The Horror of Marriage in "Jane Eyre"

Paper Summary:

This paper argues that, in Charlotte Bronte's novel, "Jane Eyre", the institution of marriage functions as a Gothic "monster." Although marriage appears to be the desired resolution of the novel's plot, it in fact contains throughout an element of horror and threatens the destruction of both individual characters and societal order.

From the Paper:

"Charlotte Bront's Jane Eyre is, in its barest form, the story of the achievement of a marriage. Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester fall in love despite class and age differences; their union is impeded by the presence Rochester's mad wife; Jane flees, then returns, and at last, the first wife having killed herself, the marriage can take place and all can end happily. It is, on one level, a novel working towards and concluding in a conventional marriage plot: loose ends are neatly wrapped up, all of the Gothic elements that have troubled the novel seem to be expunged from it, and a certain conservatism is preserved. On closer observation, however, it becomes apparent that Bront' presents a far more troubled picture of the institution of marriage than this initial reading would suggest. Marriages and potential marriages abound throughout the novel, as expected in a text that draws on the genre of the domestic novel (among others), but they are almost universally problematic: with the exception of a few servant couples, there is no purely calm and happy marriage Bront's novel. In this multi-genre novel, marriage becomes the most Gothic of spaces, in fact nearly a Gothic monster, something that haunts the characters and the text itself, something both fled from and pursued, both feared and desired, a space of possible fulfillment but of more probable danger and horror. In Jane Eyre, marriage is invested with legal and social authority and necessity, but it is also presented as deeply problematic, both because of this social importance itself, and in the fact that, like all Gothic horrors, marriage endangers identity and threatens the dissolution of the self. Throughout the novel, and even in the apparent resolution at the end, marriage poses a Gothic threat both to the self and to the workings of the domestic sphere of which it should be the most basic and well-functioning unit."

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