfield both, she is neither family nor servant, but floats uncomfortably between. (Fraiman, 1996: 616-617)
35 However, as an orphan ―bereft of all kinsfolk‖, Jane‘s ―self‖ is ―naked, unhoused and therefore perilously vulnerable‖, but it is also ―free from all constraint, able […] to write its own script and forge its own destiny‖ (Eagleton, 2005: 126). Jane‘s potential to ―shake the [social] ladder‖ (Fraiman, 1996:619) and to reshape her destiny by changing her social class renders her a possible threat to the existing system.
A similar ambiguity in her social class can be observed when Jane becomes a governess. As Eagleton, Gilbert, Godfrey and Legatt and Parkes argue, her social position as a governess is ambiguous. The governess is socially inferior but culturally and spiritually ―superior‖ to her employers (Eagleton, 2005:128). As a governess, Jane is superior to ordinary servants, but since she gets paid for her ―servitude‖ (JE, 117) and calls Rochester her ―master‖ (JE, 150), she is inferior. This makes her position in society an ―anomalous‖ one (Gilbert, 1996: 477). Godfrey describes the governess‘s position as ―a hole in the invisible wall between working- class and middle-class […] identities‖, thus confirming Jane‘s ambiguous position in society (Godfrey, 2005: 857).
Both as an orphan and as a governess, Jane poses a threat to the Victorian ideal of domesticity. As an orphan, she has no place or role in the family and as a governess she embodies a ―paradox‖. On the one hand, she ―epitomize[s] the domestic ideal‖ by acting the role of the mother, and on the other hand, she ―threaten[s] to destroy‖ that ideal by being a working woman (Legatt & Parkes, 2006, 181).
Brontë‘s heroine does not conform to the traditional submissive feminine image, which is another reason why she can be considered a threat to Victorian society. Jane‘s language is very unconventional. As a child, she finds the power to question Mrs Reed about her meanness towards Jane and describes it as the outburst of ―something‖ that ―[speaks] out of [her] over which [she] ha[s] no control‖ (JE, 60). Also, after Mr Brocklehurst‘s visit to Gateshead, Jane defies Mrs Reed and calls her ―hard-hearted‖ and ―deceitful‖, which is a very unusual way for a Victorian orphan to address her so-called benefactress (JE, 69). Gilbert describes this as ―an extraordinarily self-assertive act‖, which a ―Victorian child‖ would be incapable of (Gilbert, 1996: 479). Jane describes this scene as the first victory she has gained (JE, 69). It means her first victory against the patriarchy that oppresses her.
36 According to Brown, Victorian readers at those times regarded Jane as an ungrateful heroine because of her ―manifest anger, resentment and refusal to accord respect to Christian society‖. She further argues that it is Jane‘s ―outspokenness‖ that caused the novel to be regarded as ―dangerous and revolutionary‖ (Brown, 1993: 143). Unconventionally, Jane refuses to accept being treated like a servant. She does not accept this treatment passively and she has a rebellious nature.
With her revolutionary ideas about gender roles, Jane poses a threat to the conventional role of women in society. Newman draws attention to Brontë‘s ―many breaks with convention such as the un-Victorian courtship scenes between Jane and Rochester, and Jane‘s claim for equality with men (Newman, 1996: 452). During her first weeks at Thornfield, Jane, feeling bored, contemplates the position of women and their need for action just like men‘s. She believes ―it is narrow-minded […] to say that [women] ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags‖ (JE, 141). Her words, which sound like a feminist manifesto, are quite exceptional and revolutionary for the Victorian reader. Sadoff states that a nineteenth-century daughter was ―unlikely to question‖ the female dependence on men, and ―unlikely to mutiny, as did Jane against her young and old masters‖ (Sadoff, 1996: 529).
Jane‘s unconventionality is also expressed in her relationship with Rochester. Starting with their first encounter, it is Rochester who always needs Jane‘s help. Rochester, who falls off his horse, is unable to walk, and leans on Jane to help him walk (JE, 144-146). Also when Bertha sets fire to Rochester‘s bed, it is Jane who rescues him again and Rochester asks Jane‘s help when Richard Mason, Bertha Mason‘s brother, is wounded. Hence, instead of Rochester saving her, Jane is ―like the fairy-tale prince‖ who saves Rochester whenever he is in trouble (Bodenheimer, 1987: 167).
It is unconventional for a Victorian woman to talk overtly about her marriage to a man. After Rochester‘s first marriage proposal to Jane, he tells her ―you mutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal […] it was you who made the offer‖ (JE, 291). Jane also converses with St John, her cousin, about his love for
37 Rosamond Oliver, which surprises St John, who ―had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man‖ and thereby defy traditions (JE, 400).
Also, she resists Rochester‘s desire ―to drape her in silks and jewels‖ and expresses her irritation (Godfrey, 2005: 864). As they are shopping for their planned wedding, Rochester makes allusions to the seraglio, which disturbs Jane, who threatens to ―stir up mutiny‖ there (JE, 297-298). By talking about ―rousing a group of women to rebel against a man who owns and oppresses them‖ and refusing to be adorned with expensive clothes and jewellery, Jane shows her determination to reject the traditional role of women as passive objects rather than subjects (Michie, 1996: 596). Rochester tries to turn Jane into a passive object. Rochester, it seems, refuses to see her as a social being. Bodenheimer argues that ―Jane‘s subsequent refusal to play out his idea of her part is, among other things, a refusal to be a supporting character in a dubious – and irresponsible – tale of someone else‘s invention‖. By rejecting his idea, she asserts herself (Bodenheimer, 1987: 164-165).
Jane‘s plain appearance adds to her unconventionality as well as preventing her from becoming an object of the male gaze. As a child she was ―humbled by the consciousness of [her] physical inferiority to Eliza, John and Georgiana Reed‖ (JE, 39). Also before she leaves Lowood for Thornfield, during Bessie‘s visit, Bessie tells her that she was ―no beauty as a child‖ (JE, 123). On her first day at Thornfield, Jane expresses that she is little, pale, and has irregular and marked features (JE, 130). Brontë‘s heroine does not resemble other traditional Victorian heroines, who are at least of average beauty as defined by the Victorian standards.
Jane‘s marriage is also very unconventional since she marries someone above her class. Mrs Fairfax, who represents the typical Victorian outlook, disapproves of this marriage:
For Mrs. Fairfax, Jane and Rochester's engagement seems the flaunting of a doubly violated social taboo in which class and age boundaries, and their accompanying gender norms, are subverted through sexuality and legitimized through marriage. (Godfrey, 2005: 863)
In addition to attempting to marry above her class, Jane also divides her inheritance in a very unusual way, giving equal shares to her cousins and includes women in
38 the system of inheritance. Legatt and Parkes argue that Jane‘s inheritance is ―modern‖ because ―it is shared equally amongst various members of the family, including the women, and does not allow the recipient to escape labour for the decadence of aristocratic life‖ (Legatt and Parkes, 2006: 185). Hence, Jane defies the tradition of primogeniture, which dictates that the first-born son should inherit all the family property.
Jane‘s religious views, too, can be regarded as unconventional and threatening by the Victorians. At Gateshead, when Mr Brocklehurst, who is also the manager of Lowood, asks Jane about how to avoid going to hell, she replies ―I must keep in good health and not die‖ (JE, 64). Her answer illustrates how she questions the Christian belief in heaven and hell. Later at Lowood, she further calls religion into question. After Helen is flogged by Miss Scatcherd, Jane says ―if she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose‖ (JE, 88). As an adult, she questions heaven and hell again by asking ―Whither will that spirit […] flit when at length released?‖ (JE, 265). Also, after she finds out about Bertha Mason, she runs away to nature instead of asking for God‘s mercy, saying that she has ―no relative but the universal mother, Nature‖ (JE, 349).
There are attempts by two meek female characters to tame Jane‘s unconventional side. At Lowood, Miss Temple, the superintendent of Lowood, and Helen Burns, one of the girls at school, try to tame Jane‘s rebellious feelings. As Fraiman puts it:
If Gateshead stages Jane‘s revolt, Lowood responds punitively. It also introduces a more conventional narrative of female development involving the acquisition of humility, aspiration after respectability through romance, and the restraint of gender and class rage. (Fraiman, 1996: 620)
When Jane first meets Helen, she tells Jane that she asks ―rather too many questions‖, which is not proper for a Victorian and Christian child (JE, 83). Jane, in turn, is surprised by Helen‘s Christian philosophy of turning the other cheek. Jane thinks that ―[w]hen we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard‖ (JE, 90) whereas Helen believes that people should ―return good for evil‖ as ―the Bible bids‖ them (JE, 88). Hence, Jane is to learn from Helen the Christian virtue of forgiveness, which she demonstrates, although unreciprocated, at Mrs Reed‘s deathbed.
39 Although Jane is deeply affected by Helen, who ―preaches the orthodox lessons of forgiveness and endurance‖ (Golban, 2003: 194), Helen is an ―impossible ideal‖ for Jane, just like Miss Temple, who has ―repressed her own share of madness and rage‖ and ―embodies that impossible Victorian ideal, the woman-as-angel-in-the- house‖. Both Miss Temple and Helen act as mothers for Jane. They both comfort her, counsel her, feed her, embrace her and teach her ―at least superficially to compromise‖ (Gilbert, 1996: 480-481). Due to their taming influence, Jane can repress her anger to some extent, which later returns through the violent deeds of Bertha Mason, Rochester‘s mad wife, who also represents Jane‘s alter ego, as Miss Temple‘s ―domesticating effect‖ wanes when she marries and leaves Lowood and Jane (Fraiman, 1996: 622). Hence, Helen and Miss Temple help Jane‘s unconventionality to take a form more acceptable by Victorian society.
Jane threatens and questions the Victorian readers‘ religious values. Jane‘s Christianity is different from that of Helen‘s, Mr Brocklehurst‘s and St John‘s as she tells the reader after she decides to go back to Thornfield: ―[I] prayed in my way – a different way to St John‘s, but effective in its own fashion‖ (JE, 445). Clarke describes the two religious systems in the novel as one being ―female-centered and pre-Christian‖, and the other as ―patriarchal and Christian‖ (Clarke, 2000: 708). Jane threatens the latter. She worships a human being and confesses that Rochester becomes more important to her than God: ―He stood between me and every thought of religion […] I could not […] see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol‖ (JE, 302). She commits blasphemy by worshipping a man instead of God. However, worshipping Rochester does not prove to be an effective alternative for Jane, so she has to find or create another realm of truth where it is not necessary to worship a man. Hence Victorians perceive Jane as a character threatening Victorian social and religious values and, by extension, its class system.
Jane as an orphan is the other who is excluded from the domestic ideal no matter how much she tries to be a part of this. Golban, Vanden Bossche, and Legatt and Parkes suggest that the novel deals mainly with Jane‘s desire to find a place in the world (Golban, 2003: 194; Vanden Bossche, 2005: 59; Legatt and Parkes, 2006: 181). She prefers death to being excluded from society. At Lowood, after Mr Brocklehurst humiliates Jane in front of the other girls and announces that she is
40 deceitful, she tells Helen how she would feel if she were excluded: ―if others don‘t love me I would rather die than live – I cannot bear to be solitary and hated‖ (JE, 101). Jane‘s yearning for social inclusion can also been seen in the scene where she sits on the top step of the stairs with Adèle, Rochester‘s ward, and watches Rochester‘s guests as they arrive (JE, 198). Just like Heathcliff, who wishes he were handsome and fair like Edgar, and Pip, who wishes he did not have thick boots and dirty hands, Jane wishes she were more beautiful with ―rosy cheeks, a straight nose, [and a] small cherry mouth‖ (JE, 130). She desires to possess a notion of beauty approved by society. The orphan in fiction wants to be a part of society and therefore poses a threat to society because his or her inclusion requires a disruption of the social order. Young compares Jane to the monster in Mary Shelly‘s Frankenstein, arguing that Jane, too, desires to ―achieve a satisfying integration in a society that seems to have no place for her‖ (Young, 1991: 327). Alluding to the scene where the starving Jane looks through the window at her cousins‘ house, Young further argues that both Jane and the monster ―stoop literally and metaphorically to spy through a small low window on a private domestic scene‖ from which they are excluded as outsiders (Young, 1991: 333). Jane as an orphan with no family or money is denied a stable position in society. She gains it only after she inherits money from her uncle.
