Pre- Thesis Statement Brainstorming (Writing Process Pt 1/9)

I read some literary criticism…whatsup?  Jane Iterare by Tita French Baumlin and James S. Baumlin.  It’s a post-Jungian analysis of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and it’s pretty good once you’ve waded through

all

the

crazy

jargon.

I really only knew two or three things about this Jung fellow before I read the article.

1.  He’s a famous psychologist.  (Or rather, he would be famous if Freud didn’t already have the corner on that.)
2. You’re supposed to pronounce his name differently than I always think, but I of course don’t remember how.
3. He like totally had an affair.

So while I could appreciate Dr. Lundquist’s apparent confidence in me (she’s the one who assigned the article), I don’t think I actually qualified as part of Baumlin & Baumlin’s target audience.  That being said, there were a few things that caught my interest.  The authors brought new meaning to each of the characters in Jane Eyre by relabeling them as projections of different parts of Jane’s “self".  They made all these cool connections because they analyzed the novel as a “rebirth myth” which is a very narrow subgenre brought to our attention by Mr. Jung (Yoong? Hungie?) himself.

I do like seeing the various layers of meaning that can be found when critics analyze the same book as an autobiography, a religious coming-of-age story, a female coming-of-age story, a social criticism, and a “rebirth myth,” alternatively.  But I also find it a little strange that after spending all of Spring semester up to this point studying nothing but Jane Eyre in my 295 class, I have only seen filmmakers seriously treat the novel (with it’s castle-like setting, decidedly dark male interest, and mysterious midnight murder attempts) the way it practically screams to be treated—as a Gothic romance.  Why?  I'll tell you why.  Gothic literary critics have a seven-chapter obstacle to deal with called St. John Rivers.  Rivers goes against the grain of every Gothic romantic expectation you ever thought of entertaining.  Of him, another literary critic by the name of Emily Griesinger wrote, “But most readers today either despise him completely or, like some of my students, skim this section quickly to find out what happened to Jane’s real man, Edward Rochester.“  Many filmmakers simply cut him out.  And literary critics, it appears, have moved on to other genres for interpretive lenses.  But if you ask me, they have left the Gothic romance business woefully unresolved.

Imagine this instead:  Rene Girard is right.  Myths (genres, archetypes…it’s still all the same to me) really have been used throughout history to disguise and justify acts of collective oppression.  The Gothic romantic elements in Jane Eyre actually combine to keep Jane worse off in a Victorian patriarchy.  According to the Gothic romantic template, we would expect our hero Mr. Rochester’s unlikely adoration to be Jane’s only hope for independence.  But what kind of an independence would that be?  Even Jane’s “independence” would depend upon a man’s charity.  If this really is the feminist novel that it is said to be, then Jane should need to determine her own destiny.  So, she steps out of all the Gothic romantic shackles for a while (for 7 chapters, to be precise), and who should she meet but St. John Rivers who offers her perhaps the deepest lure for a woman seeking equality, “that of adopting a man’s cause or career and making it her own” (Adrienne Rich, yet another literary critic of Jane Eyre).  But after some careful introspection, Jane rejects that offer.  She will not abandon her passion altogether.  She will defend and value her femininity.  And as soon as she realizes that, she receives a supernatural (Gothic) revelation that sends her back to Edward Rochester, who is ready to marry her on equal terms.  In sum, all that time spent with St. John Rivers made it so that—"unlike Emily Bronte’s Catherine, who is driven by her demon lover, Heathcliff, to a socially correct marriage and later to her death"--Jane Eyre could take a step back, look within herself, and determine the kind of marriage she wanted of her own free will (Baumlin and Baumlin).  Only then we could have our happy, oppression-free, ending.

Anyway, that’s kind of what I’m looking at for my paper.  Feedback is encouraged.  Tweethis statements are on their way.  In fact, if you have any thesis statement suggestions after reading all this, please send ‘em my way!

(Shoot, I really am turning out to be a feminist, aren’t I?  Just my luck.)

No, Doctor Burton, I am not double counting my essay from 295 for this class.  Unfortunately, I only had this mild stroke of genius after I had already turned in an unrelated 295 essay on Jane Eyre.  Although, I wouldn’t put it past myself to do such a thing.  So you were right to wonder, if you did.