SPACE AND PLACE IN JANE EYRE AND WIDE SARGASSO SEA:

THE ROLE OF SAFETY, DANGER, AND MOBILITY IN IDENTITY FORMATION

A Thesis

Presented to the faculty of the Department of Humanities & Religious Studies

California State University, Sacramento

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

in

Humanities

by

Sheena Elizabeth Link

SPRING 2015

© 2015

Sheena Elizabeth Link

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ii

SPACE AND PLACE IN JANE EYRE AND WIDE SARGASSO SEA

THE ROLE OF SAFETY, DANGER, AND MOBILITY IN IDENTITY FORMATION

A Thesis

by

Sheena Elizabeth Link Approved by: __________________________________, Committee Chair Victoria Shinbrot __________________________________, Second Reader Jeffrey Brodd ____________________________ Date

iii

Student: Sheena Elizabeth Link

I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format

manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for

the thesis.

__________________________, Graduate Coordinator ___________________ Victoria Shinbrot Date Department of Humanities & Religious Studies

iv

Abstract

of

SPACE AND PLACE IN JANE EYRE AND WIDE SARGASSO SEA

THE ROLE OF SAFETY, DANGER, AND MOBILITY IN IDENTITY FORMATION

by

Sheena Elizabeth Link

This thesis explores the mobility and identity formation of the characters Jane Eyre in Jane Eyre

and Antoinette Cosway in Wide Sargasso Sea through the lens of human geography and cultural

geography, and general space and place studies. This thesis suggests that even though Jane and

Antoinette have similar circumstances and conditions, they develop autonomy inversely to one

another due in large part to their ability (or not) to recognize and navigate through safe and

dangerous spaces.

_______________________, Committee Chair Victoria Shinbrot _______________________ Date

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Throughout this process I have been encouraged, guilt-tripped, cajoled, supported, and generally

blessed by many people. Thanks are due to (in no particular order except maybe chronologically):

Prof. James Donelan, for inspiring me as an undergraduate to go to graduate school in the first

place; my advisor, Dr. Victoria Shinbrot, for agreeing to keep me as an advisee; Mira, for her

constant literary encouragement (especially in the form of timely presents such as the pleasantly

distracting Quotes from Jane Eyre); my eternal study buddy Sami, for meeting me to study and

making sure I actually sit and type; Temp, my like-minded UCSB English major cohort, for

always harassing me to get this done because ‘you’ll feel so much better once it’s over with’; my

husband for never harassing me to get this done because he knew I would just do it; and finally,

my family, for never asking about it because they assumed I finished it and graduated a long time

ago.

Also, thanks, Vic’s Café, for letting me sit and type all day long on a $2.50 cup of coffee…and

for never shaming me about all the free refills I took.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. vi

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................... ………………………….. 1

2. GATESHEAD HALL AND LOWOOD INSTITUTION, AND THE ISLAND, COULIBRI

ESTATE, AND MOUNT CALVARY CONVENT ........................................................... 9

Gateshead Hall ............................................................................................................ 10

The Island and Coulibri Estate ................................................................................... 17

Lowood Institution ..................................................................................................... 21

Mount Calvary Convent ............................................................................................. 24

3. THORNFIELD HALL AND GRANDBOIS ESTATE ..................................................... 29

Thornfield Hall .......................................................................................................... 29

Grandbois Estate ........................................................................................................ 35

4. WHITCROSS, MOOR HOUSE, AND FERNDEAN AND

THE SHIP AND THE ATTIC .......................................................................................... 39

Whitcross, Moor House, and Ferndean ...................................................................... 39

The Ship and the Attic ............................................................................................... 44

5. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 49

Work Cited .............................................................................................................................. 52

vii

1

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

In this thesis, I explore how Jane in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Antoinette in Jean

Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea interact within the spaces1 and places2 surrounding them. More

specifically, I explore a) when and how Jane and Antoinette learn whether spaces and places are

safe or dangerous, b) what degree of fluidity these spaces have (or do not), and c) how Jane and

Antoinette literally and figuratively navigate through them. I also examine how boundaries3 and

bounded spaces4 are used by Jane and Antoinette as protection from physical and emotional

harm. I trace their efforts to redefine themselves and to gain autonomy and do so while

considering the impact of space and place, especially that which is politically or socially

constructed, on these metaphorical journeys. I also explore to what extent they are successful in

these efforts. I comparatively analyze Jane’s and Antoinette’s literal and figurative transitions

based on three significant transitions: Jane’s first site of transition is from Gateshead Hall to

Lowood Institution, and Antoinette’s is from the island and Coulibri to Mount Calvary Convent;

Jane’s second is to and from Thornfield Hall and Antoinette’s second is to and from Grandbois

Estate; and the third, at which point their journeys either culminate or terminate, is to Ferndean by

way of Whitcross and Moor House for Jane, and to the attic in Thornfield Hall via the ship for

Antoinette.

There are many spaces and places that contribute to Jane’s and Antoinette’s emotional,

psychological, physical, social, and financial transformations, the variety of which reinforces the

pervasive influence space and place have on identity formation. Homes are especially significant

1 I define space as that which is further demarcated within a place, such as rooms, chambers, gardens, verandas, et cetera. 2 I define place using Robert Agnew’s description of the of space being a location or a locale (Hubbard 17); I use it to refer to a country, dwelling, town, or otherwise larger bounded location within which might exist further demarcated spaces. 3 I define a boundary as a literal boundary (such as a gate, or a wall) as well as a figurative impediment, such as social norm, or something which denies access. 4 I define a bounded space as that which is bound (and thus defined by) by a boundary. It can be a literal space, such as property, or an abstraction.

2

in that they are either sites of incarceration or sites of positive transformation; in Worlds of

Desire, Realms of Power, Pamela Shurmer-Smith and Kevin Hannam remind us, “One person’s

home place may be a confined and beleaguered space, whereas a contiguous person, with a

different set of experiences and opportunities may well feel himself (probably) to be autonomous

and unbounded” (15). Of homes’ occupation and destruction, which are present in both

Antoinette’s and Jane’s journeys, Shurmer-Smith and Hannam further explain, “Even Brontë ’s

Jane Eyre requires the burning of the house, the death of its evil spirit in the form of the alien and

mad wife, the blinding and enfeeblement of its patriarch before Jane, homeless all her life, can

build a marriage” (40).

In general, borders and boundaries are significant because they “not only

symbolize…interpersonal barriers [but] [t]hey also may symbolize internal boundaries” (Stein

and Niederland 15). They also delineate the difference between the natural world and man-made

dwellings. Homes factor significantly in Wide Sargarsso Sea as well but Antoinette is less

capable of controlling them because “[h]ome…conjures up feelings of comfort and security but

for some it may be a place of discomfort, alienation, tension or violence” (Storey 13). Antoinette

feels the latter. Within homes, rooms play an equally significant role. These bounded spaces are

physically safe (seen when characters barricade themselves inside) or emotionally destructive

(seen when characters are forcibly contained within). Islands (large bounded places encompassing

smaller bounded spaces such as towns, gardens, and dwellings) are important both for their

geographical boundaries (being literally bound by the sea), but also for their positive historic and

mythological connotations. Gardens have similar boundaries as houses (with walls and openings),

but like islands, they have historically been thought to have properties of safety or positive

transformation.

3

Spaces and places hold figurative meaning depending on their social or political construct

because “[h]uman freedom and responsibility entail relationships of power. Human freedom is

socially limited through manifestations of power” (Backhaus xxi). Power relationships are

grounded in space and place for both Jane and Antoinette. More specifically, “[n]uanced analyses

of a range of cultural spaces- from the classroom to the hospital, the asylum to the family album,

the nursery to the archive-have made it possible to understand how and why imperial power

operated through the colonization of spatialized domains” (Ballantyne and Burton 2). Space is

also “a technology of imperial power and anticolonial agency” (Ballantyne and Burton 2), and is

used as such against Jane and Antoinette, who begin as identity and agency-less individuals due

to the very imperial frameworks they are operating within. These frameworks prioritize the

conditions5 that Jane and Antoinette do not meet. Both Jane’s and Antoinette’s gender, their

economic status, their marital status, their education level, and their reputations, especially those

resulting from assessments others have made on their demeanors or mental states, contribute to a

lack freedom and mobility which obstructs their ability to navigate through all the spaces and

places mentioned above is literally and figuratively. For example, reputation impedes Jane when

Mrs. Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst declare she is a problem child and this status follows her to

Lowood Institution. Reputation impedes Antoinette when her family legacy of mental instability

colors future impressions of her. As Gary Backhaus explains, “Placement, in the physical sense,

is founded on boundaries” (xx).

The legacy of colonialism and imperialism and “the importance of space and place in the

imaginations of empire builders, colonial settlers, and native subjects, whether comprador elites

or subalterns” (Ballantyne and Burton 2) is also present. Both Brontë’s Mr. Rochester and Rhys’

Rochester impact Jane and Antoinette because both are agents of society and colonialism, and

5 The conditions are female, lack of financial independence, low social status, and lack of an advocate, parent or other.