As an orphan, Jane does not meet the requirements of society and society ―isolates those who do not conform to its requirements‖ (Brown, 1993: 140). She has no place or role in the family ideal since she is no one‘s sister or daughter. Her ―lack of a place and a name‖ that could include her into the family causes her to remain ―alone, an outsider, unloved and unwanted‖ (Siebenschuh, 1976: 212-213). Besides, due to her indignant character, she does not fit into the role of the passive female: ―Speak I must: I had been trodden on severely, and must turn‖ (JE, 68):
An orphan who is both poor and plain, Jane is victimised and excluded from this parody of a family circle because she constitutionally and mentally cannot match up to the role of the docile, placid female. (Brown, 1993: 139)
Hence, her exclusion at Gateshead commences after her uncle‘s death. In the opening scene of the book, Jane is hiding in the window recess from the household, which symbolizes her role as an ―outcast‖ (Sadoff, 1996: 531). Kaplan suggests that this scene is full of ―negations‖: Jane is ―denied activity‖ because she cannot take a
41 walk that day, she is ―banished‖ because she cannot join the others, and she is ―muzzled‖ since she is told to remain silent. Thus, the scene ―establishes her exclusion from the symbolic order‖ (Kaplan, 1996: 8). She receives hatred instead of love from her aunt and cousins. She is excluded ―from privileges intended only for contented, happy little children‖ by her aunt and after she quarrels with John Reed, she is incarcerated in the red-room like a criminal, which further contributes to her isolation and otherness (JE, 39):
Jane is punished for her rebellion by being thrown into a dungeon—or the closest thing to a dungeon in the upper-class home of the Reeds. [...] By isolating Jane in the red room, Mrs Reed wants her to come to the realization that she is profoundly alone in the world, that she cannot possibly fend for herself, and that she must submit (Legatt and Parkes, 2006: 172).
Michie states that Jane, as the other, is also associated with ―images of racial difference‖, which link her ―to rebellious colonized peoples‖ as she is described sitting ―cross-legged, like a Turk‖ (JE, 39) (Michie, 1996: 592). Being told by Helen that her religious philosophy of striking back when struck at is a doctrine held by ―[h]eathens and savage tribes‖, Rochester‘s harem metaphor and her association with Bertha, who is a Creole, are other examples of Jane‘s depiction as the racially other, which emphasize her exclusion (JE, 90).
Examples of Jane‘s exclusion can be seen at Gateshead, Lowood and Thornfield. At Gateshead, the Reeds banish Jane from their company. Mrs Reed tells her children to shun Jane: ―since my illness she had drawn a more marked line of separation than ever between me and her own children, [...] condemning me to take my meals alone‖ (JE, 59). At Lowood, Brocklehurst stigmatizes her as a liar and tells the girls to ―avoid her company, exclude her from [their] sports; and shut her out from [their] converse‖ (JE, 98). At Thornfield, Rochester tries to make her his mistress saying that ―you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me‖ (JE, 343). He attempts to exclude her from society by encouraging her to violate social norms by making an unlawful marriage and ending up a mistress. Hence, in all the great houses she enters, she is met with rejection (with the exception of Moor House as the Rivers‘ financial situation is not sound and they are obliged to work).
42 Jane suffers from a double otherness, that is, she is rejected not only by the upper classes but also by the servants. According to Legatt and Parkes, the ―tyrants‖ she comes across throughout the novel, such as ―Aunt Reed, Brocklehurst, Rochester, and St John Rivers, want to turn Jane into a personal servant‖ (Legatt and Parkes, 2006: 169). However, the servants in these houses do not seem willing to embrace or welcome Jane into their class, either. At Gateshead, Bessie and especially Abbot scorn Jane, believing she is ungrateful and unsympathetic. As Jane is being taken to the red-room, Abbot reminds Jane of her dependant position at Gateshead, which also indicates the necessity of money in order for the individual‘s status to be defined:
[Y]ou ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money and you will have none: it is your place to be humble, and make yourself agreeable to them (JE, 45).
During the Christmas preparations at Gateshead, Jane says she prefers to spend a quiet evening with Bessie, but Bessie leaves Jane for the ―lively regions of the kitchen‖, hinting to her that she has a place neither in the ―servant community‖ nor ―among the Reeds‖ (JE, 60) (Fraiman, 1996: 617). Besides, although Mrs Fairfax is kind to Jane during her stay at Thornfield, her attitude changes dramatically as soon as she learns that Jane, a governess, is planning to marry ‗her master‘. Also, Leah and the charwoman talk about Grace Poole and her secret in Jane‘s presence, but exclude Jane from their conversation. As Jane puts it: ―there was a mystery at Thornfield; and […] from participation in that mystery I was purposely excluded‖ (JE, 195). When Jane first arrives at Moor House, Hannah, the housekeeper, refuses to admit Jane into the house although she is starving (JE, 362). Hence, Jane is not only excluded by the upper classes, but also by the servants since, as an orphan, she ―embodies a foreignness‖, and ―this foreignness and the threat it poses must be excluded in order to protect the integrity of the social body‖ (Peters, 2000: 21).
In order to emphasize her foreignness and otherness, society keeps alienating her and associating her with socially unacceptable and evil characters. As an orphan without money, she is already at the bottom of the social ladder, but by denying her sympathy and nourishment, society associates her with a vagabond, ―a class including […] ‗the pickpockets‘ – the beggars – the prostitutes‘‖ (Fraiman, 1996:
43 627). Villagers near Moor House refuse to give Jane food or shelter because she is neither a beggar nor a respectable woman. She is a beggar dressed as a respectable woman, which makes it impossible for the villagers to identify her social class and hence they demonize her. Jane accentuates her monstrosity in terms of her social class in her response to Mrs Fairfax‘s reaction to Jane‘s and Rochester‘s intended marriage by asking Mrs Fairfax ―am I a monster?‖ (JE, 293). As Young explains, ―[i]t is this disparity between her appearance and her actions that makes Jane a monster in the eyes of society‖ (Young, 1991: 332). The mother of the girl who is about to throw porridge to her pig tells her daughter to ―give it [to] her if she‘s a beggar‖ (JE, 356). Therefore, were she a beggar dressed as a beggar, she would probably not have difficulty finding food. At Gateshead, while she is being taken to be locked up in the red-room, she describes her imprisonment as similar to that of a ―rebel slave‖ (JE, 44). At Lowood, during the illness of the other girls, she says she is allowed to ―ramble in the woods like gipsies‖ (JE, 109) and at Moor House, Hannah first describes her as a ―beggar-woman‖ (JE, 362). In all cases, she is associated with people from lower classes, which also emphasizes her lack of money and her rebellious nature which render her unacceptable according to society.
In addition to her association with socially unacceptable people, Jane is also linked with evil. There are numerous instances where she is described with evil attributes – ―bad animal‖ (JE, 41), ―rat‖ (JE, 42), ―mad cat‖ (JE, 44), ―wicked‖ (JE, 48), with ―artifice‖ (JE, 49), ―tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who always look[s] as if she were watching everybody, and scheming plots underhand‖ (JE, 58), ―toad‖ (JE, 58), ―the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof‖ (JE, 60), having a ―wicked heart‖ (JE, 65), and having a ―tendency to deceit‖ (JE, 65). All these phrases emphasize the way those around her want to depict her as evil.
Jane is also associated with the supernatural, especially by Rochester, who, by doing so, both denies her an identity as a human being, and tries to fit her into the role of the traditional passive female. He refers to Jane as ―elfish‖ (JE, 158), calls her a ―sorceress‖ (JE, 180), ―genii‖ (JE, 182), ―ministrant spirit‖ (JE, 233), ―fairy‖ (JE, 273), ―unearthly thing‖ (JE, 283), ―sylph‖ (JE, 288), ―a capricious witch‖ (JE, 299), ―malicious elf‖ (JE, 302) and ―mocking changeling – fairy-born and human-bred‖ (JE,
44 463). Some of these attributes such as ―witch‖, ―sorceress‖, and ―malicious elf‖ include an evil aspect which shows Rochester‘s belief in or fear of Jane‘s revolutionary and transformative power. As fairy tales are male texts, and they teach girls the difference between ‗good‘ and ‗bad‘ women, they also reveal the subconscious male fear of women. The innkeeper at ‗The Rochester Arms‘, not knowing the ―young girl‖ in question is Jane, describes Jane as having ‖bewitched‖ Rochester (JE, 452) just like Rochester accuses Jane of ―bewitch[ing]‖ (JE, 153) his horse and causing him to fall off his horse, and symbolically from power.
Trying to attribute negative qualities to the orphan reveals society‘s hypocrisy. Charlotte Brontë discloses the corruption and cruelty of Victorian society through their treatment of the orphan. It is the patriarchal society who is actually evil and cruel, but they try to project their cruelty and corruption on the orphan. The orphan, who is devoid of a nurturing family, is the pure individual self ready to be shaped by society. However, since the society is cruel and violent, they repress the orphan and treat him or her with cruelty. Jane is subject to cruelty all through her childhood and some part of her adult life, and this explains her rage and downtroddenness. She is ―abused physically and mentally‖ at Gateshead (Brown, 193: 140). There, Jane is exposed to violent acts especially from John Reed, including striking her and throwing a book at her which causes her head to bleed (JE, 42-43). After their quarrel, Jane is punished by Mrs Reed. Mrs Reed, who acts in the name of her son and therefore compromises with patriarchy, incarcerates Jane until she loses consciousness. It can also be observed that throughout the novel Jane is ―imaged as a bird of some kind‖ and John Reed, the future patriarch to whom ―all the house belongs […] or will do in a few years‖ (JE, 42), is described killing birds: ―he twist[s] the necks of the pigeons, kill[s] the little pea-chicks‖ (Siebenschuh, 1976: 308). Hence, John Reed is a symbol of oppressive patriarchy.
Similar to Mrs Reed, Brocklehurst is another character who has ―the presence and authority of a parent but none of the compassion or understanding‖ (Siebenschuh, 1976: 314). As the representatives of the oppressive middle and upper classes, they actualize the cruelty and hypocrisy of Victorian society. Brocklehurst embodies the role of the ―stony-hearted pillar of repressive patriarchy‖ and his physical description includes a suggestion of ―animalism‖, which parallels that of the wolf in ―Little Red
45 Riding Hood‖ – ―What a face he had … what a great nose! and what a mouth! and what large, prominent teeth!‖ (JE, 64) – just like his religion, which is a ―mixture of sterile [p]uritanism and worldliness‖ (Brown, 1993: 144). There is hypocrisy in his words and actions. He scolds Miss Temple for giving the girls bread and cheese instead of burnt porridge, under the pretence of trying to teach them moral values: ―when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children‘s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their souls‖ (JE, 95). While boasting about the plainness and uniformity of the appearance of the students at Lowood, he mentions his daughter Augusta‘s reaction to the appearance of the girls, who ―looked at [her] dress and mamma‘s as if they had never seen a silk gown before‖ (JE, 66). Similarly, his daughters and wife practice quite the opposite of what he preaches. On the one hand, Brocklehurst orders Julia Severn‘s natural curls to be severed entirely, declaring that ―we are not to conform to nature‖ and that his ―mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh, to teach them to clothe themselves with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel‖ while, on the other hand, his own daughters and wife are clad in ―costly‖ costumes and wear curls ―then in fashion‖ (JE, 66-67). In contrast, the students at Lowood are left to starve with burnt porridge, and they suffer from cold and are ―humiliated into submission as befitting their status as orphans‖, showing Brocklehurst‘s ―perverted notion of virtue and cynical abuse of Christian values‖ (Brown, 1993: 145).
