Introduction

Lord Byron’s Descendants 59
indicates a renunciation of the (symbolic) world. Because of the complete denial
of the importance of worldly desires, her passions are forced to consume themselves
and her in an inward fire. Her absolute rejection of desires results in an
internal self-immolation. She complies and tries to obey the laws of the symbolic
at such an excessive degree that it becomes her vanishing point. In the end, she
prevails over oppressive and tyrannical conventions. Her victory, however, is won
through her early death, as this is the only way for her to escape the symbolic; her
death frees her from all potential suffering.
Helen is not the only one who teaches Jane self-discipline. Miss Temple, the
superintendent at Lowood School, is one of the few positive female role models
who treat Jane with respect and compassion. After Helen’s death, she becomes
Jane’s only friend and as long as she stays at Lowood Jane can pretend to be content,
however:
From the day she left I was no longer the same: with her was gone every
settled feeling … I had given in allegiance to duty and order; I was quiet; I
believed I was content: to the eyes of others, usually even to my own, I appeared
a disciplined and subdued character … I had undergone a transforming
process; my mind had put off all it had borrowed from Miss Temple
– or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had
been breathing in her vicinity – and that now I was left in my natural element,
and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. (73)
Her former calmed discontent makes itself felt again and she knows that she cannot
oppress or ignore them once more: “I felt that it was not enough: I tired of
the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped;
for liberty I uttered a prayer” (74). Here she realises that she could never be content
with complying to the symbolic and that she wants more from life: “‘Then,’ I
cried, half desperate, ‘grant me at least a new servitude!’” (74).
She also desires independence and the longing for and acquiring of it is another
important motif of the novel. For an unmarried woman independence is, in
a wider sense, a matter of status and affects her self-esteem and personal identity.
3.2.4 Repressed Desires Run Wild: or the Mad Woman in the Attic
Where Helen Burns is the embodiment of the symbolic, Mr Rochester’s wife
Bertha Mason who is confined to the third story of Thornfield because of her
madness is an embodiment of the semiotic. She stands as a symbol for suppressed
female sexuality and through her Brontë raises the awareness of the amalgamation
between sexual suppression and its consequence, namely madness. Various critics
have argued that Bertha functions as Jane’s dark alter ego (Gilbert/Gubar), or as
an exemplum of the dangers of sexuality (Maynard). Like Helen, Bertha represents
the Victorian discourse of female sexuality; she is the supposedly dangerous side,