4

both control how Jane and Antoinette interact with and within space and place. Because he

controls their mobility, he influences whether they can overcome space “imbued with ideological

and political content [where there are] dehumanizing tendencies” (Hubbard 15).

Despite the fact that Jane and Antoinette navigate similar spaces and places6 and have

similar impediments7, they experience opposite degrees of success. Brontë’s Jane deftly navigates

through safe and dangerous places and spaces while on her journey from Gateshead Hall to

Ferndean. Her journey is both literal (as she physically travels from place to place) and figurative

(as she transitions from a penniless orphan to an educated and financially independent woman).

Her journey’s success depends on her ability to identify the ever-shifting boundaries between the

safe and unsafe, and relocate herself accordingly. For example, at Gateshead Hall, Jane learns that

the occupants of a space (such as her unloving Aunt Reed or her hateful cousin John) can

transform it from safe (or neutral) to unsafe by their mere presence. At Lowood, Jane is subject to

more serious dangerous spaces, such as the typhus fever-laden school, but ensures her safety by

seeking the solace of the outdoors. She receives a brief reprieve from physical danger when she

arrives at Thornfield but trades it for emotional danger in the form of Mr. Rochester’s emotional

games. She is still exposed to physical danger by Bertha Mason but it is not directed at her.

Finally, she encounters her most dramatic physical danger in Whitcross when, at her most

destitute, she nearly dies for lack of sustenance or a dwelling. By the time Jane arrives at Moor

House, she has undergone enough of a transition to be able to defend herself emotionally. She

rejects St. John’s constant and guilt-inducing advances. She makes decisions that please her, like

restoring Moor House and returning to Mr. Rochester. In short, she has realized her autonomous

self when, with the freedom of her inheritance, she asserts her independence and embodies “the

unified and autonomous (feminine) subject” (Mardorossian 64).

6 Homes, rooms, gardens, and islands 7 Gender, economic status, and reputation

5

Not only does Jane redefine herself each time she physically relocates (from orphan at

Gateshead Hall to teacher, to governess, to fiancée, to wealthy independent, to wife), but her

mobility supports her increasing autonomy. Escaping Gateshead Hall (as Jane the orphan) for

Lowood Institution leads her to Miss Temple, her first friend, Helen Burns, and an environment

where she thrives academically and gains a position as a teacher. Leaving Lowood as a teacher

for her governess position at Thornfield Hall introduces her Mr. Rochester, Mrs. Fairfax, and

Adèle, who allow her to feel, for the first time, the happiness of companionship and purpose, and

romantic love. Stealing from Thornfield Hall in the middle of the night as a jilted fiancée and

fortuitously finding Moor House is perhaps Jane’s most extreme physical and figurative

relocation. She journeys the furthest and under the direst circumstances, nearly dying, and, she

literally renames herself “Jane Elliot.” However, it is also Moor House where Jane realizes the

most emotional and financial benefit. She gains amiable relatives who make her feel accepted, an

inheritance which allows her to be independent, and, most importantly, the resolve to return to

Thornfield Hall and reunite with her beloved Mr. Rochester, as the independently wealthy Jane

Eyre who has finally taken possession of her rightful inheritance. At the end of Jane’s journey,

she successfully controls space and place (and her navigation throughout it) instead of continuing

to be manipulated by it (and allowing its safety and danger to dictate how she traverses it). In this

way, Jane’s acquisition of her inheritance is an exertion of power because, “[r]ather than being

viewed simply as portions of geographic space, territory implies notions of ownership, power and

control whereby that space is utilized for the attainment of particular outcomes (Convery,

Corsane, and Davis 1). In Jane’s case, the outcome is autonomy.

Like Brontë’s Jane, Rhys’ Antoinette can differentiate between safe and dangerous

spaces and places. However, where Jane’s mobility ensures her own safety and advances her

situation, Antoinette remains in dangerous, yet familiar spaces and places, and instead either

6

mimics or seeks those around her (such as her mother Annette, Rochester, Christophene, a

nameless ship steward, and Richard Mason) to keep her safe, It cannot be accounted for solely in

terms of her sexual and racial domination” (Mardorossian 68). She depends on them to protect

her. For example, she finds new mother figures each time one rejects or fails her, instead of, like

Jane, rejecting the need for a mother-figure entirely. None of Antoinette’s mothers – Annette,

Christophene, or Aunt Cora – keep her safe, but this failure does not deter her from seeking

another. She also observes their behavior and mimics because she is “ensnared by colonialist

assumptions that she unsuccessfully and often grotesquely attempts to replicate” (Mardorossian

61). Both these tactics fail, ensuring Antoinette’s emotional deterioration, financial deficit, and

death. Like Jane, Antoinette similarly undergoes a journey. She physically relocates from

Coulibri Estate, to the convent, to the honeymoon estate Grandbois, across the North Atlantic via

ship before terminating her journey in the attic in Thornfield Hall. However, unlike Jane,

Antoinette’s mobility is not by her own initiation. She relocates because conditions force her, not

because she decides to do so, and Antoinette leaves Coulibri because it burns to the ground; she

leaves the convent because her stepfather arranges her marriage without her knowledge; she

abandons the bathing pool because Tia takes her money; and she leaves the island because

Rochester forcibly brings her to England. Because she has no control over her physical journey,

she tries to advance her so-called situation in life during each of these moves by defining herself

or the situation positively. For example, she tells Tia, “I can get more [money] if I want to” (Rhys

24) to present herself as richer than she is. She offers her presence to Annette to mitigate for

Pierre’s death and reminds her mother, “But I am here, I am here” (Rhys 48) to increase

Annette’s maternal love. Antoinette learned this behavior from Annette and mimics it because she

believes it may actually improve her condition. For example, Annette sold her last ring to buy

muslin to make new dresses to give the impression that their wealth was stable. This ruse begat

7

friends, which eventually led to her marrying Mr. Mason. Annette also insisted that Antoinette

wear a too-small clean dress, so as to impress the Masons. And, Annette (unsuccessfully)

maintains the illusion of high society when she “still rode about every morning not caring that the

black people stood about in groups to jeer at her, especially after her riding clothes grew shabby”

(Rhys 18). In general, “Antoinette replicates her mother’s racial thinking to the point where it is

sometimes hard to determine whether she is transcribing her mother’s words…or sharing the

beliefs she has internalized and naturalized” (Mardorossian 67). These replication efforts are

reactionary attempts at autonomy.

Unfortunately, not only do these reactionary attempts at autonomy fail, but they also

result in increasingly negative opinions and experiences, which is in direct contrast to Jane’s

experiences. When Antoinette seeks comfort from her mother, Annette effectively banishes her to

Christophene’s exclusive company whereas Jane rejects her only mother figure, Mrs. Reed, who

summons Jane for comfort when dying rather than her own children. Further, Antoinette attempts

to enhance her value by increasing the attractiveness of space and place, such as the rich and

vibrant colors of the island, and then associating herself with these elements. She oversaturates

and overstimulates Rochester; he then avoids her. Jane deliberately avoids similarity with that

which she observes pleases Rochester, namely the coy and outgoing Blanche Ingram, and yet,

Rochester chooses Jane instead of Blanche. Antoinette inadvertently poisons Rochester to make

him love her which causes him to pull away from her cloying affection. The more Jane avoids

Mr. Rochester, the more he seeks her out and his love for her increases. Finally, Antoinette is

even, against her will, renamed “Bertha” whereas Jane chooses her own new moniker “Jane

Elliot.”

Both Jane’s and Antoinette’s journeys involve inheritances of which Antoinette is aware

but Jane is not. Antoinette’s actions cause her inheritance to be slowly seceded away while Jane’s

8

actions unintentionally ensure she receives hers. For example, Jane’s autonomous self comes to

fruition with an almost miraculous inheritance, again, through no conjuring of her own. Jane was

not even aware of the possibility that the poor Eyres had money. In a tragic mirroring, Antoinette

loses her rightful inherence due in large part to her excessive efforts to avoid a love-less (and

property-less) marriage. Antoinette’s psychological state, though certainly deteriorating, collapses

entirely when Rochester physically severs her from the island, which is the physical embodiment

of her inheritance. Further, she dies after he installs her, against her will, inside Thornfield - an

estate that should have been part of her financial repertoire as Rochester’s legal wife.

In sum, Jane’s success and Antoinette’s failure is foreshadowed in the first pages of the

novels:

In the first section of the novel, the young Antoinette’s perceptual and psychological

point of view is considerably confused and confusing. Whereas the initial chapter of Jane

Eyre raises the question of how an abused and continually humiliated little girl could

possibly come up with such psychological vigor and self-esteem, Wide Sargasso Sea’s

protagonist appears fragmented, insecure, and disoriented so much so that she seems to

function merely by internalizing others’– especially her mother’s – language and

contradictory values. (Mardorossian 65).