Cruelty towards the weaker can be seen at Gateshead and Lowood among people of all classes. It is inflicted by those from lower classes such as the servants at Gateshead and the big girls and teachers at Lowood. In order to survive, the servants and big girls compromise with the patriarchs in acting out cruelty towards the weak. Bessie and Abbot help Mrs Reed in imprisoning Jane and after her imprisonment Abbot says, talking about Jane‘s parents, ―one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that‖ and Bessie replies ―a beauty like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition‖ (JE, 58). Hence, the servants work as hard as ―the Reed tyrants‖ to bring Jane under control and she is ―constantly reminded that her existence depends entirely upon the Reeds‘ benevolence‖ (Legatt and Parkes, 2006: 175). Bessie tells Jane, as she drags her into the red-room, that ―if [Mrs Reed] were to turn you off you would
46 have to go to the poorhouse‖ (JE, 44). Jane is very well aware of the ―servants‘ partiality‖ (JE, 46) and her low and dependant position in the house due to her lack of money. Also, the ―famished‖ big girls at Lowood ―would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion‖ and again the younger girls were denied ―the light and heat of a blazing light‖ since ―each hearth in the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double row of great girls‖ (JE, 92-93). As can be seen in the scenes where Helen, another abandoned girl, who is ―orphaned‖ after her father‘s remarriage, is punished unjustly by Miss Scatcherd, some teachers, who are working-class people, play their part in the scheme of cruelty towards the weak (Gilbert, 1998: 359). Helen is made to stand in the middle of the large schoolroom, which Jane thinks is ―ignominious‖ and she is flogged by Miss Scatcherd, who ―instantly and sharply inflict[s] on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs‖ (JE, 84-86). In order to survive in this system, the oppressed do what their oppressors do, and the victimized in turn victimize the others who are innocent and weaker than themselves. The problem is that individuals identify with the system and adopt its means. It is significant that it is the patriarchy that oppresses people and especially women, but among Jane‘s oppressors there are female characters: Mrs Reed, the servants at Gateshead, and the teachers and the big girls at Lowood. These women have compromised with patriarchy.
What makes Jane different from these women is Jane‘s rejection to identify with the system. Gothic elements are employed to reveal her suppressed anger: the absent mother and father, the recurring theme of death, associations with evil and the supernatural, incarcerations, screams, mirroring characters and mention of ghosts. Gothic scenes are present throughout the novel: Jane‘s book about birds contains gloomy pictures of the ―cold and ghastly moon‖, a sinking shipwreck, ―marine phantoms‖, and the ―black, horned‖ Devil watching people at the gallows (JE, 40). Another Gothic scene is the famous red-room scene. The terror Jane experiences with the apprehension that her uncle‘s ghost might visit her when she is locked up in the red-room results in her having ―a species of fit‖ (JE, 50). Also, after Jane‘s illness, Bessie and Sarah, when talking about it, say ―[s]omething passed her all dressed in white, and vanished‖ and they talk about ―a light in the churchyard just over [Mr Reed‘s] grave‖ (JE, 52). At Thornfield, before Rochester and Jane meet in the woods for the first time, Jane hears some sounds made by Rochester‘s horse
47 and remembering Bessie‘s tales, she thinks it is a ―North England spirit called ‗Gytrash‘; which in the form of horse, mule, or large dog, haunt[s] solitary ways, and sometimes [comes] upon belated travellers‖ (JE, 143). Later on, Jane shows Rochester her sketches, which are again full of Gothic images reflecting Jane‘s mind, imagination and subconscious, which are untamed and frightening because of the repressed feelings that abide there (JE, 157). Jane‘s hearing her mother‘s words ―[m]y daughter, flee temptation‖ (JE, 346), Rochester‘s cries ―Jane! Jane! Jane!‖ (JE, 445) and Rochester‘s hearing her reply ―I am coming; wait for me‖ (JE, 472) are other Gothic scenes of the novel. However, Gothic scenes culminate with the inclusion of Bertha Mason in the plot. With her laughter heard behind Jane‘s bedroom door (JE, 179), her shrieks (JE, 235), her incarceration and with her very existence and deeds, Bertha completes the Gothic atmosphere of the novel, which reflects the subconscious desires of the characters.
Bertha Mason is portrayed as Jane‘s alter ego and the fragmentation of Jane‘s personality starts gradually in her childhood and results in a complete split with the introduction of Bertha. The first signs of the fragmentation of Jane‘s personality can be seen at Gateshead, in the red-room, when she sees herself as a stranger in the mirror and describes her reflection as a ―strange little figure there gazing at [her] with a white face [and] glittering eyes‖ (JE, 46). Then again, this time on the morning of her wedding day, when she refuses to become Rochester‘s mistress, she cannot identify her image in the mirror. The ―robed and veiled figure‖ she sees in the mirror is ―so unlike [her] usual self that it seem[s] almost the image of a stranger‖ (JE, 315). She tries to cope with her anger and frustration by projecting them onto a part of herself alien to her (because socially unaccepted) and Charlotte Brontë incarnates them in Bertha. Bertha acts as an agent of Jane‘s violent and socially unacceptable feelings of revenge, which is why she is depicted as a ―wild beast or fiend‖ (JE, 239).
What Bertha now does […] is what Jane wants to do. […] Bertha, in other words, is Jane‘s truest and darkest double: the angry aspect of the orphan child, the ferocious secret self Jane has been trying to repress ever since her days at Gateshead. (Gilbert, 1996: 492)
Bertha is portrayed as Jane‘s ―alter ego‖ and she actualizes the secret desires Jane has been trying to control (Gilbert, 1996: 483).
48
As another Gothic element, there is the recurring theme of death, which invokes fear, around Jane throughout the novel. Death is inseparable from Jane as an orphan, since her parents are dead. Jane‘s uncle, Mr Reed, is dead and Jane is imprisoned in the room where ―he breathed his last‖, which causes Jane to feel terrified with the anticipation of his ghost visiting her (JE, 46). After that, she falls critically ill and almost dies, but manages to survive. Then at Lowood, girls keep dying due to poor conditions and malnutrition. Jane describes the tragedy, which has become a part of everyday life at Lowood, in these words: ―Many […] went home only to die: some died at the school, and were buried quietly and quickly‖ (JE, 108). Helen dies in Jane‘s arms while Jane is ―asleep‖ (JE, 114). At every point in her life, and especially at critical moments, Jane longs for death. During her incarceration in the red-room, she contemplates starving herself to death by ―never eating or drinking more, and letting [her]self die‖ (JE, 47). Later, at Thornfield, after she finds out that Rochester is already married and the wedding is cancelled, she lies ―faint‖ in her room ―longing to be dead‖ (JE, 324). Also, after she runs away from Thornfield, wandering in the countryside looking for food and shelter, she wishes to die there:
―… I wished … that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil […]‖. (JE, 351)
Hence, death is an integral part of Jane‘s life. Anolik argues that the mother figure represents social control, order and safety, in which case her absence or death should stand for chaos. Marriage, just like the mother figure, also means order and its absence again suggests chaos, which is necessary for the Gothic plot to advance or ―thrive‖ since ―Gothic novels rely on fractured domestic structures in order to construct the […] crises that eventually produce stability (Anolik, 2003: 27-28). Marriage, however, is a male construct that represents the oppression of women, which is exemplified in Rochester‘s treatment of Bertha and Jane. As it is a patriarchal society, the parent figure is not the mother but the father. Because the mother figure is taken over by the male, there is chaos and violence in the novel. Also, Jane‘s first mother figure, Mrs Reed is a problematic figure in that her treatment of Jane with cruelty and violence is dominated by her alliance with patriarchy.
49 Both the atmosphere of chaos and terror already existing in society, and the chaos and terror the orphan may cause in society are conveyed with the use of all these Gothic elements. Since the orphan does not belong to the domestic ideal, he or she can be rendered unhomely (unheimlich) in the sense that Freud used it, which is why the Victorians conceive him or her as a threat and try to repress and exclude the orphan from the system by acting violently and cruelly.
Because society does not act like a mother and does not give security to its helpless member, the orphan therefore represents society‘s failed responsibility. By mistreating and excluding the orphan, the Victorians are in fact, trying to exclude and repress what they do not want to see in their conventional society. Brontë depicts Jane as a threat and shows how they exclude her and justify this by attributing their violence and cruelty to her. In this way, Brontë reveals the cruelty and hypocrisy of Victorian society. For example, Mrs Reed blames Jane for being wicked and deceitful and ignores ―her own darling‖ John‘s (JE, 47) wickedness, to which she is ―blind and deaf‖ (JE, 42). While Brontë depicts Jane as a threat to Victorian religious values, she ironically presents the Rev. Brocklehurst as a respectable clergyman who ―is said to do a great deal of good‖, at least in the first chapters of the book (JE, 83).
Because Jane is banished from the domestic ideal, she has to create a new system where she can be a part of another ideal. Hence, Jane‘s social exclusion ―prompts her rebellion‖ (Vanden Bossche, 2005: 52). After the red-room episode, Jane begins to question her situation: ―Why was I always suffering […] always accused, forever condemned?‖ (JE, 46) and ―[t]his questioning […] leads her to further rebellion‖ (Legatt and Parkes, 2006: 172). She has the power to defy her aunt, as a result of which Jane feels ―the strangest sense of freedom‖ (JE, 69). Her rebellious spirit is also nourished by her imagination, which is strengthened by her love of reading. At Gateshead she reads Bewick’s History of British Birds and Gulliver’s Travels, which improve her imagination. As Legatt and Parkes state ―[r]eading increases Jane‘s rebellion and gives her the power to oppose tyranny‖ (Legatt and Parkes, 2006: 180).
50 Jane‘s being regarded as a real threat stems from her change and growth. However, every time Jane is attacked or opposed by tyranny, she retaliates, using the means she has learned from society. After John Reed throws a book at her, she attacks him saying ―I don‘t very well know what I did with my hands‖ (JE, 43) and after Mrs Reed locks her up, she defies her and tells her ―[p]eople think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. You are deceitful‖ (JE, 69). Although Helen and Miss Temple try to tame Jane‘s rebellious feelings, when she leaves Lowood, Jane again continues to retaliate when attacked by patriarchy. However, as an adult, she learns to reattack in a more ‗civilized‘ way on her part, and leaves the ‗uncivilized‘ parts to her alter ego, Bertha Mason Rochester.
Bertha is depicted like a beast so that Rochester‘s injustice to her can be absolved or at least mitigated. Legally, Rochester is guilty of attempting to commit a crime by trying to marry although he is already married. Morally, however, although he is still guilty, he can be sympathized with for being obliged to remain married to a beast. According to Spivak, Bertha is portrayed as an animal in order to ―weaken her entitlement under the spirit if not the letter of the Law‖ (Spivak, 2003: 312). Thus, Rochester can be excused for his treatment of Bertha. She is also an example of how Rochester regards women: they are beings he can marry for money, and imprison when he no longer wants them. She also symbolizes Rochester‘s ―guilt‖, for she is a living proof of his intended crime, bigamy (Golban, 2003: 195).
As well as being the Gothic hero, who recognizes ―plain Jane‘s values‖, Rochester is also the Gothic villain, who attempts to ―transgress the laws of man by committing bigamy‖ (Meyers, 2001: 32). Clarke describes Rochester as a ―domestic despot‖, who marries for money, ―us[es] women for sex but wishing to possess them exclusively with no obligations in return‖, ―mocks the feminine qualities of his ward Adèle‖ and ―forms no close attachments but lies to and teases women mercilessly‖ (Clarke, 2000: 705).
