Introduction

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gone; he is now desexualised but redeemed through Jane’s return by love.
Whereas he was before a rebel, he is now Christianised and believes in the divine
law. A true fairy-tale ending is now possible. When Rochester is courting Jane, she
tells him that when they are married
“for a little while you will perhaps be as you are now, – a very little while;
and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious; and then you
will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you: but when you get
well used to me, you will perhaps like me again, – like me, I say, not love
me. I suppose your love will effervesce in six months, or less” (228).
This is a reasonable and realistic conclusion when considering a union of dominance
and submissiveness: the male, who is more powerful, will eventually tire of
the weaker female. She will then be unable to satisfy him. The reversal of these
gender roles is brought about by the decline of Rochester’s dominant position,
through the breaking of his Byronic power. In the end they are equals, Rochester
now depends on Jane and she realises that “I love you better now, when I can
really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you
disdained every part but that of the giver and protector” (392). Rochester’s reduction
of power is precipitated by Brontë's realisation that, within the constraints of
a common constellation of the male as a subject and the female as an object, a
happy ending is impossible. Towards the end of the novel, in the face of traumatic
events it becomes apparent that Jane and Rochester depend on each other, recognise
their equality. When Rochester touches Jane now it is not motivated by sexual
desire but because he perceives her as his “prop and guide” (395).
She returns to Rochester as a free individual, constrained neither by the symbolic
or semiotic, but as her own woman who chooses for herself. She is completely
independent and in every way his equal, if not even his superior. Thus, she
announces to the reader “Reader, I married him” (395) as a sign of her emancipation.
Now that the war of the orders within her has ended, she eventually embraces
“woman’s work”. She reminds the reader that domesticity in itself is not
the culprit, she has been given the opportunity to put higher duties of life before
passionate love, but decided against it.
3.7 Conclusion
Jane is one of the first heroines in nineteenth-century literature who does not
pretend to be content with her restricted role as a woman. She is torn perpetually
between reason and emotion, the symbolic and semiotic, and in her search for
equality and independence; she wants to find a means of balancing the dictates of
both. By the examples of Helen, whose desire for death demonstrates how a total
compliance with the symbolic results in violence against the self, and Bertha,