9

CHAPTER TWO: GATESHEAD HALL AND LOWOOD INSTITUTION, AND

THE ISLAND, COULIBRI ESTATE AND MOUNT CALVARY CONVENT

Though their journeys end dramatically differently, Jane’s and Antoinette’s literal and

figurative transformations are prompted by similar conditions: they begin early in their lives,

originate in their childhood dwellings (Gateshead Hall and Lowood Institution for Jane, and the

island, Coulibri Estate, and the convent for Antoinette), and are marked by physical relocations.

First, Jane’s and Antoinette’s youth, gender, and social situation contributes to their susceptibility

to the influence and restrictions of space and place. They are females of lower social status;

Jane’s status results from being an orphan of poor clergy parents while Antoinette is a ‘white

cockroach’ who is shunned by black former slaves and the white elite alike. As such, they lack

control over the extent of their mobility. This means that whatever space (physical or figurative,

or both) they occupy is nearly inescapable because they lack the financial means or social

influence to advocate for themselves. They lack a parent figure who advocates for and protects

them. And, their youth means they have not amassed enough life experience to know how to

negotiate their way out of unsafe spaces despite their gendered status. Second, there is

discontinuity between the actual state of their childhood dwellings and the ideal childhood home

is discontinuous. Childhood homes are supposed to be nurturing, safe, and filled with love. In

reality, both childhood dwellings (Coulibri Estate and Gateshead Hall) contain spaces (rooms,

hallways, window-seats, verandas, glacis, and gardens) that are safe, dangerous, or both. Jane

avoids and repurposes unsafe spaces towards her end goal of navigating away from Gateshead

Hall. In contrast, Antoinette integrates herself even further into and associates herself more

strongly with the spaces that comprise Coulibri Estate, such as the rooms. Finally, both Jane and

Antoinette experience physical relocations though Jane’s is by choice and Antoinette’s is not.

Their degree of choice in their mobility significant part of their divergent journey because it is

10

where Jane first demonstrates the autonomy that will reward her later in life. And, this is also

where Antoinette’s tendency to be controlled (or put another way: Antoinette’s tendency to allow

her mobility to be hindered) foreshadows her eventual deterioration, perhaps because her

“cluelessness about the power relations that structure her world is of course also a function of her

subject position as a member of the planter class” (Mardorossian 68). Her experience underscores

that:

[t]here are a myriad of elements which contribute to identity and place may be one of

these, reflected in a sense of belonging in a certain place or of a feeling of affinity with a

place. For some there is a sense of attachment to land linked to ideas of home, locality

and region. (Convery, Corsane, and Davis 1)

Gateshead Hall

At Gateshead Hall, safety and danger very clearly identified and initially inescapable.

Jane’s condition as a penniless orphan with no education who had been begrudgingly accepted in

the care of her unloving aunt, Mrs. Reed, stifles her mobility. Her condition means she cannot

escape or live happily within Gateshead. In this way, Jane operates within “places [which] are

constituted of, and the outcome of…social, political and economic relations” (Hubbard 17). For

example, her cousin, John Reed, deliberately reminds Jane of her social and economic deficits

(and his superiority) and reinforces their effect on her daily life. He also explicates how he

separates her, based on these deficits, from the Reed family. He tells her:

‘You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no

money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen's

children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama's expense.’

(Brontë 67)

11

John further describes the specific spaces he owns to which Jane has no right of access: “Now, I'll

teach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they are mine; all the house belongs to me, or will do

in a few years” (Brontë 67). Finally, he eliminates her mobility by her own vocation by physically

banishing her to a specific space. He commands, “Go and stand by the door, out of the way of the

mirror and the windows” (Brontë 67). The effect of this banishment is not just control over where

Jane goes, but also what she sees. She cannot see herself if she is away from the mirror, and she

cannot see the outdoors (her frequent place of solace) if she is away from the window. In addition

to being restricted, Jane is also emotionally and physically abused by John who “bullied and

punished [her]; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually”

(Brontë 66). This violence also causes emotional distress; Jane recalls, “Every nerve I had feared

him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near” (Brontë 66). This

interminable abuse is, for the most part, endured by Jane who was “[a]ccustomed to John Reed's

abuse…[and] never had an idea of replying to it” (Brontë 67) other than to avoid it, which she

does with varying degrees of success. Jane’s method of navigating danger is avoidance. She

confines herself “into the window-seat” (Brontë 63) and draws “the red moreen curtain nearly

close” (Brontë 64) to avoid John: she “‘wished fervently he might not discover [her] hiding-

place” (Brontë 65). In this way, Jane learns that any space within which John Reed resides is

unsafe.

Spaces within Gateshead Hall are also unsafe when used as punishment. Mrs. Reed

punishes Jane using space in three ways; segregation within Gateshead, threats of dismissal, or

outright imprisonment within. As to segregation, Jane is “dispensed from joining [Mrs. Reed,

John, Georgiana, and Eliza]…and excluded…from privileges” (Brontë 63) prior to her ‘attack’ on

John Reed; after the attack, Mrs. Reed:

12

had drawn a more marked line of separation than ever between [Jane] and her own

children; appointing [Jane] a small closet to sleep in by [her]self, condemning [Jane] to

take [her] meals alone, and pass all [her] time in the nursery, while [her] cousins were

constantly in the drawing-room. (Brontë 85)

She is isolated even further from anything that might resemble companionship: “Georgiana and

Eliza, evidently acting according to orders, spoke to me as little as possible” (Brontë 85) and Mrs.

Reed even declares to John, “‘I told you not to go near her; she is not worthy of notice; I do not

choose that either you or your sisters should associate with her’” (Brontë 85). Jane is segregated

during holidays and either observes festivities “from the stairhead” or is by herself in “the solitary

and silent nursery” (Brontë 86). In fact, Jane recalls, “For nearly three months, I had never been

called to Mrs. Reed's presence; restricted so long to the nursery, the breakfast, dining, and

drawing-rooms were become for me awful regions, on which it dismayed me to intrude” (Brontë

89).

Threats of outright dismissal from Gateshead Hall are frequently intimated. Jane recalls

Mrs. Reed’s threat that Jane “would have to go to the poorhouse” (Brontë 70) which is levied so

frequently that Jane recalls that “[t]hey were not new to [her]: my very first recollections of

existence included hints of the same kind” (Brontë 70). Mrs. Reed does indeed finally dismiss

Jane by way of sending her to Lowood Institution permanently, even requesting, “as for the

vacations, she will…spend them always at Lowood” (Brontë 93). True, it is Mrs. Reed who

summons Mr. Brocklehurst but Jane reaches a state of physical danger and mental despair that her

actions are singularly directed toward changing her situation; Jane no longer accepts the status

quo but also cannot recover from the abuse she receives. She verbally attacks John Reed (an

anomaly), calls him a “‘[w]icked and cruel boy!’” and likens him to “‘a murderer [and] a slave-

driver’” (Brontë 67). She feels “physically weak and broken down” which is coupled with her

13

“worse ailment…[of] an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept drawing

from [her] silent tears” (Brontë 77). She cannot be roused to happiness even though Mr. Lloyd

tries to convince Jane that her life good; that she has “a kind aunt and cousin” (Brontë 82) and

that Gateshead Hall is “a very beautiful house…[and] a fine place to live at….and a splendid

place” (Brontë 82). Jane remains unconvinced; she remembers “fearful pangs of mental

suffering” (Brontë 77) and how her “racked nerves were now in such a state that no calm could

soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably” (Brontë 78). Even by her beloved books, her

favorite pastime cannot lift her spirits. Even Gulliver’s Travels, which she “had again and again

perused with delight” (Brontë 78), elicits no happiness:

Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand--when I turned over

its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to

find--all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and

fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I

closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse. (Brontë 79)

So, while the catalyst for her journey to Lowood is her actions which resulted in her

imprisonment in the red-room, it was ensured by lifetime of enduring “[a]ll John Reed's violent

tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifference, all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality”

(Brontë 72). Jane knows that she can no longer ensure emotional or physical safety at Gateshead.

She, by her own admission, is miserable and believes that “school would be a complete change: it

implied a long journey, an entire separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life” (Brontë

83).

Sequestering to the red-room is Mrs. Reed’s primary punishment and she exacts it

frequently. Jane usually does not resist (“I resisted all the way: a new thing for me” (Brontë 69;

emphasis mine). The red-room provokes Jane’s mental agitation; she initially worries about a

14

supernatural encounter caused by her “sign[s] of violent grief [which] might waken a

preternatural voice…[and which] would be terrible if realized” (Brontë 74). She grows

“oppressed [and] suffocated” and, ultimately fearing for her life, she finally begs, “‘O aunt! have

pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it--let me be punished some other way! I shall be killed if—’”

(Brontë 75). This encounter in the red-room causes Jane to have “a species of fit” (Brontë 75)

which renders her unconscious and greatly damages her mental state. This experience in the red-

room causes her such desperation that she negotiates her way out of Gateshead Hall.