Rochester insults Jane in several instances. First, he lets his genteel guests talk lowly of governesses in Jane‘s presence causing her to feel ashamed and degraded (JE, 205-206). He also tricks her into talking about her secret feelings about him by disguising himself as a gypsy fortune-teller (JE, 225-231). After she consents to
51 marry him, he tries to turn her into a different woman and, more importantly, tries to emphasize the social and financial differences between them by adorning her with jewels and silk dresses and making her his slave as illustrated in his allusions to the seraglio. Jane expresses her embarrassment while they are shopping at Millcote in these words: ―the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation‖ (JE, 297). Although Rochester, on the surface, tries to transform her into Mrs Rochester by buying her gifts, Jane sees this transformation as one which transforms her into the ―image of a kept woman‖ and she ―rightly senses loss, not gain, of prestige, status, and selfhood‖ (Gilead, 1986: 186). According to Michie, he seeks to ―shower Jane with gifts‖ in order to ―emphasize their difference in status – the money he has and she lacks‖ (Michie, 1996: 595). Right from the beginning, he lies to her about his marital status and even after his marital status is disclosed, he still insists that Jane be his mistress and proposes that she lives with him in France:
You shall be Mrs Rochester – both virtually and nominally […] You shall go to a place I have in the south of France […] Never fear that I wish to lure you into error – to make you my mistress (JE, 331).
However, even then, he is lying to her since what he is proposing to her is exactly that, which Jane realizes and replies: ―If I lived with you as you desire – I should then be your mistress‖ (JE, 331).
Jane, who is attacked by patriarchy embodied in the character of Rochester, retaliates, rejecting the role of submissive female and that of the servile orphan, and takes her revenge through Bertha‘s violent deeds. As Gilbert explains ―Jane Eyre secretly wants to tear the garment up [and] Bertha does it for her‖ (Gilbert, 1996: 492). By burning down Thornfield, which symbolizes Rochester‘s ―patriarchal power‖, Jane/Bertha deprives him of both his patriarchal power and physical power (Meyers, 2001: 33). According to Eagleton, by maiming and blinding Rochester, Jane/Bertha makes it less likely that he ―go[es] off philandering [since] he can‘t see, which helps to secure Jane‘s power over him‖ (Eagleton, 2005: 131). Although according to the innkeeper‘s story Rochester‘s wounds were due to his ―courage‖ and ―kindness‖ (JE, 454), Bertha‘s jumping to her death upon Rochester‘s approach ―demonstrates that his role as a saviour is a farce‖ (Meyers, 2001: 33). In fact, Rochester is not a ―gallant figure risking his own life to save Bertha and the
52 servants‖ but a man who needs Jane‘s help when he ―falls from his horse, and is burned in his bed just as he does when he is blinded and maimed‖ (Sternlieb, 2002: 28-29).
Besides, in order to have a respectable social class, as a woman, Jane needs money, which she later inherits, or a status, which she can attain through marriage. As a governess, it would be improper in the eyes of society to marry her master, as can be seen from Mrs Fairfax‘s reaction; therefore, Jane needs Bertha‘s intervention to bring Rochester a little down the social ladder, closer to Jane, by setting his house on fire, and causing him to retreat to Ferndean, which is a house of ―moderate size‖ and has ―no architectural pretensions‖ (JE, 455) as opposed to Thornfield, which is ―a fine old hall, rather neglected of late years, perhaps, but still […] a respectable place‖ (JE, 128). It is also a mansion where ―[e]verything appear[s] very stately and imposing‖ (JE, 130). Bertha acts as an agent in making Rochester Jane‘s equal in terms of power by causing him to become blind and maimed.
At Ferndean, the power roles between Jane and Rochester are reversed, and Jane takes revenge by playing on Rochester‘s jealousy. With her presentation of her relationship with St. John, she plays with his jealousy and insecurities in a way that parallels his earlier games with her about Blanche Ingram, an upper class girl who flirts with Rochester (Bodenheimer, 1987: 160; Godfrey, 2005: 867). Just as he misleads her into thinking that he is going to marry Blanche Ingram, Jane, too, lets Rochester believe that she is in love with St John. Rochester is now ―helpless, indeed – blind, and a cripple‖ as the innkeeper tells Jane (JE, 545) and she is out to ―rehumanize‖ him by cutting his hair before he is ―metamorphosed into a lion‖ (JE, 461). Jane also ―reverses the gendered power structures‖ by cutting Rochester‘s hair to make him ―fit for society‖ since, at Lowood, it was Brocklehurst, a patriarch, who had the authority to order a haircut to make a student ―fit for society‖. However, in the end, Jane as a woman decides what is right for the male (Legatt and Parkes, 2006: 186). In addition, the severing of hair alludes to the Biblical story of Samson, who loses his power through the loss of his hair. Similarly, Jane by cutting his hair causes Rochester to lose his power. In this way Jane symbolically deprives Rochester, a member of the upper class and the representative of patriarchy, of his
53 power.
The novel ends with Jane‘s ―ultimate triumph‖ (Cohen, 1991: 29). With her famous words ―[r]eader, I married him‖ (JE, 474), Jane ―declares herself a desiring subject rather than a bartered object‖ (Meyers, 2001: 33-34). Now Jane is ―a mother, instead of needing one […] the head of a house, instead of a servant of some kind […] needed, instead of needy and […] has status and self-image with which she can live happily‖ (Siebenschuh, 1976: 310). In the opening chapter of the novel, Jane is told to ―remain silent‖ (JE, 39) whereas at the end she ―impress[es] by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye‖ (JE, 476). Hence, in the end, ―her voice becomes the central source of perception for her blind and captive audience, Mr. Rochester‖ (Bodenheimer, 1987: 155). Jane‘s exclusion from society at the beginning of the novel is replaced by her ―social inclusion‖ (Vanden Bossche, 2005: 46-47). Since she has found her cousins, she has a family and has inherited her fortune, and she is the wife of Mr Rochester. Her inheritance helps her shed her dependency and become ―an independent woman‖, and the burning down of his ancestral mansion and his injuries make Rochester dependent on Jane, which renders their marriage possible (Sadoff, 1996: 533). Instead of master and servant, Jane and Rochester are now a ―middle class couple‖ (Legatt & Parkes, 2006: 185) and the ―social gulf‖ between them has shrunk ensuring a ―fulfilling equality between them‖ (Eagleton, 2005: 131). The orphan has, thus, moved upward socially gaining more rights, at the same time causing the middle and upper classes to lose some of theirs.
Although the novel seems to end with the equality of Jane and Rochester, Sternlieb argues that Jane‘s urge for revenge still persists even after she marries Rochester and their ―vying for power‖ continues since Jane Eyre is a ―revenge novel, one that exposes Rochester‘s cruelty to Bertha, to Adèle, and especially to herself‖ (Sternlieb, 2002: 17-18). However, there is a balance and reconciliation in the end.
Consequently, Jane, who starts off as a vulnerable orphan girl, is depicted as a symbolic threat to patriarchal society and to the notions of family and domesticity, because of her struggle to claim rights and a place in society. She is excluded and associated with socially unacceptable and lower class characters, to emphasize her
54 otherness and the threat she may pose. Also, the fear of society of the changes she may bring about and Jane‘s subconscious desires are conveyed through Gothic elements. Charlotte Brontë also discloses the corruption and violence inherent in society through the exploitation and abuse of Jane, who is in fact an unprotected little girl, who has to use the means she learns from society in order to establish a new order in which there is a place for herself in society.
In the new order created in the end, Jane has power. She rejects the status quo and establishes a marriage that is completely unconventional. Although it seems she helps him read, actually she makes Rochester see through her eyes and thus dominates him. The woman who is symbolically orphaned does not have a mother to protect her and to give her love. The mother figures in the novel compromise with the patriarchs, so they cannot offer these feelings. Jane cannot find a mother for herself but becomes one. She rises from ―obscurity to wealth and gentility‖ (Auerbach, 1975: 405). The ―purgative destruction‖ of Thornfield releases the rebellious feelings and the repressed anger of the orphan and finally disposes of the chaos created by her during her attempt to find a place in society (Siebenschuh, 1976: 305-306). Once a new position for the orphan is created, the chaos is over and a calmer and more balanced order resumes. In the final scene of Jane Eyre Jane‘s achievement is similar to that of Cathy‘s in Wuthering Heights. Cathy, who is also an orphan, and Jane both instruct the males by reading to them. These unconventional but domestic scenes indicate that there is a shift from oppressive patriarchy to equality and reconciliation.
55 CHAPTER IV GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Pip, the protagonist of Charles Dickens‘s Great Expectations, is an orphan who is raised as a common boy. However, because of the false notions of gentility imposed upon him, he starts to have dreams of rising socially. He is influenced by Miss Havisham, the eccentric lady who is deserted by her bridegroom on her wedding day, to believe that being common is to be despised and that he should become a gentleman. While this dream of rising socially seems to be Pip‘s own desire, he is actually brainwashed by Miss Havisham and her beautiful ward, Estella. On the one hand, as an individual attempting to change his social class, Pip becomes a danger for the social class system because he symbolically represents the working class whose perceived aim is to overthrow the middle and upper classes by claiming more rights. The fear evoked in the middle and upper classes by the working class, as represented in the figure of the orphan trying to rise socially, is conveyed through Gothic elements. On the other hand, as an unprotected orphan, Pip is victimized by society. Hence, Dickens reveals the corruption and cruelty of the Victorian society through Pip‘s victimization by the adults around him, most of whom are victims of society themselves, and he shows how Pip, unlike his oppressors, represses his anger and expresses it on a symbolic level through his alter egos and hallucinations.
Pip is another orphan just like Heathcliff and Jane. Although the identities of Pip‘s parents are known from their tombstones, they, along with his five other siblings, are ―dead and buried‖ (GE, 35). Since he has no parents, Pip symbolizes the absence of stable social relations and he is in a sense unlocated in society although he is brought up like a common lower class boy by his mean sister, Mrs Joe, and her benign husband, Joe, a blacksmith. As ―pip‖ means ―a small fruit seed‖ (Merriam- Webster Dictionary), Pip comes to represent a seed of society, who will grow, become an individual, and will be shaped by society during this process. As an individual, Pip is both a component of society and is separate from it. However, as an orphan, he is an outsider in the domestic ideal and his peripheral position in society deprives him of a protecting family, which he looks for at the churchyard at the beginning of the novel.
56
In the opening scene of the novel, the reader encounters Pip in a churchyard before his parents‘ and siblings‘ gravestones trying to imagine ―what they were like‖ from their tombstones (GE, 35). Pip‘s parents are ―implacably dead‖ and ―equated only with their tombstones‖ (Auerbach, 1975: 412). By reading his parents‘ tombstones, Pip confirms his ―loss of origin‖, and perceives his existence as ―other, alien, [and] forlorn‖ (Brooks, 1996: 482). Trying to visualise what they look like from the inscriptions on his parents‘ tombstones, Pip is endeavouring to find a family for himself.
Pip‘s real name is Philip Pirrip. He explains that he ―called [him]self Pip, and came to be called Pip‖ (GE, 35). Thus, Pip is self-named, which suggests his effort to become the author of his life. Beaty argues that since Pip is in search of ―authority‖, he gives himself a name, and becomes ―self-authored‖, hence trying to create his own ―identity‖ (Beaty, 1980: 553). This autonomous act of self-naming is necessary for Pip to become the author of his life, ―write himself a story‖ and ―find his way out of the marshes‖ (Schor, 1996: 542). Since Great Expectations is a Bildungsroman, in order to complete his self-formation, Pip is in search of a plot for his life. Although he tries to be autonomous, his life is influenced and shaped by the other characters around him.
