Introduction

Lord Byron’s Descendants 75
whose fate raises the awareness of an amalgamation between sexual suppression
and its consequence: madness, Jane is warned to comply solely with one order.
The Byronic hero catalyzes Jane’s feminine desire for the male subject. Brontë
knew that there could be no happy-ending where a Byronic hero was concerned,
since he is too powerful and oppressive a character. Consequently, the hero needs
to be broken, stripped of his power and crippled, in order to ensure a relationship
of equality between Rochester and Jane. In the end, Rochester has to atone for his
sins, which results in the loss of the role of the dominant male leader. Nevertheless,
through his love for Jane, he is able to admit his dependence on her; he has
discarded every sign of self-righteousness and pride. One of the first authors who
actually placed the hero within reach of redemptive love is Charlotte Brontë,
whose Mr Rochester could be saved by Jane Eyre. He accepts the existence of a
higher power and loses his threatening power, with which he has put Jane’s identity
at risk. His blindness, from which he will eventually recover, is a symbolic
immersion of the male hero in a feminine experience; men must learn how it feels
to be helpless and to be forced into dependency.
Jane has eventually found a way to balance the two orders, an unconventional
circumstance which forces her to live withdrawn from society at Ferndean in the
forest, since society would not accept such an arrangement.
4. Ellen Wood’s East Lynne
4.1 Ellen Wood: Firm Moralist or Cultural Critic
East Lynne by Ellen Wood was serialised from 1861 to 1862 in William Harrison
Ainsworth’s New Monthly Magazine and became an instant hit. When it was reprinted
in three-decker form, it became an immediate success. It is said to have
been sold more than two and a half million times by the end of the century and
has been translated into various languages (Jay xxxviii). However, in the twentieth
century it fell out of print and became forgotten. It underwent what Light calls
“cultural squint” a result of the literary institution’s “obsession with […] elites”
(11).
The novel depicts unequal power relations between men and women by focusing
on Lady Isabel Vane, who after the death of her father, Lord Mount Severn,
marries the country lawyer Archibald Carlyle. Carlyle purchases her father’s estate
East Lynne. Isabel marries Carlyle out of necessity as her father died without making
any provisions for his daughter. Her love for Sir Francis Levison leads her to
elope with him to Franc. When he abandons her she is once again homeless and
penniless. Disguised as Mme Vine she returns home to become a governess to her
own children. The total dependency of women on men and the demand to put
institutionalised and before passionate love is clearly criticised.