The importance of finances and social standing is not lost on Jane. When offered the

opportunity to escape but be permanently categorized as poor, Jane refuses, saying:

I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind; and then to learn to speak

like them, to adopt their manners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor

women I saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage

doors of the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the

price of caste. (Brontë 82)

Mrs. Reed sends Jane to Lowood so she will “brought up in a manner suiting her prospects [and]

be kept humble” (Brontë 93) as well as be “trained in conformity of her position and prospects”

(Brontë 94). Mrs. Reed can do this because “Jane’s lack of a protective father figure leaves her

open to countless dangers [including being sent to Lowood and enduring] Mr Brocklehurst’s

mismanagement” (Lydon 24).

Jane changes the spaces and places from dangerous to safe by avoidance and redefinition.

Boundaries, once used to punish Jane, become safe at which point Jane draws them. She earns her

first victory towards autonomy when she defies Mrs. Reed’s restrictions in Gateshead Hall. She

takes charge of her future when she takes charge of her mobility in Gateshead Hall. When Mrs.

15

Reed orders her to leave the nursery, she disobeys, returns to Mrs. Reed and eloquently defends

herself:

‘Go out of the room; return to the nursery,’ was her mandate. My look or something else

must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with extreme though suppressed

irritation. I got up, I went to the door; I came back again; I walked to the window, across

the room, then close up to her. Speak I must: I had been trodden on severely, and must

turn: but how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I gathered my

energies and launched them in this blunt sentence” (Brontë 95).

Self-defense sparks a physical reaction in Jane and she recalls, “Ere I had finished this reply, my

soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It

seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty”

(Brontë 96). Further, Jane threatens to expose Mrs. Reed’s behavior beyond the boundaries of

Gateshead Hall, saying, “‘I'll let everybody at Lowood know what you are, and what you have

done’” (Brontë 96). Mrs. Reed reminds Jane of their previous arrangement with the spaces in

Gateshead, saying “‘But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow’” (Brontë 96) and bids her

return to the prescribed boundaries and “‘return to the nursery--there's a dear--and lie down a

little’” (Brontë 96). Jane recognizes the futility, refuses to leave, and demands mobility, saying

“‘I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live

here’” (Brontë 96; emphasis mine). And it is here that Jane earns her second spatial victory by

forcing Mrs. Reed to “abruptly quit…the apartment’” (Brontë 96), rather than Jane leaving. The

significance of this exchange is profound, in that Jane changes her condition by manipulating the

spaces around her. She simultaneously refuses to stay at Gateshead Hall, and also refuses to leave

the room when ordered to do so by Mrs. Reed. Jane reflects on her victory in military terms: “I

was left there alone--winner of the field. It was the hardest battle I had fought, and the first

16

victory I had gained: I stood awhile on the rug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed

my conqueror's solitude” (Brontë 97). Jane has rewritten some of the rules of space and place in

Gateshead Hall. However, her victory is quickly tainted by the possibility of future retaliation by

Mrs. Reed. Jane wonders if she should mitigate for rewriting the boundaries in her favor. She

recalls:

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on

swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation

as if I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's

pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to

make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of

my nature. (Brontë 97)

Distraught, Jane changes her location in an effort to reduce her feeling of despair. She “went out

to walk in a part of the plantation which was quite sequestrated; but I found no pleasure” (Brontë

97). Seeking solace in the natural landscape is a preface to her future actions in times of

emotional distress. When Mrs. Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst categorize her as a problem child, she

despairingly seeks the outdoors:

I opened the glass-door in the breakfast-room: the shrubbery was quite still: the black

frost reigned, unbroken by sun or breeze, through the grounds. I covered my head and

arms with the skirt of my frock, and went out to walk in a part of the plantation which

was quite sequestrated; but I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fir-cones, the

congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds in heaps, and now

stiffened together. I leaned against a gate, and looked into an empty field where no sheep

were feeding, where the short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very grey day; a

most opaque sky, "onding on snaw," canopied all; thence flakes felt it intervals, which

17

settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without melting. I stood, a wretched child

enough, whispering to myself over and over again, ‘What shall I do?--what shall I do?’

(Brontë Ch. 4)

Jane is also aware of her age deficit, that she is not given as much latitude as adults. She is

concerned about the impact on her journey, in particular, out of Gateshead and into Lowood:

I dimly perceived that [Mrs. Reed] was already obliterating hope from the new phase of

existence which she destined me to enter; I felt, though I could not have expressed the

feeling, that she was sowing aversion and unkindness along my future path; I saw myself

transformed under Mr. Brocklehurst's eye into an artful, noxious child, and what could I

do to remedy the injury?” (Brontë 92)

The Island and Coulibri Estate

Safety and danger is less clearly demarcated at Coulibri Estate than at Gateshead Hall,

and Antoinette responds differently to dangerous places. She avoids the wrong people, or does

not avoid at all. She does not negotiate escape from Coulibri. She encounters spaces, places, or

objects that simultaneously contain danger and safety; that should be safe but are dangerous; or

that transition from safe to dangerous. Spaces and places are difficult for Antoinette to categorize

as safe or dangerous. Because she cannot categorize space and place, she has no strong impetus

to escape. She always reminds herself of the good and safe in a space and is thus reluctant to

leave the familiar even though it is partially or fully dangerous.

First, the island itself is a twofold space. By containing death, deterioration and danger, it

rejects various motifs that suggest that islands are sites of fertility, youth, beauty, and prosperity.

Even though “[t]he fabricated ‘mystic orient’ is…often seen as a timeless place, built around

notions of the eternal and the archetypal” (Shurmer-Smith and Hannam 19), the island is the site

18

of nearly all Antoinette’s tribulations. The island further departs from the symbolic norm of being

“a state of prelapsarian innocence and bliss, quarantined by the sea from the ills of the continent”

(Tuan 118) because danger, fear, and evil are infused in the topography of the island. Natural

elements are beautiful but contain a sinister quality; there are “orchids not to be touched, snaky-

looking, octopus like. Then there is the insect world: moths and beetles that are forever flying into

the candle flames; nests that swarm with black and red and white ants; a snake” (Joseph 32-33).

Further, death is omnipresent on Antoinette’s island, a total reversal of the transformative and

regenerative properties of the Eden island motif, especially the idea of the “island of eternal life”

(Tuan 119). Death begins with Mr. Luttrell who “shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone for

always” (Rhys 17). Death continues with Annette’s poisoned horse found “lying down under the

frangipani tree [and] which was not sick [but] was dead” (Rhys 18). Pierre also challenges the

positive physical attributes that island supposedly contain. He “staggered when he walked and

couldn’t speak distinctly” (Rhys 19) and eventually dies from the Coulibri Estate fire. And Coco,

their pet parrot who was bound by his clipped wings, is an inhabitant of the island whose death is

also caused by the Coulibri Estate fire. In stark contrast to the island as the origin of life in that

“many of the world’s cosmogonies…begin with the watery chaos” (Tuan 118), Antoinette’s

island represents the end of life.

The island is not the only site of safety and danger. Boundaries are simultaneously safe

and dangerous, and therefore difficult for Antoinette to navigate. Man-made spaces, in particular

dwellings, cultivate danger when boundaries are used to specifically exclude or incarcerate; “[t]e

benign word ‘home’ can be used euphemistically for something which has no sense of dwelling,

but rather an incarceration…for the purpose of excluding ‘marginals’ from the rest of society”

(Shurmer-Smith and Hannam 41). After Annette’s remarriage, Antoinette remembers (or

imagines) the duality of safety and danger Christophene’s room:

19

I knew her room so well – the picture of the holy Family and the prayer for a happy

death. She had a bright patchwork counterpane. Yet one day when I was waiting there I

was suddenly very much afraid. The door was open to the sunlight…but I was afraid. I

was certain that hidden in the room (behind the old black press?) there was a dead man’s

dried hand, white chicken feathers, a cock with its throat cut, dying slowly,

slowly…Then Christophene came in smiling and pleased to see me. Nothing alarming

ever happened and I forgot, or told myself I had forgotten. (Rhys 31)

Antoinette observes the degenerative effect of a house that is not a home in her mother who

“grew thin and silent and refused to leave the house at all” (Rhys 19) prior to her total mental

degeneration; Antoinette will later mimic this status in her relationship with Rochester when she

drinks only rum, refuses to eat, and is locked in her room. And “when a black little girl follows

her, calling her a white cockroach, Antoinette’s reaction…[is to repeat] a phrase she heard her

mother use in reference to the old gardener Godfrey” (Mardorossian 65). In this way, Antoinette

mimics others’ detrimental interactions with space even though it contributes to her own

deterioration.