Abel Magwitch, an escaped convict, is ―the most important parental figure‖ Pip encounters (Golban, 2003: 167). Pip meets him at the churchyard, where he ―start[s] up from among the graves‖ of Pip‘s parents, suggesting his role as a father figure (GE, 36). Emerging like ―an apparition of the real father‖, he represents the authority of the ―absent father‖ (Hara, 1986: 595). Magwitch has authority over Pip both as a father figure and as one of the most important characters influencing his life:
Magwitch is a character representing the double meaning of ―author‖: the writer and the father. He is both the author of Pip‘s story and the father who has secretly adopted him as his son […]. (Hara, 1986: 593)
A few years after compelling Pip to steal a file from the forge and some food from his sister‘s house, Magwitch, to show his gratitude, anonymously sends money to Pip to make him a gentleman, so Pip can realize his great expectations i.e., to become a gentleman worthy of marrying Estella. As Magwitch is Estella‘s biological
57 father and Estella is the object of Pip‘s great expectations, Magwitch is the ―physiological‖ maker of Pip‘s great expectations as well as being their ―financial‖ maker through the inheritance he leaves Pip (Rawlins, 1994: 89). He is Pip‘s ―second father‖ as he tells Pip when he returns to England from exile to see him (GE, 337). However, as a father figure, Magwitch is not appropriate since he is a convict excluded from society.
Another influential, but rather feminine, parental figure in Pip‘s life is Joe. Joe, as the opposite of Magwitch, is ―a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish dear fellow – a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness‖ (GE, 40). With his ―unfailing goodness and kindness‖ Joe is ―an ideal master and companion for the orphan boy‖ (Hara, 1986: 600). He has the ―touch of a woman‖ (GE, 168), with which he takes care of Pip when he falls very ill after Magwitch dies, by wrapping him up and taking him ―in his arms‖ and carrying him ―as if [he] were still the small helpless creature to whom he had so abundantly given of the wealth of his great nature‖ (GE, 476). It is Joe, who teaches Pip good moral values such as the importance of being honest. After Pip lies to his sister about his experience at Satis House and confesses this to Joe, Joe tells Pip that ―lies is lies‖ and lying is not how one can overcome his ―common[ness]‖ (GE, 100). Instead of a father, Joe acts like a mother to Pip, especially during his illness. Moreover, at the end of the novel, Joe has a son whom he calls Pip. Houston calls this the ―reproduction‖ of Pip by Joe, who acts as Pip‘s ―true mother‖ (Houston, 1992: 22-23). By creating another Pip, Joe acts like a mother to Pip. Joe is not an appropriate father figure for Pip because it is a patriarchal society and Joe lacks masculine qualities, which is a deficiency from Pip‘s point of view as he falls prey to Miss Havisham, who is a negative mother figure.
Magwitch and Joe, as Pip‘s two most influential father figures, represent opposite forces. Joe is associated with ―domesticity‖ whereas Magwitch‘s world is characterized by ―colonization and hard work‖ (Moya and Lopez, 2008: 179). Magwitch, being another orphan and a convict, is always outside the family circle: on the marshes, in prison, or in New South Wales, where he makes his fortune from scratch. Throughout the novel, Joe, however, is almost always at home, which suggests that Joe is closer to the feminine and Magwitch to the masculine worlds.
58 Thus, Magwitch and Joe can be regarded as ―substitutes‖ for one another as parents since both of them are ―surrogate fathers‖ for Pip and Pip is ashamed of being connected to both (Mortengaler, 1998: 718).
In addition to Magwitch and Joe as the central father figures, there are other parental figures around Pip. Mrs Joe is the immediate potential mother figure, as Pip‘s sister; however, she treats him ―sadist[ically]‖ and fails to fulfil her role as a mother (Golban, 2003: 167). Yet another mother figure is Miss Havisham. Pip looks up to her as a symbol of gentility. Neither Mrs Joe nor Miss Havisham is capable of showing affection to Pip. Mrs Joe teaches Pip the concept of ―property‖ and Miss Havisham creates in him the ―impulse to change his condition‖ (Golban, 2003: 167). Another caricatural father figure is Pumblechook, who is ―a well-to-do corn-chandler‖ (GE, 55), ―appropriated‖ (GE, 55) by Mrs Joe although he is actually Joe‘s uncle. After Pip inherits his fortune, he starts to pretend he is Pip‘s benefactor and continuously asks for permission to shake his hand. He is described by Dessner as ―a parody of the surrogate father‖ and because of his continuous handshaking, he is linked to the surrogate father Magwitch, who also continuously shakes Pip‘s hand (Dessner, 1976: 443). However, they both need to establish a relationship with Pip in order to turn themselves into his fathers.
The orphan figure as an individual who does not have a role or place in the family ideal is considered to be an embodiment of the difference within the family and therefore dangerous to it. Although Pip, in fact, like other orphans, is a victim of society, he is also depicted as a threat because of being associated with the working class people due to and after his prospects of changing social classes in his search for a place in society. The reason why he is depicted as dangerous is because the cruelty of the Victorians is better revealed through the exclusion and abuse of helpless children, whom they also regard as dangerous and prone to evil. Moreover, his act of self-naming can also render him a threat to parental authority. By naming himself, Pip ―subverts whatever authority could be found in the text of the tombstones‖ of his parents (Brooks, 1996: 482). The orphan again comes to symbolize the working class who defies the authority of the middle and upper classes because Mrs Joe‘s treatment of the orphan resembles the irresponsible reactions of the Victorian middle class to the working classes.
59
Another example of Pip‘s depiction as dangerous can be seen in his not conforming to religious doctrines. His not fully complying with the rules of Christianity, which are personified in Joe and Biddy, make him dangerous. Joe is described by Pip as the ―good Christian man‖ (GE, 472). Joe and Biddy, just like Helen Burns and Miss Temple in Jane Eyre, are ―archetypes of passivity‖ who ―endure everything cheerfully‖ and Pip‘s reluctance to ―devote his life to such mere endurance‖ makes him ―dangerous‖ (Rawlins, 1994: 90-91). Pip doubts if the church will be ―powerful enough to shield‖ him when his ―wicked secret‖ is revealed, hence questioning the power of the church (GE, 55). Also pride, which is one of the seven deadly sins, can be observed in Pip‘s actions, especially after he starts going to Satis House. Because of his ―excessive pride and narcissism‖, he feels ashamed of his life at home, wishes Joe were ―less ignorant‖ and ―worthier of [his] society‖ and envies a more genteel life, which is against the Christian principle of humility (GE, 137) (Golban, 2003: 160). Besides these, Pip is also depicted as a threat to marriage conventions by attempting to marry someone who is ―approximately‖ his sister. Since Estella is Magwitch‘s biological daughter and Pip is his ―adoptive son‖, their relationship is marked by the ―interdict as well as the seduction of incest‖ (Brooks, 1996: 492). As Magwitch‘s biological daughter and surrogate son, the two ‗siblings‘‘ relationship would disrupt the family values of patriarchal society, putting the orphan in a position in which he or she rejects moral values.
His dream of rising socially, which renders him a threat to the social class system, is initiated at Satis House. Estella‘s disparaging remarks about Pip‘s boots and hands, which ―had never troubled‖ him before, cause Pip to see them as ―vulgar appendages‖ (GE, 91-92). After she calls his hands ―coarse‖ and his boots ―thick‖ during Pip‘s first visit, he feels ―alienated‖ from the forge and his life there (GE, 90) (Hara, 1986: 601). From what is instilled into him at Satis House, Pip believes the only way of achieving social integration and being worthy of Estella‘s love is by realizing his dream of becoming a gentleman through changing his social class. He has ―fantasies of upward mobility‖, which symbolically render him dangerous for the social class system (Wynne, 2000: 53). Estella‘s comments ―spur Pip into an effort at upward mobility‖, which he can realize through Magwitch‘s intervention (Crawford, 1988: 629).
60
The inheritance he receives from Magwitch becomes the means by which Pip can put his great expectations into motion. However, although becoming a gentleman seems like Pip‘s own desire, had he not been to Satis House and had Magwitch not decided to make him a gentleman by leaving him a fortune, he would probably never have thought of it. Therefore, while, on the one hand, the orphan has dreams of upward mobility, on the other, he is exploited and manipulated by society. Miss Havisham, who wants to take her revenge on men because she was deserted by Compeyson, abuses her adopted daughter Estella, another orphan, to this end and gets her to humiliate Pip‘s ―common[ness]‖ and lets him fall in love with her but not return his love (GE, 91). Friedman argues that Pip, like Compeyson, is another ―false gentleman‖, which is why Miss Havisham gets Estella to take revenge on Pip (Friedman, 1987: 413). Miss Havisham herself is also a part of this cruelty because she brings up Estella without giving her love in that ―strange house‖ among her strange relatives who ―intrigu[e]‖ against Estella, making her feel ―suppressed and defenceless‖ and Miss Havisham exploits her to take her own revenge from Compeyson (GE, 287). Compeyson victimizes Miss Havisham and she, in turn, victimizes Estella and also gets her to victimize Pip. Hence, each victim turns others, who are innocent, into victims.
It is not only Miss Havisham, who uses Pip in her scheme of avenging herself on society. Magwitch, who believes society has wronged him, also victimizes Pip to take his vengeance on society, which he feels is ―responsible for his criminal fall and subsequent prosecution‖ (Loe, 1994: 212). The convict, as an outcast, has no place in society and is ―desperate to have a real identity‖, which he tries to attain by making Pip into ―his false image of a gentleman‖ (Holbrook, 1993: 133). Magwitch boasts that he has ―made‖ (GE, 355) a gentleman, and talks of Pip as ―his gentleman‖ (GE, 447) as if Pip was some kind of property. Magwitch sees himself as the ―owner‖ of Pip (GE, 339). No matter how ―charitable‖ his initial intention is, he sees Pip as a ―vehicle‖ for his ―fantasies of revenge over Compeyson in particular and the structure of the English class system in general‖ (Crawford, 1988: 628). He tries to reduce Pip to some kind of possession with no soul, through which he can actualize his scheme of revenge. He also regards Pip as an extension of himself and therefore desires to make a gentleman out of him. Hence, what Magwitch does
61 is to desire to ―create, own and exploit human beings as property and extensions of the ego‖ (Rawlins, 1994: 88). Auerbach argues that in Great Expectations the orphan, ―having no soul‖ is considered by society to be ―a thing‖ (Auerbach, 1975: 413). He is reduced to a ‗thing‘ and therefore is shaped by society in his process of self-formation.
As well as being reduced to the position of property to be exploited and utilized for society‘s aims, the orphan is also exposed to violence, exclusion and rejection. In the novel it is repeatedly stated that Pip is brought up ―by hand‖ by his cruel sister (GE, 39). Obviously, the term ―by hand‖ is employed ironically to emphasize the physical violence Pip is subject to as a child. To punish Pip, Mrs Joe uses ―Tickler‖, which is a ―wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with [Pip‘s] tickled frame‖, (GE, 40), she makes ―dive[s]‖ at Pip and ―fishe[s] [him] up by the hair‖ (GE, 44), ―heavily bump[s] [Pip] from behind in the nape of the neck‖ for not answering her questions about Satis House and Miss Havisham ―at sufficient length‖ (GE, 95), and ―box[es] [his] ears‖ (GE, 96). ―[P]hysical abuse‖ inflicted on Pip by his sister also suggests his ―lack of maternal love‖ (Houston, 1992: 18). In addition, when Magwitch first meets Pip in the churchyard, the convict threatens to ―cut [his] throat‖ (GE, 36) and have his ―heart and liver out‖ (GE, 37). Orlick, who is a ―journeyman‖ kept by Joe at weekly wages, feels jealous of Pip, who works as an apprentice to Joe, for getting a day off from Joe and attacks Pip (GE, 139):
[…] Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew out a red-hot iron bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run it through my body, whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil, hammered it out – as if it were I […]. (GE, 141)
During Pip‘s second visit to Satis House, Estella, not satisfied to learn that Pip does not think she is insulting enough, slaps him across the face (GE, 111). Unlike the others, who have power over Pip just because he is small and unprotected, Estella‘s power over Pip comes from her enchanting beauty and her social status which raises her above Pip, as she is the adopted daughter of a wealthy woman. The prevalence of physical violence towards the orphan in the novel illustrates the general atmosphere of cruelty during the Victorian age as depicted by Dickens.
