Jane Eyre's Equality of Spirit
August 4, 2022
When Jane Eyre claims to be Mr. Rochester's equal, she has no social status, no financial security, and no political power. But she has certainty that her spirit, as it will stand before God, is equal to anyone else's spirit.
When Jane Eyre claims to be Mr. Rochester's equal, she has no social status, no financial security, and no political power. But she has certainty that her spirit, as it will stand before God, is equal to anyone else's spirit.
This is part 2 of a 3-part series. You can find the others here: Part 1, "The Foundation of Jane Eyre’s Moral Education," and Part 3, "Adam Smith on Jane Eyre’s Blanche Ingram."
In the Liberty Fund’s recent reading group on Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Adam Smith, “Liberty, Equality, Jane Eyre, and Adam Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric,” participants rapidly acknowledged how odd a combination Brontë and Smith first seemed to be. However, as our conversation moved forward to a discussion of one of the secondary readings — Susan Ridout's Letters to a Young Governess — I became more and more grateful to have considered the economic elements of Jane Eyre. I found that although Smith’s lectures on rhetoric and his discussion of equality were his primary influence on the reading group, approaching the text with an economic lens is in itself a valuable asset to a modern reader’s analysis of Jane Eyre.
In the Liberty Fund’s recent reading group on Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Adam Smith, “Liberty, Equality, Jane Eyre, and Adam Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric,” participants rapidly acknowledged how odd a combination Brontë and Smith first seemed to be. However, as our conversation moved forward to a discussion of one of the secondary readings — Susan Ridout's Letters to a Young Governess — I became more and more grateful to have considered the economic elements of Jane Eyre. I found that although Smith’s lectures on rhetoric and his discussion of equality were his primary influence on the reading group, approaching the text with an economic lens is in itself a valuable asset to a modern reader’s analysis of Jane Eyre.
This struck me in particular as we read Jane’s celebrated declaration:
“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? — You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! . . . [I]t is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal — as we are!”
For modern audiences who don’t understand the precarious socio-economic status of governesses, Jane’s declaration does not carry its full weight. Brontë’s contemporaries, by contrast, would have readily understood the enormity of this claim; in this moment, Jane is dismissing a series of rigid class barriers, stepping beyond the positions allotted to women, to servants, and especially to governesses in Victorian England.
Financially-based class divisions constrain Jane’s world from the first. The Reeds punish her for her dependence on them, treating her as a burden and telling her that she ought to beg on the streets rather than rely on their money for survival. However, knowing only of the ragged clothing, hunger, and illness associated with poverty, Jane admits that she was unwilling to flee her abusive but financially secure family, being too afraid “to purchase liberty at the price of caste.” At Lowood School, the Reverend Brocklehurst ensures that every girl in attendance lives in an enforced poverty reminiscent of ancient ascetics. Ultimately, Jane is only able to escape this cycle of abuse and financial dependency after her education enables her to apply for work as a governess.
However, being a governess does not mean total salvation from socio-economic inequality. As Brontë herself said, “a private governess has no existence, is not considered as a living and rational being” by those around her. Neither one of the servants due to their nearness to the family, nor a member of the family due to their status as employees, governesses often lived in social, intellectual, and emotional isolation. In Jane Eyre, the isolation Jane experiences may initially seem to be merely a continuation of her lonely childhood. However, her habit of sitting on the sidelines, permitted to look upon but not engage with the family and its guests — yet still subject to scrutiny and criticism if her employer or his company felt so inclined — is a good representation of the reality experienced by many governesses, as noted by the author of Letters to a Young Governess:
“If you are too lively, you may seem obtrusive, if too grave, unsociable and unkind. Your appearance, your manner, your dress are observed; and without due care you may unwillingly offend. . . [so] do not forget your proper place, and seek one not assigned you. . .
“[As a governess,] you may be neither left in solitude, nor yet allowed to join familiarly in society. You are, it is true, invited to the drawing room; but when there, must sit unnoticed and almost unseen; and this will make you more sensible of your inferiority of station, than the absence of such seeming condescension.”
Such personal isolation was sometimes accompanied by dismissive associations with governesses as a class. For example, midway through Jane Eyre, Lady Ingram tirades against governesses, claiming that she has “suffered a martyrdom from their incompetency and caprice” and warning that she can see in Jane’s physiognomy “all the faults of her class.” Jane describes herself as one of an “anathematized race” in Lady Ingram’s eyes, heightening the comparison; to the nobility, governesses are not individuals — their equals before God and the law — but rather members of a hated caste of servants.
Yet although membership in this class meant perpetually inferior political standing, governesses were not secure even in this difficult position. The moment an employer decided to, he could fire his governess, leaving her without home, income, or even the references necessary to work in the future. For governesses of particularly difficult children, this could come without warning or real cause. For example, only moments after her mother’s tirade, Blanche Ingram shares an anecdote about successfully conspiring to have her governess and her brother’s tutor fired:
“. . . Tedo, you know, I helped you in prosecuting (or persecuting) your tutor, whey-faced Mr. Vining—the parson in the pip, as we used to call him. He and Miss Wilson took the liberty of falling in love with each other—at least Tedo and I thought so; we surprised sundry tender glances and sighs which we interpreted as tokens of ‘la belle passion,’ and I promise you the public soon had the benefit of our discovery; we employed it as a sort of lever to hoist our dead-weights from the house.”
Understanding this background allows readers to understand and appreciate more fully the magnitude of Jane’s claim to equality. As a governess, she has no social status to draw on, no financial security to rely on, and no political power to exert in making her claim. Denied influence in the material world, her claim to equality is — and can only be — metaphysical: “it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal — as we are!”
Although many modern readers and filmgoers interpret Jane Eyre as primarily a love story, the novel is not just a romance. To those willing to analyze aspects of the novel such as its socio-economic and political elements, Jane Eyre is clearly the rich retelling of an entire life — of one woman overcoming incredible odds to seize the happy ending that every authority figure in her childhood would have denied her: recovery and closure from trauma, a loving marriage rooted in mutual respect rather than financial maneuvering, and a child of her own.