Introduction

58
Vanessa Mangione
is the ideal victim for Brocklehurst’s method of education, as she is pious, patient
and submits completely to the symbolic order. She endures unjust punishment
uncomplainingly, forgives the teacher’s cruelty and entirely acknowledges the legitimacy
of their punishment. Helen appears like a living martyr; her desire for
death however, demonstrates how the total compliance to the symbolic results in
violence against the self. Her total submission to her oppressors eliminates any
kind of self-preservation; as a result, she is convinced of her inadequacy and her
guilt for not being able to live up to their expectations leads to this desire for
death. Thus, Helen’s submissiveness and inability to live within the symbolic order
let her consider death as her only chance of happiness:
No ill usage so brands its record on my feelings … We are, and must be,
one and all, burdened with faults in this world; but the time will come soon
when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies
when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of
flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain, the impalpable principle
of life and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature:
whence it came it will return – perhaps again to be communicated to some
being higher than man – perhaps to pass through gradations of glory from
the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! Surely it will never, on the
contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No; I cannot believe
that; I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I
seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling; for it extends
hope to all; it makes Eternity a rest – a mighty home, not a terror and an
abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can clearly distinguish between the criminal
and his crime, I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last;
with this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too
deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking
to the end. (50-51)
This passage shows how completely Helen has given up, not only on herself but
also on the world; consequently, she almost excessively waits for her death to
come.
Jane admires Helen’s attitude immensely, and it has a deep impact on her: “It
was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in
the transit” (58). Helen’s martyrdom however, is presented as saintly and at the
same time as self-abnegating. Although she serves also as an example to instruct
Jane in the virtues of patience, endurance and selflessness, her patience implies “a
rational submission to the repressive conventions of Lowood, which she does not
challenge” as well as a “resigned endurance of life as a burden from which will
come release” (Eagleton 15). Eagleton sees in Helen’s heroism a “heroic selfaffirmation”
that is “a realization of the self through its inner surrender” (16). As
her name a suggest, Helen “Burns” within; her suffering and religious passion