Unlike Jane, Antoinette would rather stay in a devastating yet familiar space than

relocate, perhaps because sometimes she finds barriers and boundaries comforting. Barriers were

safe for Antoinette during her early years at Coulibri. After a nightmare, she reminds herself of

the spaces, boundaries and barriers around her to feel safe:

I lay thinking, ‘I am safe. There is the corner of the bedroom door and the friendly

furniture. There is the tree of life in the garden and the wall green with moss. The

barrier of the cliffs and the high mountains. And the barrier of the sea. I am safe.

I am safe from strangers.’ (Rhys 27; emphasis mine).

20

The boundaries of the Coulibri Estate are safe, in particular, those of the garden: “When I was

safely home I sat close to the old wall at the end of the garden….[and] I never wanted to move

again [because] [e]verything would be worse if I moved” (Rhys 23).

People also represent the safe/dangerous duality when they change from safe to

dangerous. Because they fluctuate between being safe and dangerous, they influence whether

Antoinette whether she avoids them or is drawn to them. Initially Antoinette, like Jane, tries to

avoid dangerous people. Though Annette is Antoinette’s mother, she is devoid of matronly

actions and protection and this influences where Antoinette spends her time. Because Antoinette

is “a little afraid of [Annette]” (Rhys 20) she changes her location and “[spends] most of [her]

time in the kitchen which was in an outbuilding some way off” (Rhys 20). Antoinette also avoids

spaces in which her mother resides, just as Jane learned to avoid Mrs. Reed and her cousins;

Antoinette remembers, “once I made excuses to be near her when she brushed her hair, a soft

black cloak to cover me, hide me, keep me safe. But not any longer. Not any more” (Rhys 22).

When Annette leaves Coulibri seeking happiness through dances and horse rides, “the house was

sad when she had gone” (Rhys 27), so Antoinette mimics her, saying “I too left it and stayed

away till dark” (Rhys 27). When Annette asks Antoinette to “leave her alone” (Rhys 22),

Antoinette changes her physical location and seeks the comfort of “the old wall at the end of the

garden” (Rhys 23). Christophene interjects and introduces her to Tia who “soon was [her] friend”

(Rhys 23). Antoinette’s excursions with Tia take her to the bathing pool nearly every day which

emphasize Annette’s negligence because she “never asked [Antoinette] where [she] had been or

what [she] had done” (Rhys 23). But friends are not safe either. Tia changes from safe to

dangerous. She hurts Antoinette emotionally when she verbally attacks her and takes her money

and her dress. Antoinette responds by mimicking “cultural stereotypes about black Creoles”

(Mardorossian 66) she has been exposed to her entire life and calling Tia a “cheating nigger”

21

(Rhys 24). This encounter causes Antoinette to think that anything is “better than people” (Rhys

28). And, after losing this friendship, Antoinette encounters physical danger when she has no

reason to visit the bathing pool any longer so instead she “went to parts of Coulibri that [she] had

not seen, where there was no road, no path, no track [and] the razor grass cut [her] legs and arms”

(Rhys 28). Tia is not the only character who changes from safe to dangerous. Annette too

embodies this duality. Not only is Annette incapable of keeping Antoinette safe, Annette cannot

keep herself safe: she exposes herself to danger by walking “up and down the glacis…which ran

the length of the house…[which is dangerous because] anyone passing could stare at her. They

stared, sometimes they laughed” (Rhys 19-20). Christophene is another mother-figure who is

simultaneously safe dangerous. To some, she is dangerous: “The girls from the bayside who

sometimes helped with the washing and cleaning were terrified of her” (Rhys 21). However,

Annette reminds Antoinette that Christophene protected them, saying: “‘Christophene stayed with

me because she wanted to say. I dare say we would have died if she’d turned against us’” (Rhys

21). In this way, Christophene represents simultaneous danger and safety that makes it difficult

for Antoinette to know how much to interact with and trust Christophene.

Lowood Institution

Having navigated between safe and dangerous places for the first several years of her life,

Jane leaves Gateshead Hall, the only home she has known, for Lowood Institution. In this way

Jane reinforces that “home is more importantly a point of departure than a place to return to”

(Shurmer-Smith and Hannam 42). Jane remains attuned to potential danger in the spaces and

places she encounters after leaving Gateshead. For example, even before leaving, the carriage

driver expresses hesitation at taking Jane alone, saying, “I wonder Mrs. Reed is not afraid to trust

her so far alone” (Brontë 101). And, upon arriving in a town for a dinner break, Jane is “left…in

22

an immense room” (Brontë 101) where she remembers, “I walked about for a long time, feeling

very strange, and mortally apprehensive of some one coming in and kidnapping me; for I believed

in kidnappers, their exploits having frequently figured in Bessie's fireside chronicles” (Brontë

101).

Jane arrives at Lowood having accomplished a number of victories towards her

autonomy. She successfully existed in an unsafe house, redrew boundaries, and achieved a small

measure of happiness by negotiating her escape. These victories are crucial in her journey

towards redefinition. At Lowood, Jane quickly identifies the safe and dangerous places. The

outdoors is generally a safe place, proved by the fact that the garden and its “open air” (Brontë

108) is where Jane and the other girls partake of Miss Temple’s gracious gift of “bread and

cheese…to the high delight and refreshment of the whole school” (Brontë 108). This is the first

act of kindness at Lowood Jane experiences. The garden is also where Jane meets her first friend,

Helen Burns. Previously Jane had mixed feelings towards the outdoors (“I never liked long walks,

especially on chilly afternoons” (Brontë 63)), but only because of its negative association with

retuning to Gateshead Hall: “Dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with

nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled

by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed” (Brontë 63).

The garden is also where Jane learns who at Lowood is safe and who is not. In the garden Helen

explains that “Miss Scatcherd is hasty--you must take care not to offend her; Madame Pierrot is

not a bad sort of person…and Miss Temple is very good and very clever; she is above the rest”

(Brontë 112).

The forest-dell, where Lowood lay, affords Jane more than just safety; it provides

happiness, of which Jane has not had abundance. Jane affirms this, saying:

I discovered, too, that a great pleasure, an enjoyment which the horizon only

23

bounded, lay all outside the high and spike-guarded walls of our garden: this

pleasure consisted in prospect of noble summits girdling a great hill-hollow, rich in

verdure and shadow; in a bright beck, full of dark stones and sparkling eddies. (Brontë

140)

More specifically, “the valley…appeals to human beings [because] it promises an easy

livelihood” and “symbolically the valley is identified with the womb and shelter. Its concavity

protects and nurtures life” (Tuan 118). The more nature-like Lowood becomes, the happier does

Jane:

Lowood shook loose its tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash,

and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up

profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a

strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their

pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre. All this I

enjoyed often and fully, free, unwatched, and almost alone: for this unwonted liberty and

pleasure there was a cause, to which it now becomes my task to advert. (Brontë 140-141)

Finally, the outdoors saves Jane from possible death when she escapes to it after:

[t]hat forest-dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and fog-bred pestilence;

which, quickening with the quickening spring, crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathed

typhus through its crowded schoolroom and dormitory, and, ere May arrived, transformed

the seminary into an hospital. (Brontë 141)

Jane is allowed to “ramble in the wood, like gipsies, from morning till night” (Brontë 142) and

she recalls that she and the other girls “did what [they] liked, went where [they] liked…[and] we

lived better too” (Brontë 142). The outdoors is a place of “sweet days of liberty” (Brontë 142). In

this way, Lowood provides Jane her first feelings of happiness in her entire life.

24

Lowood itself, and not the outdoors, eventually becomes an entirely safe place after Mr.

Brocklehurst is removed and several deficiencies are improved. Jane thrives because she “had the

means of an excellent education placed within [her] reach; a fondness for some of [her] studies,

and a desire to excel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing [her] teachers” (Brontë 149).

However, she learns that just as the presence of a horrible individual can infuse danger into a

place, so can the departure of a good one remove happiness from one. From the time of Miss

Temple’s marriage and subsequent departure Jane feels “no longer the same: with her was gone

every settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree a home” (Brontë

151). More than that, Jane recalls, “I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a

prayer” (Brontë 151) and sets out to achieve this liberty by way of advertising. She removes

herself from Lowood not because it is unsafe, but because she wants to be happier. She does not

defy boundaries as she previously had, but craves freedom from them, from Lowood’s “rules and

systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and

fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse,

to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils” (Brontë 151).

Mount Calvary Convent

Though Antoinette joins Mount Calvary Convent after Coulibri burns down, it is not by choice.

In fact, immediately after the fire destroys Coulibri, Antoinette desperately seeks out the places

and people that are familiar even if they have previously harmed her, such as Tia:

I saw Tia and her mother and I ran to her, for she was all that was left of my life as it

had been. We had eaten the same food, slept side by side, bathed in the same river. As I

ran, I thought, I will live with Tia and I will be like her. Not to leave Coulibri. Not to go.

