Is Bertha the double of Jane?The madwoman in the attic

 

Jane Eyre= AIR

Helen Burns = FIRE

Grace Poole= WATER

St John Rivers= WATER

Bertha Mason- association with the French word maison= House

Is Bertha the double of Jane?

Bertha is like Jane

SIMILARITIES

There are parallels between the two of them.

Jane hides behind a curtain at the beginning of the story

Jane is then imprisoned in the red room. Red is the colour of rage and of blood. It may be associated to women’s fertility.

She’s confined into a room in order not to make her poison the world

Bertha is imprisoned in Rochester’s house.

Both of them have a passionate love for Rochester

Both of them are outsiders. They’re marginalized.

Jane is always marginalized in any house in which she takes up residence.

Both of them are aggressive against conventional structures.

DIFFERENCES

Bertha  is also the opposite. Possibly she’s colored. She’s associated with blood and fire. West Indies is described as a hell with a blood-red sun and a fiery landscape.

She’s uncivilized. If you have too much life and fire in England you’re put into margins, you’re kept out.

She’s everything Jane fears.

She’s monstrous, grotesque, obscene.

Bertha comes from Jamaica.

That suggests a whole history of slavery, exploitation, colonialism.

Britain in the 1840s is still a major imperial power and has been until recently a major slaving power too.

The madwoman in the attic, somewhere is hidden in the secure domestic home.

She’s always been concealed or denied.

The fire that she sets is a way to indicate that she’s present, that she’s there and they must listen to her and recognize her and hear her.

She’s described as growling and snatching away like a dog- she’s been removed from language.She can’t speak English, but she can use signs. Her actions are her language

Bertha rips the veil two nights before and leaves it on the floor. It’s a proof of Bertha’s existence and her violence. She does what Jane would like to do.

Ripping the veil is showing the truth.

Rochester describes Bertha as unchaste. She lacks sexual control.

Rochester says that the house is poisoned, it’s a plague house.

Finally the fire is used by Bertha to clean the house, but also to reveal herself.

Women’s work causes anger on the part of women who were rebelling against that role

Sewing, weaving is a sign of their enslavement just like their white wedding dresses.

Bertha must die finally in order for Jane to be with Rochester not because she represents Rochester’s  marriage but because Jane has to kill that side of her and has to become submissive to be with Rochester.

At the end Jane returns to Thornfield Hall in a position of power as she’s inherited some money.

Now Rochester is physically weak and he lives in the middle of the woods(like old women in fairytales). Their gender roles are switched, but at the end we’re told that Mr Rochester is getting his sight back, he’s getting his strength back again.

So the question is… What will happen now? Will Jane be locked into a cage like Bertha?