Moreover, Pip is exposed to rejection and repression by those around him; more so before he comes into his inheritance and, in a diminished form, still after he
62 becomes rich. As a poor boy, he is constantly nagged, scorned and made to feel persona non grata by especially his sister, Mrs Joe:
I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. (GE, 54)
Mrs Joe also complains about Pip to her guests during the Christmas dinner, giving them details of ―all the illnesses‖ Pip has been ―guilty of‖ and ―all the acts of sleeplessness‖ Pip has ―committed‖ and all the times she has ―wished [Pip] in [his] grave‖, and he has ―contumaciously refused to go there‖ (GE, 59).
Pip is rejected not only by his sister but also by Estella, who rejects Pip for his commonness. Estella makes harsh remarks degrading Pip‘s appearance and manners and feels strong scorn for Pip. Her contempt is so strong that it becomes ―infectious‖ and Pip catches it, too (GE, 90). Symbolic of her rejection of Pip, at the end of Pip‘s first visit to Satis House, she laughs ―contemptuously‖, ―pushe[s] [Pip] out‖ and locks the gate upon him excluding him from her world (GE, 94). After Pip receives his inheritance and goes to London, his rejection both by Estella and by Miss Havisham‘s relatives, who represent the materialistic society, continues but, due to the ―stupendous power of money‖, in a less severe and less frequent manner (GE, 178). Miss Havisham‘s relatives, believing she has bestowed her wealth on Pip, feel envious and hate him ―with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment‖ because they are looking forward to Miss Havisham‘s death to share her inheritance (GE, 226). Their hatred of Pip shows the importance of money and how it determines the individuals‘ place in society. Possessing money is as much a reason for being respected as it is for being hated, since those people hate Pip for wrongly assuming that he has usurped their share of Miss Havisham‘s money. Also, when Pip meets Estella in London, he describes Estella‘s manner of speech which presents Pip and herself as ―disposed of by others‖ indicating their being abused by society and discarded to London (GE, 289-290). London represents the ―larger society‖ as the centre of experience and corruption in the novel and, there, they are excluded and removed further from the domestic ideal (Golban, 2003, 128). This feeling is later confirmed by Pip when he confesses he has‖ no home anywhere‖ (GE, 461).
63
In addition to being rejected by those around him, Pip, like Jane and Heathcliff, is also associated with socially unacceptable, low and evil characters. ―Animal imagery‖ is used very often to refer to Pip (Wynne 2000: 53). During Christmas dinner at Mrs Joe‘s, Mr Wopsle begins his speech by saying ―[s]wine‖ and pointing at Pip as if he is mentioning his ―christian name‖ (GE, 58) and Mr Pumblechook and Mrs Joe continue the allusion by comparing Pip to a ―Squeaker‖ and speculate on how the butcher ―would have whipped‖ him, ―shed [his] blood and have [his] life‖ (GE, 58). Pip is also compared to a dog by Magwitch during their first encounter when he calls Pip a ―young hound‖ (GE, 36). The same imagery persists during his visits to Satis House when he is given food ―as if [he] were a dog in disgrace‖ (GE, 92). Ironically, Pip describes the way Magwitch eats his meals by using the same metaphor. At the beginning of the novel when Pip brings Magwitch the pork pie he has stolen for him, Pip notices a ―decided similarity‖ between the way a ―large dog of [theirs]‖ eats its food and ―the man‘s‖ (GE, 50). Magwitch is victimized by society and he is turned into a criminal. Hence, a connection between Pip and Magwitch, his symbolic father, as victims of society, is established.
Pip is also identified with the convict in several other instances, especially in the scene in which he walks with difficulty with the bread and butter he puts down his leg, ―which makes him walk like the chained convict‖ (GE, 45) (Brooks, 1996: 484). Another scene in which Pip is identified with the convict is when Pip asks Joe the meaning of the word ―convict‖. Joe, puzzled, can only say ―Pip‖, unintentionally associating Pip with the convict (GE, 45).
Pip, as a representative of the individual, is corrupted by society or other external forces. The dog imagery and other identifications establish a link between Pip and the convict. The moment Pip encounters Magwitch, he is introduced into the world of the criminal. Pip commits his first crimes against his foster parents by stealing food from his sister‘s pantry and a file from Joe‘s forge. However, the ―guilt‖ does not belong to Pip since it is ―imposed upon‖ him by ―outside authority‖. He is, in fact, the ―helpless orphan‖ boy who finds himself in this atmosphere of criminality because of forces that are out of his control (Hara, 1986: 595-596). Therefore, it is emphasized that the individual who is originally innocent is corrupted by society.
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Nevertheless, society associates the orphan with the criminal believing he is innately evil as Mr Hubble, another guest at the Christmas table, puts it: the young are ―[n]aterally wicious‖ (GE, 57). Mr Jaggers, a London lawyer who is a lawyer to both Miss Havisham and Magwitch, tells Pip ―you‘re a bad set of fellows‖ meaning young boys in general, which shows his and by extension society‘s belief in the innate evil in man (GE, 111). Hence, the adult world ―encourages Pip to cultivate a sense of the original sin‖ (Rawlins, 1994: 84). The adults believe that Pip is guilty by birth and expect him to commit a crime any time. This can be observed when Pip is taken before the justices to be bound apprentice to Joe. He is ―pushed over‖ by Mr Pumblechook as if he is a pickpocket and the people who see him immediately assume that he is a pickpocket who is caught ‖red-handed‖ (GE, 132). Hence, the orphan is regarded as prone to criminality by the people around him.
Although society wants to depict the orphan as inclined to evil, the real evil lies in society itself. When explaining to Pip why he took Estella from her mother, who was a murderer, and gave her to Miss Havisham, Mr Jaggers depicts a thorough picture of Victorian society and the cruelty especially orphan children are exposed to. He says that it is an ―atmosphere of evil‖ and these children are ―generated in great numbers for certain destruction‖, ―tried at a criminal bar‖, ―imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged‖, ―made orphans‖ and ―bedevilled‖ (GE, 424-425). Jaggers‘s portrayal of Victorian corruption and cruelty can also be observed in Dickens‘s criticism of the education system, religious institutions, justice system and the police force. At Mr Wopsle‘s great aunt‘s school, which Pip attends to get rid of his ‗commonness‘, the teacher falls into ―a state of coma‖ and sleeps, and the students tread on each others‘ boots, and when Biddy gives them ―three defaced Bibles‖ with ―specimens of the insect world smashed between their leaves‖, they read these Bibles without ―the least notion of, or reverence for‖ what they are reading about (GE, 102). Furthermore, when Mr Pumblechook takes Pip before the justices to have him bound apprentice to Joe, Pip describes the ―mighty justices‖ as ―taking snuff, or going to sleep, or writing or reading the newspapers‖ (GE, 133). After Mrs Joe is attacked by Orlick, the police arrest ―several obviously wrong people‖ and persist in ―trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract
65 ideas from the circumstances‖ (GE, 149). This shows that the real problem is in the basic institutions of society such as the system of education, religion and justice.
In addition to showing the corruption of social institutions, which are supposed to create or at least maintain order, Dickens also reveals the violence and hypocrisy that prevail in Victorian society. Examples of physical violence are employed to further emphasize the corruption of society. Mrs Joe physically abuses Joe as well as Pip. She ―knock[s] his head for a little while against the wall‖ (GE, 43) and throws a ―candlestick‖ at Joe (GE, 126). Other examples of physical violence are when Orlick and Joe fight because Orlick argues with Mrs Joe (GE, 142) and Mrs Joe is ―knocked down‖ by a ―blow on the back of the head‖ (GE, 147). Examples of hypocrisy further stress the corruption of society. One of the characters who best exemplifies society‘s hypocrisy is Mr Pumblechook, who initially sees Pip as a potential criminal, but pretends that he is Pip‘s ―chosen friend‖ and benefactor and as soon as he becomes rich (GE, 181). He also pretends that he knows Miss Havisham in person although he has never seen her (GE, 96). Mr Matthew Pocket, who is Miss Havisham‘s cousin, and his family are another symbol of society‘s hypocrisy. While Mr Pocket lectures on ―domestic economy‖ and writes ―treatises on the management of children and servants‖, in his own family, children are ―tumbling up‖ rather than being ―brought up‖. Servants scold and give orders to Mrs Pocket, who is unable to hold her baby properly, and children look after one another (GE, 209). Hence, throughout the novel Dickens reveals the corruption, cruelty and hypocrisy of Victorian society both through their maltreatment of the orphan and the malfunctioning of social institutions.
To define the corruption and cruelty of Victorian England, Houston compares the ―spider community‖ on Miss Havisham‘s rotten wedding cake to ―England itself‖ since the spiders, by eating the cake, are actually ―engaged in the perpetuation of [their] own consumption‖ (Houston, 1992: 21). Similarly, society consumes, abuses or utilizes the elements that construct itself, that is, individuals, moral values and social institutions. However, during this process, society is actually consuming itself because individuals, ethical values and social institutions, which are essential for a functioning society, are consumed, which puts the society in a precarious position. The allusion is further observed in Miss Havisham‘s criticism of her relations for
66 being covetous and looking forward to her death to ―feast upon‖ her and her money (GE, 116).
Money, as a determinant of social class, is considered very important for most of the characters in the novel. Mrs Joe complains about being ―a blacksmith‘s wife‖ (GE, 41) and Mr Jaggers repeatedly states that he is ―paid‖ for doing his job (GE, 169, 307), and refuses to talk to his clients unless they first see Wemmick, his cashier and clerk, and pay him the required sum for his services (GE, 191). Mrs Pocket‘s preoccupation with titles and nobility causes her to see her husband‘s ―necessity of receiving gentlemen to read with him‖ as a ―blow‖ (GE, 215). Moreover, Wemmick explains his philosophy to Pip as to always get hold of ―portable property‖ no matter where it comes from (GE, 224).
The importance of money in society can also be observed in people‘s changing attitudes towards Pip before and after he attains wealth. Mr Trabb, the town tailor, starts to call Pip ―sir‖ as soon as he learns that Pip has become rich (GE, 177) and Mr Pumblechook repeatedly asks permission to shake Pip‘s hand. Even Joe, who normally tells Pip they are ―ever the best of friends‖ and calls him ―old chap‖ (GE, 78), starts to address him as ―sir‖ (GE, 245) during his first visit to Pip in London, because he feels alienated from Pip now that Pip enjoys the privileges of another class. Trabb‘s boy imitates Pip‘s false pretensions of becoming a gentleman in the street when Pip visits his town, revealing people‘s change of attitude towards Pip after he becomes rich. Hence, it is emphasized that the rising middle class gives considerable importance to wealth.
Money and by extension social class being so important to people, the orphan figure who tries to change his or her social class is regarded dangerous, because as a potential new member of the middle class, he or she is a potential usurper of their wealth by claiming his or her share of it. The orphan figure trying to find a place for himself or herself may represent the subconscious fear of the working class, who is threatening to overthrow the middle and upper classes by claiming more rights. Therefore, due to the fear of middle and upper classes of being overthrown by working class, or the fear of Victorian social values symbolically being rejected by
67 the orphan figure, society desires to exclude and punish the orphan figure, and projects its own evil on him or her, trying to repress him or her.
Pip as a victimized orphan represses his anger towards his oppressors. To express Pip‘s repressed feelings, Gothic elements are used in the novel. The Gothic setting establishes ―a sense of isolation for its protagonist and creates situations beyond social norms of generally accepted practice and behaviour‖ and hence, its chaotic atmosphere enables questioning ―ordinary modes of perception‖ allowing for social change (Loe, 1994: 208). This change, however, is frightening for society and society‘s fear is expressed through criminals who have the potential to disrupt the existing ‗order‘ or status quo of society.