Not. (Rhys 45)

25

Even after Tia harms her with “the jagged stone in her hand” (Rhys 45), Antoinette still seeks out

those with a history of harming her. In this next case, it is Annette. Antoinette is eager to reunite

with Annette, saying “I jumped out of the carriage and ran as fast as I could across the

lawn…[and] went in without knocking…I put my arms round her and kissed her” (Rhys 48). Like

Tia, Annette rejects her and then physically harms her:

She looked at the door, then at me, then at the door again. I could not say ‘He is dead,’ so

I shoot my head. ‘But I am here, I am here,’ I said, and she said ‘No,’ quietly. Then ‘No

no no’ very loudly and flung me from her. I fell against the partition and hurt myself.

(Rhys 48)

Finally, Antoinette makes one final effort to avoid change. When on “the first day [she] had to go

to the convent, [she] clung to Aunt Cora as you would cling to life if you loved it” (Rhys 48), but

to no avail.

At Mount Calvary Convent, Antoinette continues to associate both natural elements of

space and man-made places with either safety or danger. The path to the convent contained “walls

and gardens on each side of the hill” (Rhys 49) where a boy and girl “closed in on” (Rhys 49)

Antoinette and verbally assault her by reminding her of the people in her life who have rejected

and harmed her:

‘Look at the crazy girl, you crazy like your mother. Your aunt frightened to have you in

the house. She send you for the nuns to lock up….Your mother sans coulottes. She try to

kill her husband and she try to kill you too that day you go see her.’ (Rhys 49-50)

Walls and gardens trap Antoinette by preventing her from escaping the truth of her mother’s

madness and disaffection for her. This is a reversal of previously, where they were her solace

from her mother’s madness.

26

Antoinette adjusts to living within new boundaries, the convent walls, and soon thereafter

describes it as her “refuge, a place of sunshine and of death” (Rhys 56), showing how the convent

itself, like the island before it, contains a duality of safety (refuge) and danger (death). Antoinette

cannot escape the dual nature of places, and people, and she assigns this dichotomy to the

convent. As she acclimates to life in the convent, Antoinette divides her world and categorizes the

elements positively or negatively: “Everything was brightness, or dark. The walls, the blazing

colours of the flowers in the garden, the nuns’ habits were right, but their veils, the Crucifix

hanging from their waists, the shadow of the trees, were black” (Rhys 57). Flowers have been

reassigned from dangerous, such as the orchids at Coulibri, to good, such as the “bright bush of

flowers” (Rhys 52) she sees with pretty Louise de Plana, as well as the embroidered silk roses

that are “coloured…as [the girls] choose” (Rhys 53).

Still, despite Antoinette’s best efforts to categorize elements and people as either safe or

dangerous, good or evil, she cannot escape the convent’s dichotomy. The institution itself is both

her “refuge, a place of sunshine and of death” (Rhys 56). Even her favorite occupant, Miss

Louise, has “a high sweet voice [with which she sang] so carelessly in Chapel about death” (Rhys

55). And Antoinette also demarcates time using the familiar safe/dangerous duality; she divides

her day by when she takes her meals (which are life-sustaining), but also ‘at the hour of our

death” (Rhys 57). When her stepfather comes to visit her, she has “a feeling of dismay, sadness,

loss [and] it was like the morning when [she] found the dead horse” (Rhys 59). Antoinette knows

she will be forced to leave the convent walls within which she has finally found refuge and

resents others’ curiosity about her inevitable departure because she knows “[t]hey are safe [and

cannot] know what it can be like outside” (Rhys 59).

Antoinette’s apprehension at leaving the convent, being ‘on the outside,’ and becoming a

bride supports the notion that when entering marital dwellings, “[y]oung brides are not just

27

newcomers, they are also outsiders; they have to be incorporated, but the process cannot be

achieved overnight” (Shurmer-Smith and Hannam 34). However, after learning of her impending

marriage, Antoinette dreams about the spaces and places of her past:

Again I have left the house at Coulibri. It is still night and I am walking towards the

forest…I am wearing a long dress…which is white and beautiful and I don’t wish to get it

soiled…Now we have reached the forest. We are under the tall dark trees [and] there is

no wind” (Rhys 59-60).

Antoinette moves in her dream from the forest to “an enclosed garden surrounded by a stone

wall” (Rhys 60). By locating herself within the boundaries of her childhood in her dream, she

demonstrates that “[i]n many cases, locations within one’s bounded space are much more

attractive than locations beyond” (Cox 132).

At the convent, Antoinette mimics to achieve happiness by fitting in and being accepted.

She strives to look like the de Plana sisters whom she “admires [because] they sit so polished and

imperturbable” (Rhys 54). She asks, “‘Please, Helene, tell me how you do your hair, because

when I grow up I want mine to look like yours” (Rhys 54). Antoinette verbally mimics; she

“learnt to say very quickly as the others did’ offer up all the prayers, works and sufferings of this

day’” (Rhys 56). She mimics the other girls by visiting new spaces within the convent; she

follows them “down the stairs to the big stone bath [and] up the wooden steps of the refractory”

(Rhys 56). She copies their behavior and learns new tricks, such as “soap[ing] [her]rself under the

chemise [and] dressing with modesty” (Rhys 56).

Both Jane and Antoinette abandon childhood dwellings, but Jane does so with much more

agency than Antoinette. And, where Jane learns to avoid people and places that have previously

harmed her, Antoinette seeks solace in them in times of crisis, and is harmed yet again. They

28

enter the next phase of their journey with different abilities. Jane has the ability to advocate for

herself and negotiate change, while Antoinette still relies on others to change her circumstances.

29

CHAPTER THREE: THORNFIELD HALL AND GRANDBOIS ESTATE

Thornfield Hall and Grandbois Estate are sites of, for Jane and Antoinette respectively, their

first introductions to romantic love. Their relationships with their respective Rochesters begin

here. However, the manner of their introductions to love are starkly different. Antoinette’s

marriage to Rochester is brokered by her stepfather, while Jane spends much of her time

believing Mr. Rochester will marry Blanche Ingram, meaning the possibility of her own marriage

to Rochester is not even considered by Jane. As such, Antoinette and Jane act very differently

within the spaces and places of Thornfield and Grandbois. Antoinette applies romantic

significance to the spaces and places she encounters with Rochester, and tries to further seduce

him using them. By contrast, Jane uses them to avoid Mr. Rochester. Jane and Antoinette see

inverse results to their actions. The more Antoinette tries to increase Rochester’s love for her, the

more he withdraws and she further deteriorates. By contrast, the more Jane avoids Mr. Rochester,

the more he loves her. Jane’s identity is concretized by her detachment by Mr. Rochester.

Antoinette’s identity deteriorates with her attachment to Rochester.

Thornfield Hall

Just like Gateshead Hall before it, Thornfield Hall still contains safe and dangerous places.

In “Abandoning and Re-inhabiting Domestic Space in Jane Eyre, Villette and Wide Sargasso

Sea,” Susan Lydon suggests that Thornfield is no safer than any previous place Jane has been

because “[t]he patriarchal mansion that Jane seeks refuge in as a governess exposes her to

dangers as much as it shelters her from harm” (24). Lydon is correct that Thornfield has the

potential to be dangerous, though not necessarily entirely to Jane, due in large part to Jane’s

dexterity in staying within safe spaces. The danger at Thornfield is implied even when it is not

overtly experienced: “Grace Poole also highlights the notion of Thornfield Hall as a dangerous

30

place when she tells Jane to bolt her door” (Lydon 25). Bertha lights Rochester’s room on fire,

Jane saves him, and her own room stays unharmed. Bertha bites Richard Mason, and Jane assists

with saving his life; again, Jane is unharmed. In fact, at the moment when Bertha could have

physically harmed Jane, Bertha frightens Jane but leaves her untouched. Jane remains relatively

unscathed physically while at Thornfield, a condition she was frequently threatened with at

Gateshead Hall under John’s bullying fist.

The primary danger at Thornfield, then, is emotional. While emotional danger certainly

occurred at Gateshead Hall, Jane had not formed emotional attachments to Mrs. Reed or her

cousins, so their lack of love for Jane impacted her less. Once Jane loves Mr. Rochester, she

becomes vulnerable to being hurt. So, Jane uses space and place to keep herself safe emotionally.

Gates, as visible barriers, play a significant role. In some cases, these barriers do not exist in

actuality, but are manifested by other people. For example, when struggling with her feelings for

Mr. Rochester, she “dreamt of Miss Ingram all the night: in a vivid morning dream I saw her

closing the gates of Thornfield against me and pointing me out another road” (Brontë 327).

Further, Mr. Rochester makes certain rooms off limits to Jane. With the case of the attic, he

justifiably does this to protect Jane (and himself) from Bertha. Mr. Rochester's right to set limits

and boundaries is demonstrated when bad things happen to Jane when she defies the boundaries.

