27. John Stuart Mill, On the Subjection of Women (1873), in ‘On Liberty’ and Other Essays, ed. John Gray (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 503.
28. See Ch. V, note 18 and Ch. XXXIII, note 1.
29. Phrenology, considered to be the science of the mind, took the form of character divination from the shape of the skull. Stemming from the physiological and psychological theories of the Austrian physician, Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828), the theory was fashionable in Britain during the mid-nineteenth century. (See also Ch. III, note 3.)
30. Sir Walter Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), ed. W. M. Parker (London: Dent, Everyman, 1991), p. 323.
31. Madwoman in the Attic, pp. 336–71.
32. Leslie Stephen, ‘Hours in a Library: Charlotte Bront?’, Cornhill Magazine 36 (December 1877), in CA, Vol. I, p. 238.
33. David Lodge sensitively analyses this symbolic patterning in the chapter ‘Fire and Eyre: Charlotte Bront?’s War of Earthly Elements’, in Language of Fiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English Novel (London: Routledge, 1966).
PREFACE
1. preface: Charlotte Bront? expressed mortification with this Preface, writing to her editor, W. S. Williams, on 11 March 1848, that ‘I read my preface over with some pain – I did not like it. I wrote it when I was a little enthusiastic, like you, about the French Revolution. I wish I had written it in a cool moment; I should have said the same things, but in a different manner’ (Letters, Vol. II, p. 41). Both her Francophobic feeling and her distrust of violent revolution had made her cautious, and she was embarrassed by her fulsome praise of Thackeray as the prophet of his age.
2. the timorous or carping few: Many early reviews were rapturous; most were impressed. But the Spectator review of 6 November 1847 expressed doubts over the novel’s aesthetic, its ‘low tone of behaviour’ and the repulsiveness of the hero and heroine (CA, Vol. 3, p. 3). Charlotte Bront? was hurt by the notice in the Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction, which accused the novel of attacking Christianity in its portrayal of Mr Brocklehurst and St John Rivers, and of embodying the age’s ‘unquiet spirit of insubordination’ (4th Series, December 1847, pp. 376–80). It was not until December 1848 that Elizabeth Rigby in the Quarterly Review stigmatized Jane Eyre as ‘anti-Christian’, associating it with the continental revolutions and Chartism (CA, Vol. 3, pp. 41–61).
3. the Pharisee: Jesus denounced the Pharisees, formalists who judged by laws and codified man-made traditions rather than the spirit, as ‘hypocrites’. In discussion with the Pharisees, Christ denounces the Mosaic law with the words: ‘What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder’ (Matthew 19:6). The inflated manner of the Preface is probably due to Charlotte Bront?’s sensitivity at the public response to sexual aspects of Jane Eyre.
4. sepulchre … charnel relics: In Matthew 23:27, Jesus condemns the Pharisees as ‘whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness’. Charlotte Bront? assumes the authority of a latterday prophet.
5. Ahab did not like Micaiah … faithful counsel: Allusion to the story of Kings Ahab and Jehosophat, who rejected the counsel of the prophet Micaiah, son of Imlah. He refused to flatter the kings by prophesying what they wished to hear (assurance of the success of a military expedition to Ramoth-Gilead). The false prophet, Zedekiah, struck Micaiah for his dissidence (2 Chronicles 18).
6. satirist of ‘Vanity Fair’: Vanity Fair was being published in numbers during 1847–8. The dedication of Jane Eyre to William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) was added to the second edition of January 1848. Charlotte Bront? was unaware of the embarrassing and painful coincidences with his life (his wife’s mental illness and her incarceration), which gave rise to a rumour that, as she wrote in a dismayed letter of 28 January 1848: ‘“Jane Eyre” had been written by a Governess in his family”’ (Letters, Vol. II, p. 22). She withdrew the dedication in the third edition.
7. Greek fire: Incendiary weapon in Greek heroic myth.
8. levin-brand: Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) revived this archaism, from ‘levin’, ‘a flash of lightning’ (OED). See Marmion (1808), Bk I, l. 90: ‘To him [Nelson] as to the burning Levin, / Short, bright resistless course was given’ (Poetical Works, ed. J. Logie Robertson (London: Oxford University Press, 1971)). Charlotte Bront? implies a cosmic force in Thackeray’s sarcasm, which she picks up in the image of ‘lambent sheet-lightning’ expressive of ‘the electric death-spark’.