Throughout the novel, evil is always lying in wait. Criminality, which is closely related to evil, inspires fear because society wants to keep crime and evil away from their domestic circles. However, the appearance of criminals in public or domestic settings causes feelings of terror. Compeyson‘s and Orlick‘s menace ―lurking‖ in the background as well as the other recurring convicts at the pub and on the stagecoach contribute to the Gothic plot (Holbrook, 1993: 133). Evil is manifested through these criminals.
The novel is full of examples of fear-inspiring Gothic imagery which are connected with ―death, decay, violence, and mental distortions‖ (Loe, 1994: 212). Death is an inseparable part of the life of the orphan child. Pip finds his parents, both biological and surrogate, in the graveyard. Hence he is surrounded by death from the start. The major Gothic imagery is depicted in Miss Havisham and her house. With her ―corpse-like‖ (GE, 90) appearance, sitting in her neglected house in a ―faded and yellow‖ (GE, 87) wedding gown, she looks like a ―waxwork‖ and a ―skeleton‖ (GE, 87). She looks more dead than alive and her denial of time, which gives the image of her being dead, is observed in her stopping all the clocks in the house at ―twenty minutes to nine‖ (GE, 88), the time when Compeyson deserted her. Also her decaying wedding cake, which is now home to the ―spider community‖ (GE, 113), demonstrates how everything in the house is decaying and dead-like. There are also instances when Pip sees a ghost in the brewery in Satis House (GE, 259), which completes the imagery of Satis House as the haunted castle in Gothic novels.
68
The element of fear is also enhanced with Pip‘s nightmares. The night before he steals the food and the file for Magwitch, burdened with guilt, Pip dreams that he is called out by a ―ghostly pirate‖ to go ashore and be ―hanged there at once‖ (GE, 47). Also he feels ―haunted‖ (GE, 332) by his dead sister in London, and ―[a] thousand Miss Havishams‖ haunt Pip when he stays at Satis House overnight (GE, 325).
The Gothic plot provides the required chaotic atmosphere for change and questions the commonly approved order. The ―unknown unconscious‖, which is one of the themes of the Gothic novel, is considered as ―[o]ther than the subject and, for that reason, monstrous‖ (Moya and Lopez, 2008: 187). In Great Expectations, Pip‘s unconscious is at work to take the revenge for his repression by society.
As Pip is repressed and wronged by a number of parental characters, he has an ―appetite for revenge‖ (Houston, 1992: 22). His repression takes the form of ―aggression‖ and ―violence against surrogates‖ (Sadoff, 1982: 51). He has to find a way of dealing with them. Therefore, some evil characters in the novel appear as Pip‘s dark doubles and projections of his unconscious desires, and undertake the mission of taking Pip‘s revenge.
The first of these characters is Orlick, who is another apprentice working for Joe at the forge. He is regarded as the most obvious of Pip‘s alter egos and therefore an agent of his violent impulses (Hutter, 1970: 36; Dessner, 1976: 441; Hara, 1986: 599; Friedman, 1987: 413; Crawford, 1988: 640; Rawlins, 1994: 84; Schor, 1996:551-552; Brooks, 1996: 491; Wynne, 2000: 53). Orlick, as Pip‘s alter ego, first punishes Pip‘s cruel sister who has been so ruthless to Pip. He ―avenges Pip‖ by beating Mrs Joe (Schor, 1996: 552). Another hint for Pip being guilty of his sister‘s assault is his identification with George Barnwell immediately before his sister is attacked by Orlick. Mr Wopsle and Mr Pumblechook make Pip act out the tragedy of George Barnwell, who murders his own uncle, and they identify ―the whole affair‖ with Pip. Mr Pumblechook even warns Pip as if ―it were a well-known fact that [he] contemplated murdering a near relation‖ (GE, 145). Pip is so full of guilt because of his identification with George Barnwell that he says he feels disposed to believe that he ―must have had some hand in the attack‖ (GE, 147). Orlick also robs, beats and
69 humiliates Mr Pumblechook, who pretends to be Pip‘s benefactor only after Pip becomes wealthy. Pip abhors Mr Pumblechook and calls him a ―detested‖ and ―diabolical‖ ―villain‖ (GE, 130-132). Hence, Orlick acts out ―Pip‘s bestial self‖ by punishing the parental figures who wrong him (Rawlins, 1994: 84).
Another character that emerges as Pip‘s dark double is Bentley Drummle, one of Mr Pocket‘s students, who later marries Estella. He is ―idle‖ and ―proud‖ (GE, 225) and uses Estella with ―great cruelty‖ during their marriage (GE, 490). Pip is humiliated and scorned by Estella, who takes Miss Havisham‘s revenge on men using Pip. Hence Pip transfers his aggression towards Estella onto Bentley, and Bentley by mistreating Estella takes Pip‘s revenge. Bentley also accomplishes Pip‘s ―metaphorical ravishing‖ of Estella, literally beats her into ―submission‖, and silences her voice (Schor, 1996: 552). His physical abuse and ―abasement‖ of Estella lowers her social position and diminishes the gap between them, making her ―worthy of Pip‘s love‖ (Houston, 1992: 22), which is also similar to the relationship between Jane and Rochester, in which Rochester is subdued by Jane‘s alter ego.
Compeyson is regarded as another of Pip‘s alter egos (Hutter, 1970: 36). Compeyson is Magwitch‘s arch enemy and tries to destroy him until the end of the novel. His hatred of Magwitch parallels Pip‘s aversion to Magwitch. Magwitch commodifies Pip by seeing him as his own property and forces his false concept of a gentleman onto Pip. Hence, Pip feels that his life is ―corrupted […] by a false idea‖ (Holbrook, 1993: 145). Compeyson sitting behind Pip at the theatre represents Pip‘s ―repressed murderous desires toward the criminal who fathered him‖ (Sadoff, 1982: 53). Although towards the end Pip seems to be reconciled with the idea of adopting Magwitch as a father figure, there are hints that he still feels anger towards Magwitch. When Magwitch is finally put in prison, Pip is ―suspected of carrying poison‖ to him (GE, 468). Sadoff considers this as an indication of Pip‘s wish to ―consign Magwitch […] to death‖ (Sadoff, 1982: 53). Moreover, Magwitch‘s capture and death suggest Pip‘s ―underlying complicity‖, for this recapture ―removes Magwitch from Pip‘s life and frees him of the burden of his creator‖ (Crawford, 1988: 642).
70 Pip‘s anger towards Miss Havisham is not expressed through one of his alter egos, but by himself. Miss Havisham teaches Pip that poverty is a ―social humiliation‖ and causes him to feel inferior (Brittan, 2004: 45). She also uses Pip as the object of her revenge. Hence, Pip depicts Miss Havisham as the ―Witch of the place‖ (GE, 113) ―devouring the beautiful creature‖ she has reared (GE, 320) and himself as the ―young Knight of romance‖ out to rescue the princess (GE, 253). Pip‘s wish to see her dead is explicit in his visualizing her as hanging. He fancies the figure of Miss Havisham ―hanging […] by the neck‖ in a gallery in the brewery in Satis House during his first visit (GE, 94). Also, When Pip visits Miss Havisham to receive Herbert‘s money, Pip says he remarks a new ―expression on her face, as if she were afraid of [him]‖ (GE, 408) and she repents her injustice to Pip. While walking in the garden, Pip again fancies seeing Miss Havisham ―hanging‖ (GE, 413), immediately after which he finds Miss Havisham running towards him ―with a whirl of fire blazing all about her‖ (GE, 414); hence, Pip‘s wish to see her hurt is realized as she ―combusts‖, or burns, when Pip is there and she dies shortly after this (Houston, 1992: 22). In this way, Pip‘s intention to hurt Miss Havisham is fulfilled.
In the published ending of the novel, which this study will focus on, Pip returns, after Magwitch‘s death, to the marshes to ask for forgiveness from Joe and Biddy, and to marry Biddy only to find them married and decides hastily to go to Cairo to work with his ―terminally good‖ friend Herbert Pocket, whom he has helped secretly to found a business (Kincaid, 1995: 82). He returns to his town to see Joe and Biddy, and their son, little Pip, and daughter, after working for eleven years in Cairo. Pip‘s return to his town can be considered as a return to Joe‘s teaching, which symbolizes the ―standard which Pip has left and to which he must return in order to make accurate judgements about himself‖ (Loe, 1994: 204). Eagleton sees this return to the forge as a requirement for ―shuck[ing] off his false social persona‖, after which he can start over and marry Estella (Eagleton, 2005: 155). Moreover, Pip is symbolically reborn and is given a second chance as Joe‘s son, little Pip. Pip immediately identifies little Pip with himself: ―sitting on my own little stool looking at the fire, was – I again‖ (GE, 490). He goes to the churchyard with little Pip, which is a re-enactment of the opening scene, where Pip was introduced into the world of the criminal. For little Pip, who has tender and compassionate parents, the graveyard experience is not
71 terrifying at all. Little Pip, unlike Pip, is not devoid of the affectionate and protecting mother figure represented by Biddy.
The orphan finding a place for himself or herself in a new system can be observed at the end of the novel. Satis House is burnt down, and all the parental figures, who represent patriarchy, except for Joe, who has never hurt Pip, are either dead or punished. Miss Havisham‘s death is regarded as ―purgatory‖ because she was the initiator of Pip‘s false expectations and her death produces a cleansing effect (Friedman, 1987: 419). Also, since Miss Havisham is the only character to whom Pip expresses his anger, it can be concluded that the orphan‘s power of speech destroys and recreates the great house:
Miss Havisham‘s yielding to the power of Pip‘s emotions seems somehow to ignite the fire that destroys her and Satis House, […]. So the vision of the orphan passing through a great house which his influence destroys and restores retains its potency. (Auerbach, 1975: 412)
The decaying remains of the past are annihilated and only the garden of the house is left, where ―the old ivy‖ has ―struck root anew‖ and a new house is going to be built on that ground, denoting a promising start or regeneration for Estella and her property (GE, 491). Also Estella and Pip leave the garden holding hands. Although Estella says they will ―continue friends apart‖, Pip sees ―no shadow of another parting from her‖ (GE, 492). Hence the ending can be considered optimistic. Friedman argues the ending echoes the closing lines of Paradise Lost, in which ―a reconciled Adam and Eve go forth together, united, to face the world‖ and this suggests ―a basically positive outcome‖ (Friedman, 1987: 418).
Consequently, in Great Expectations, the figure of the orphan is used because he is a symbol of the absence of a protecting home, which is why Pip has to find a place for himself in society. Thus, he is also associated with the working class people whose pursuit of rights parallels Pip‘s search for a place in society. Hence Pip is pushed by his elders to gain a higher social standing and he is wronged and repressed, but he finds ways of dealing with his plight. By depicting some evil characters as Pip‘s alter ego, Dickens uses symbolism to show how the repressed orphan tries to take his revenge. He does not resort to violence or try to victimize others for his own revenge, as Miss Havisham, Magwitch and others do. He does
72 not act out his violent emotions, but represses them. Although he is a victim himself, he does not victimize others because Dickens uses alter egos. In this way, he rejects the values and means of society, who teaches people to be violent and cruel. His rejection of society‘s values also contributes to the completion of his self- formation in terms of Bildungsroman. He comes to see that the values of society are false. He sheds the false idea of being a gentleman and the importance of money, which are notions imposed upon him by society, and only when he rejects these values, does he change and complete his self formation as an individual.
At the end of Great Expectations, Pip achieves reconciliation between the old system and the new one. He is not dependant on the others any more, but he can work as a clerk as a result of the education and experience he has attained through Miss Havisham‘s and Magwitch‘s intervention in his life. His union with Estella seems possible because Estella is humbled by her cruel husband. Similarly, Rochester is subdued at the end of Jane Eyre, and Cathy and Hareton are less fierce and violent at the end of Wuthering Heights. There is reconciliation at the end of these novels. Cathy, Hareton, Jane, Pip and Estella, who are all orphans, finally gain a home by rejecting the hypocrisy of society‘s norms.