In another case of Mr. Rochester setting boundaries, he sequesters her to the schoolroom. Mrs.

Fairfax reminds Jane to lock her door so that her bedroom door is a protective barrier. Jane also

observes the way boundaries impact others’ behavior: When Jane thinks that Mr. Rochester loves

Blanche Ingram, Jane is surprised as his lack of “journeyings backward and forward, no visits to

Ingram Park: to be sure it was twenty miles off, on the borders of another county; but what was

that distance to an ardent lover?” (Brontë 331; emphasis mine). Rochester also initially limits his

interactions with Jane: She recalls, “all my acquaintance with him was confined to an occasional

31

rencontre in the hall, on the stairs, or in the gallery” (Brontë 200). He also dictates whether there

will be boundaries (or a lack thereof) between himself and Jane. When she erects a figurative

boundary of space between them, he responds:

Don't draw that chair farther off, Miss Eyre; sit down exactly where I placed it…Miss Eyre,

draw your chair still a little farther forward: you are yet too far back; I cannot see you

without disturbing my position in this comfortable chair, which I have no mind to do. I

did as I was bid, though I would much rather have remained somewhat in the shade;

but Mr. Rochester had such a direct way of giving orders, it seemed a matter of course to

obey him promptly. (Brontë 201)

Mr. Rochester also uses his profusion of roaming varied spaces and places as a way of

establishing superiority over Jane, asking her:

‘Then, in the first place, do you agree with me that I have a right to be a little

masterful, abrupt, perhaps exacting, sometimes, on the grounds I stated, namely, that I am

old enough to be your father, and that I have battled through a varied experience with many

men of many nations, and roamed over half the globe, while you have lived quietly with

one set of people in one house?’ (Brontë 205; emphasis mine)

Finally, Mr. Rochester also uses boundaries to keep people other than Jane at a distance. In the

midst of an emotional confession to Jane, he is interrupted when “Adèle here ran before him with

her shuttlecock” (Brontë 216), so he orders, “‘Away!’ he cried harshly; “keep at a distance, child;

or go in to Sophie!’” (Brontë 216). In this way he keeps Jane’s attention with him and him only.

The result of Mr. Rochester’s attention on Jane fans her growing affection, which is articulated by

Jane as a boundary being eliminated: “The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint: the

friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to him” (Brontë 219;

emphasis mine).

32

Boundaries are not only used by other people to impact Jane. She also uses them

defensively at Thornfield, just as she learned to do at Gateshead and Lowood in part because,

just like the pseudo-homes of Gateshead and Lowood before it, at Thornfield the “traditional

notion of home is disjointed and out of place” (Lydon 24). When Jane is in danger of emotional

damage, such as by Mr. Rochester who “seems to take cruel delight in courting Blanche Ingram

in Jane’s presence until he draws tears from her eyes” (Lydon 25), Jane “sit[s] in the

shade…[because] the window-curtain half-hides [her]” (Brontë 251) to physically avoid them.

Upon hearing the “probability of a union between Mr. Rochester and the beautiful Blanche”

(Brontë 236), Jane describes her feelings in terms of travel and boundaries, chiding her heart to

return to their natural boundaries:

When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into my heart,

examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand

such as had been straying through imagination's boundless and trackless waste, into the

safe fold of common sense. (Brontë 236; emphasis mine)

Jane’s growing affection for Rochester also forces her to navigate the physical spaces in

Thornfield more carefully to avoid Rochester and his distressing effects upon her. First, Jane does

not “quit [her] sanctum of the schoolroom…[and ] refuge in time of trouble” (Brontë 242),

because Rochester rarely enters. When Rochester returns, Jane “[takes] care to stand on one side,

so that, screened by the curtain, I could see without being seen” (Brontë 243). She even keeps

Adèle out of sight and tells her, “Well now, while the ladies are in their rooms, I will venture

down and get you something to eat” (Brontë 244). She ensures she will remain unseen even

while accomplishing this task by “seeking back-stairs which conducted directly to the kitchen”

(Brontë 244). She observes how physical distance and negotiation within the room reflects the

emotional distance she feels. She wonders:

33

What had occurred since, calculated to change his and my relative positions? Yet now,

how distant, how far estranged we were! So far estranged, that I did not him to come and

speak to me. I did not wonder, when, without looking at me, he took a seat at the other

side of the room and began conversing with some of the ladies. (Brontë 252; emphasis

mine).

Jane seeks the outdoors which previously represented emotional and literal safety. When

grappling with her growing feelings for Mr. Rochester, Jane evades him and his unknown

advances: she “sought the garden…[and] went apart into the orchard. No nook in the grounds

more sheltered and more Eden-like; it was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers” (Brontë 332). In

this way, the garden’s barriers are safe because the garden’s “very high wall [which] shut it out

from the court [and] screened it from the lawn [created a space where Jane] could wander

unseen” (Brontë 332). Once, while in this space, knowing that Mr. Rochester is approaching due

to the increasing “new scent [of]…Mr Rochester’s cigar” (Brontë 333), Jane feels, “I must flee. I

make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery, and I see Mr. Rochester entering. I step aside into

the ivy recess; he will not stay long: he will soon return whence he came, and if I sit still he will

never see me” (Brontë 333). Further, when Jane “learns that Mr Rochester cannot make her his

legal wife [and] she is forced to turn to the outdoors to prevent becoming Mr Rochester’s mistress

and compromising herself in her own eyes and in the eyes of polite society” (Lydon 25). And

when she decides to physically leave Mr. Rochester and Thornfield Hall, she decides against

entering chambers to say goodbye because if she did she might change her mind. She stays safely

in the hallway and whispers her goodbyes, which ensures she will indeed leave Thornfield. Jane

removes herself from Rochester’s presence to redefine herself as someone other than Mr.

Rochester’s jilted fiancée. She successfully redefines herself. Lydon says, “Charlotte’s ending

revises and reverses Victorian conceptions of home concluding with a heroine who boldly claims

34

‘I am independent [. . .] as well as rich [. . .] I am my own mistress’” (25). When Mr. Rochester

suggests sending her to Ireland, she responds with trepidations due “‘[n]ot [due to] the voyage,

but [to] the distance: and then the sea is a barrier...[f]rom England and from

Thornfield…and…from [Mr. Rochester]’” (Brontë 336).

In addition, Jane is emotionally transported back to familiar spaces. After the very

emotional encounter with Mr. Rochester where Jane rejects his pleas to be his wife, she falls

asleep and dreams of spaces from her previous life: “That night I never thought to sleep; but a

slumber fell on me as soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the scenes of

childhood: I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead Hall; that the night was dark, and my mind

impressed with strange fears” (Brontë 410). When leaving Mr. Rochester and bidding farewell to

the tenants of Thornfield, Jane stays in the familiar spaces of her childhood – the hallways –

because to leave them and enter chambers would render her emotional to the point of abandoning

her resolve to leave.

“Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!” I whispered, as I glided past her door. “Farewell, my

darling Adèle!” I said, as I glanced towards the nursery. No thought could be admitted of

entering to embrace her. I had to deceive a fine ear: for aught I knew it might now be

listening.

I would have got past Mr. Rochester’s chamber without a pause; but my heart momentarily

stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the

inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I

listened. There was a heaven--a temporary heaven--in this room for me, if I chose: I had but

to go in and to say - “Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till

death,” and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of this. (Brontë 411)

35

Grandbois Estate

At Grandbois, Antoinette uses both space (natural landscape) and place (man-made

constructs) to seduce Rochester. She downplays the intensity of certain natural places and

features to make the island – and thus herself – more palatable to Rochester. Similarly, she

positively (albeit unsuccessfully) presents the dilapidated state of certain man-made spaces,

specifically Grandbois – again, to forge an intimate bond with her new husband. Because she sees

herself as an extension of both the island and Grandbois, she equates Rochester’s acceptance of

these spaces and places to his acceptance of her. At which point Antoinette, through her

introduction of Grandbois (and thus her past) is the focus of Rochester’s attention, her condition

transforms because,

For those on the margins, this [interpretation of the past] may be articulated only through

a desire to make sense of the world in such a way that they cease to be peripheralized into

a supporting role, and appear as legitimate actors in their own right. (Shurmer-Smith and

Hannam 45)

In short, she manipulates Rochester’s perception of space and place without manipulating the

space or place itself. Initially she succeeds as Rochester does respond positively to Grandbois, the

island, and Antoinette. However, as she becomes more desperate these elements that once

attracted Rochester overwhelm him and he eventually rejects Antoinette.

Upon reaching the “boundary of Grandbois,” (Rhys 70), Rochester succumbs to the

seduction and views things positively. Antoinette smiles “naturally and simply” (Rhys 71).