73 CHAPTER V CONCLUSION
Emily Brontë‘s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë‘s Jane Eyre, and Charles Dickens‘s Great Expectations, which all centre on orphan protagonists, delineate a profound portrayal of the Victorian way of life and its evil propensities. Victorians superficially attached a lot of importance to moral and religious values and to social institutions, which were intended to bind society together. They had a strong belief in the notion of domesticity, which idealized the middle class home as a haven of peace, where the mother was the angel-in-the-house, looking after the children and ruling the house, and the father was the source of income and authority. The children, on the other hand, were expected to be obedient to their elders. However, this ideal was usually nothing more than a pretension. The real face of Victorian family life is demonstrated through the atmosphere of violence and cruelty that prevail in these three novels.
In the Victorian novel the figure of the orphan, who has no fixed roots in society and no role in the ideal of domesticity, is considered an outsider. He or she represents the other or the difference within the house. Hence, in order to maintain its integrity, the family excludes the orphan because only in this way can the family retain its integrity. Also, as Peters argues, the family needs to exclude the orphan in order to reaffirm itself. Thus, the orphan in fiction is rejected and excluded from domestic spheres and is associated with socially unacceptable, supernatural or evil characters, denoting the orphan‘s alienness and otherness as well as his or her possibility of threat. This is evident in Heathcliff‘s association in Wuthering Heights with gypsies and Satan, Jane‘s in Jane Eyre with evil and supernatural beings and Pip‘s in Great Expectations with criminals and animals. These orphans, in their struggle to find a place for themselves in society, pose a threat because they want to create a place for themselves. The orphans in these novels reveal the shortcomings of society and even change social structures as in the case of Jane Eyre. Their struggle may represent the deep-seated fear of the working class which tries to overthrow middle and upper classes in order to attain a new position in society and society‘s fear of being overthrown is projected onto the figure of the orphan, associating him or her with the working classes and hence regarding him or
74 her as a threatening agent that has to be repressed or excluded. This fear, as well as the excluded orphan‘s consequent feelings of revenge, which are sometimes suppressed in the orphan‘s subconscious, as in the cases of Jane and Pip, is conveyed through the Gothic atmosphere dominating the three novels.
The figure of the orphan, who displaces people in their homes where they are supposed to feel most secure, makes people feel uncomfortable, just like the unhomely that appears in the homely with a disturbing effect. Gothic elements in these novels both enable the questioning of previously accepted notions by presenting an alternative reality and provide a medium for the outlet of suppressed desires. Conventional values that are acknowledged by society are challenged by the Gothic and the subconscious fears or desires of individuals are expressed through the use of supernatural elements or the portrayal of some characters as alter egos. As well as creating the atmosphere of chaos necessary for destruction and recreation of the system, the Gothic also provides an atmosphere which enables the expression of the middle- and upper-class fear of being overthrown by the working class, which is represented with the orphan‘s quest for a place in society.
The orphan figure is used as a means through which Victorian novelists reveal the corruption, cruelty and hypocrisy of Victorian society. Since the orphan is in fact a helpless and vulnerable child, society‘s symbolic demonization of him or her and the orphan‘s victimization demonstrate society‘s callousness. The orphan figure suggests pure self, which is yet to be defined and shaped by society. If he or she is nurtured and cultivated appropriately, then the orphan can lead a decent life without posing a threat to social values. However, if the orphan is mistreated, abused and exploited, then all he or she can learn from society is violence and corruption, with which he or she will retaliate.
Since all three novels are examples of the Bildungsroman, they are closely related to the formation of the self of the individual. Victorians were interested in their origins and the formation of the individual due to the quickly changing ideas in the Victorian age. Industrial developments, which triggered a reorganization of the social classes and the changing of traditional values, caused uncertainty in society and made the
75 individual more important. Hence the orphan figure, without any background to restrain him or her, presented the novelists with the possibility of exploring the formation of the individual‘s self.
Chapter Two of this study analyses the position of the orphan in society focusing on the character of Heathcliff, who is an orphan with obscure origins. With his dark appearance, Heathcliff is frequently associated with the demonic. He is excluded and rejected by the Earnshaw family the moment he enters Wuthering Heights. Hence, he has no place in the domestic ideal, which is, in fact, characterized by violence and corruption. Since he is exposed to violence, all he learns from society is violence, with which he attacks it and takes his revenge by usurping the property and roles of the Earnshaws and Lintons. Thus, his appropriation of their rights parallels the working class‘ endeavour to claim their rights from middle and upper classes, which invokes a similar fear in the Victorians.
When Heathcliff comes to Wuthering Heights, he is a little orphan boy who is harmless. However, being violent and cruel is indoctrinated into him by society‘s mistreatment of Heathcliff. They use him with great cruelty and try to oppress him and he, in turn, uses cruelty and violence to avenge himself. Representing the pure self, Heathcliff, who is like Locke‘s tabula rasa at the beginning, is inscribed with a corrupting and brutal script. Heathcliff‘s malignity is an emblem of the extent of the corruption of Victorian society revealed by Emily Brontë. Heathcliff is an embodiment of the monster into which society can transform unprotected individuals.
Chapter Three deals with Jane‘s progress and the formation of her self. Jane starts off as an orphan, whom society tries to exclude and reduce to a servant but she rejects the role that is deemed appropriate for her. She is again associated with the other within the family, excluded and oppressed. However, in order to make room for herself in society, Jane has to resist society‘s humiliation and exploitation of her and attack the patriarchy that oppresses her. In that respect, although she is not a member of the working class, her struggle to rise socially and her rejection of patriarchal society‘s values parallels those of the discontented working class. Her endeavour to find a place renders her a threat in the eyes of society and lead to her
76 identification with supernatural and evil characters. Because her parentage is ambiguous, that is, her father is a priest whereas her mother is from the upper class, she does not have a place among either group, which makes her position all the more precarious. However, she manages to make her way out of the obscurity surrounding her into the relatively safer realm of being a middle-class mother and wife.
In the process of achieving her status as a middle class wife and mother, she subverts the teachings of society and finds means to give vent to her repressed anger. Her use of language is a significant part of her rebellion against authority. She confronts Mrs Reed, Mr Brocklehurst, Rochester and St John verbally and defies their authority in an unconventional way. Also, the anger she has tried to repress throughout her childhood is manifested through the violent deeds of her alter ego, Bertha Mason causing the burning down of Rochester‘s ancestral mansion, which is a symbol of his power as a patriarch. Jane/Bertha also causes Rochester to receive wounds, thus creating his dependence on her so that they can have a marriage based on equality. The corruption and violence of Victorian society is once again revealed through society‘s exploitation and victimization of the helpless orphan girl.
Chapter Four of this study examines the position of Pip as an orphan in Victorian society. Pip, just like the other two orphans, represents the self, which is also evident in his name, which means seed. As the seed of society, he endeavours to grow up to become an individual and complete his self formation. His mind is filled with false notions from the onset and he learns to reject them only in the end when his character formation is complete. As a child he is exposed to violence and abuse. He is victimized by Miss Havisham as part of her scheme of avenging herself on all men for being deserted by Compeyson. Magwitch, too, tries to take revenge for being excluded and rejected by society. By making Pip a respected gentleman, a character Magwitch himself has always wanted to be, Magwitch satisfies his feelings of revenge by owning a gentleman. Both Miss Havisham and Magwitch are in fact victimized by society, but they take their vengeance by victimizing an innocent and unprotected orphan. Hence, Dickens depicts the cruelty and corruption of society through the victimization of Pip and his being treated like a piece of property.
77
Pip is wronged by a number of people who are his parental figures throughout the novel. These parental figures represent the capitalism that oppresses and exploits individuals. Although Pip‘s desire to rise socially is imposed upon him by Miss Havisham and is made possible through Magwitch‘s inheritance, it still renders Pip dangerous because changing one‘s social class is an act of disobedience to authority, which associates Pip with the disobedient working class. Miss Havisham and Magwitch, by causing Pip to fulfil their false notions of being a gentleman, are in fact abusing and victimizing Pip. Hence, Pip takes revenge for his abuse and exploitation through the return of his repressed desires in the form of certain characters portrayed as Pip‘s alter egos, which is conveyed through the Gothic atmosphere of the novel.
In the three novels that this study focuses on, the orphan figure as an embodiment of the other, stands out as a threat to the boundaries of family and class as defined by the Victorians. The cruelty of Victorian society is revealed in all three novels through the exploitation and victimization of the orphan in a similar manner. The three orphans are exploited, abused and associated with evil and socially unacceptable characters, and they all take their revenge on their oppressors. They use certain means to take their revenge when rejecting society‘s values. Heathcliff rejects his treatment as a servant and uses physical violence and the methods he learns from society such as contracts and property deals in order to subvert the existing order and create a place for himself in society. Jane, too, rejects being reduced to a servant which society thinks fit for orphans and she challenges oppressive patriarchy through her unconventionality and the power of her words. On a symbolic level, she also uses her repressed anger to avenge herself on Rochester. Pip, too, first rejects being a common boy, and he dreams of becoming a gentleman, denoting an upward movement on the social scale. He then comes to realize the falseness of this, and in the end, he rejects the false notion of gentility instilled into him as a boy. He avenges his victimization on those responsible for it through his alter egos and hallucinations only on a symbolic level. Hence, whereas Heathcliff is the most violent of the three orphans reflecting his revenge and anger through his actions, Pip is the most passive as regards the means he uses for revenge. Heathcliff resorts to violence and crime to avenge his abuse whereas Jane
78 or Pip refrain from criminal offences, which is partly why Heathcliff has to die in order to clear the new system of the taint of the old system, which he bears.
The three orphans manage to find a place in society. They eventually find a position which is accepted and defined by society. Heathcliff becomes a landowner, by taking into possession the two great houses of the novel and fulfilling his scheme of taking his revenge on those who excluded and oppressed him. Jane becomes a middle class wife and mother respected by society, having brought the man she wanted to marry lower down the social scale by symbolically causing him to lose his ancestral mansion and herself rising socially through the discovery of her relatives and the inheritance she can thus receive. Pip, who is initially made to believe that being a common blacksmith apprentice should be despised and that he should rise socially and become a gentleman, realizes its falseness and understands that he was made to do it in the wrong way. He then starts over, works hard as a clerk and manages to have a decent life and a place in society. In all three cases, the initial status quo or order is disrupted by the orphan‘s endeavour to find a new position for himself or herself in society by upward social mobility. This attempt causes crises and chaos, which is similar to the chaos, uncertainty and fear caused by the class conflict in society.
In the end, in all three novels reconciliation is achieved. Heathcliff‘s death purges the new system of the evil effects of the old system, which was based on violence and cruelty. Cathy and Hareton have a relationship which is not characterized by oppressive patriarchy. Unconventionally, it is Cathy who teaches Hareton how to read and write and the novel ends with a domestic scene, which is not characterized by violence. Jane also achieves reconciliation in the end by marrying the man she wants. She symbolically causes Rochester to be blinded and maimed, which smoothes over his tyrannical side, removing the evil effect of the old system. She herself receives her inheritance, which reverses her former position as dependent on Rochester and they have an unconventional marriage, which is not based on the dominance of the male. Pip uses the knowledge he acquires through Miss Havisham‘s influence and Magwitch‘s money in order to find a position as a clerk. He is educated by Mr Pocket with Magwitch‘s money and as a result of Miss Havisham‘s influence. In the end he can work as a clerk in the company in which he
79 secretly helped Herbert to become a partner. In the new order, Pip has a job which makes him independent. There is also a hope of being united with Estella, whose pride has been subdued, which indicates that the evil effects of the old system produced by Miss Havisham are purged. The orphans, who were bereft of a home and a place in society, find homes in the end. Heathcliff achieves death, which he regards as a reunion with Catherine, and Cathy and Hareton become a family. Jane lives at Ferndean as a wife and mother and Pip has prospects of a union with Estella. Heathcliff, Jane and Pip, by effecting changes in society, finally manage to find a place for themselves in society.
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