Rochester wavers towards unhappiness when he notices a cliff, but Antoinette distracts him with

more natural island features, giving him mountain water to which he admits, “it was cold, pure

and sweet” (Rhys 71). And he has forgotten his objection to oversaturated color as he observes

the water’s “beautiful color against the thick green leaf” (Rhys 71; emphasis mine). Antoinette

36

then brings his attention to the color of the red earth. Rochester, now fully complicit in the

seduction, bestows the ultimate compliment upon the earth at Grandbois by likening it to

England. He more fully engages in the seduction, noticing “what looked like an imitation of an

English summer house” (Rhys 71). The seduction continues, now combining man-made places

with the natural spaces. Rochester stands “on the veranda [and] breathed in the sweetness of the

air. Cloves [he] could smell and cinnamon, roses and orange blossom. And an intoxicating

freshness as if all this had never been breathed before” (Rhys 73). This sexual imaginary abounds

with Rochester penetrating an unoccupied space. Antoinette beckons him to fully enter, saying

“Come, I will show you the house” (Rhys 73). Why is she so eager to have Rochester enter?

Perhaps for a literal consummation, and perhaps because she associates the veranda and its

exposure to danger for her “mother [who] had a clear view to the sea, but anyone passing could

stare at her. They stared, sometimes they laughed” (Rhys 19-20). Antoinette reinforces the house

as safe (as opposed to the dangerous veranda) by telling Rochester, “‘Once…I used to sleep with

a piece of wood by my side so that I could defend myself if I were attacked’” (Rhys 74). And,

Rochester views the room with a window as “a refuge” (Rhys 74), perhaps because it allows

escape even if only visually. While the spaces surrounding Grandbois successfully seduce

Rochester, the man-made places do not. It is the promise, the tantalizing tease of the house that

Rochester wants, not to fully occupy the house itself., once inside the house Rochester observes

the “neglected and deserted [place, the] large unpainted room [with a] shabby sofa” (Rhys 73;

emphasis mine) which is in stark contrast to the overwhelming natural beauty with which they

have just been oversaturated.

In her first attempt to use a potion to distract him, Antoinette offers him rum punch and

they drink “to happiness” (Rhys 73). It does not work, because Rochester observes even “larger

and emptier” rooms after drinking the happiness elixir. Antoinette notices, asking, “Don’t you

37

like it here? This is my place and everything is on our side” (Rhys 74). Not only does Antoinette

liken Grandbois to herself by calling it ‘my place,’ but she uses similar military language that

Rochester began his narrative with: ‘our side’ implies a conflict or battle, and Antoinette is

certainly fighting a battle against her deficits to align Rochester and herself.

In a final and dramatic effort to seduce Rochester using the island, Antoinette begs

Christophene (indigenous the island) to use her magic (also native to the island) and make

Rochester love her. Antoinette believes that if Rochester loves her, he will visit her in her room.

He does not enter Antoinette’s bedroom when he begins to despise her; he contains himself to the

veranda: “I hear him every night walking up and down the veranda. Up and down. When he

passes my door he says, “Goodnight, Bertha” (Rhys 113). In this way, Rochester identifies and

avoids the spaces that are dangerous, which are those Antoinette occupies.

Rochester’s dissatisfaction with the man-made places soon leeches to the natural world.

His appreciation of Grandbois is short-lived and soon he is overwhelmed by the excess. He

notices that “[t]he food [is] too highly seasoned” (Rhys 80) and that so many “moths and beetles

found their way into the room [that Amelie] “swept them up…uselessly. More moths and beetles

came” (Rhys 80). Also, “there was a very strong scent of flowers…and the noise…was

deafening” (Rhys 81). Mr. Rochester observes “hundreds of fireflies” (Rhys 81). Even the size is

to excess. He sees “[a] large moth, so large that I thought it was a bird” (Rhys 81). The “starlight

was so bright” that they do not need candles. The “scent of river flowers was overpoweringly

strong” (Rhys 83).

Antoinette does not know how to exist without using elements of the island, of Coulibri

which reinforces that “attachment [to place] may serve as an integral component of self-identity”

(Convery, Corsane, and Davis 1). Mardorossian agrees, and uses Antoinette’s seduction of

Rochester as an example:

38

After their initial estrangement, for instance, she tries to win him back by telling the/her

truth about her past but confirms instead his suspicion that she has inherited her mother’s

madness and promiscuity; she is wearing the white dress he liked so much, ‘but it ha[s]

slipped untidily over one shoulder’ (Rhys 127). Antoinette herself is incapable of realize

that in Rochester’s eyes, her attire actually associates her with (black) female wantonness

and prostitution since her only frame of reference is her favorite childhood picture she is

striving to emulate, “‘The Miller’s Daugher,’ a lovely English girl with brown curls and

blue eyes and a dress slipping off her shoulders” (36; emphasis mine) (69-70).

39

CHAPTER FOUR: WHITCROSS, MOOR HOUSE, AND FERNDEAN

AND THE SHIP AND THE ATTIC

Jane’s and Antoinette’s inverse transformations culminate in Moor House and Ferndean,

and the ship and attic, respectively. It is here that their mobility between spaces and places,

transcend or stay within boundaries, and overcome the detriments of their conditions as

financially-devoid women without male or parental advocates either succeed or fail. Jane’s self-

advocacy is legitimized upon installing herself at Ferndean with Rochester. Antoinette

deteriorates because she is bound in the attic. Before this happens, however, Jane and Antoinette

change locations one final time, which is crucial because it results in their identification being

established. This is because places “play a potentially important part in the symbolic and

psychical dimension of our identifications [because] it is not spaces which ground identifications,

but [named] places” (Carter, Donald, and Squires xii). Jane journeys through Whitcross to Moor

House; on this endeavor she finally gains enough experience to return to Thornfield and find

Rochester in Ferndean. For Antoinette, her final location change and last chance for self-

advocacy is during her journey across the ocean in the belly of the ship. She does not escape the

ship, and does not escape her tragic fate.

Whitcross, Moor-House, and Ferndean

Upon leaving Thornfield, Jane seeks comfort and safety in the “universal mother, Nature”

saying, “I will seek her breast and ask repose” (Brontë 414). Jane “struck straight into the heath; I

held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside… [and finds a] crag protected

my head: the sky was over that. Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here” (Brontë 414-

415). Because she just came from a situation where people failed her, she logically turns to

Nature to protect her because “[n]ature seemed…benign and good; I thought she loved me,

40

outcast as I was” (Brontë 415). Further, Jane seeks the qualities in Nature that the people in her

life have lacked: “I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her

with filial fondness. To-night, at least, I would be her guest, as I was her child: my mother would

lodge me without money and without price” (Brontë 415). Significantly, Jane realizes the

necessity of that which nature offers, which are qualities to which she never assigned value.

Much of Jane’s time after leaving Thornfield Hall lacks the familiarity that boundaries

gave her for the duration of her life. She wanders without knowing where she is, and lacks

markers to guide her or a hearth to anchor her. In Whitcross she attempts to find a new home but

lacks the newly-found assertiveness she displayed previously. She recalls, “I passed up the street,

looking as I went at all the houses to the right hand and to the left; but I could discover no pretext,

nor see an inducement to enter any” (Brontë 418). Then, her wandering becomes aimless in

addition to fruitless: “I drew near houses; I left them, and came back again, and again I wandered

away: always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim to ask--no right to expect interest

in my isolated lot” (Brontë 414). Jane seems to have lost much of the advocacy she spent her

earlier years building up. As she gets closer and closer to death, her sense of self-preservation

wane, saying “‘Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street, or on a frequented road’” (Brontë

422). She stumbles upon a house and observes the scene before trying to enter: “The aperture was

so screened and narrow, that curtain or shutter had been deemed unnecessary; and when I stooped

down and put aside the spray of foliage shooting over it, I could see all within” (Brontë 423-424)

And, as she is on the verge of death, she is permitted to enter a new space: “Young woman, rise,

and pass before me into the house’” (Brontë 429). She is transformed upon crossing the boundary

from the outside to the inside: “Somehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this

house, and once was brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer outcast, vagrant, and

disowned by the wide world” (Brontë 430). Jane’s physical transition affects her internally self-

41

definition. She does not identify with the terms ‘outcast’ or ‘vagrant’ which imply homelessness,

or a lack of belonging to a physical dwelling. Moreover, she “resumes [her] natural manner and

character…[and] thanked God--experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of grateful joy-

-and slept” (Brontë 430-431).

Jane recovers from her bout of homelessness at Moor-house but she cannot keep track of

time. She orients herself according to physical space she observes, namely the rooms and a

narrow bed:

The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is very dim in my mind. I

can recall some sensations felt in that interval; but few thoughts framed, and no actions

performed. I knew I was in a small room and in a narrow bed. To that bed I seemed to

have grown; I lay on it motionless as a stone; and to have torn me from it would have

been almost to kill me. I took no note of the lapse of time--of the change from morning to

noon, from noon to evening. I observed when any one entered or left the apartment.

(Brontë 432)

This habit of orienting herself with familiar elements continues. Ever the rejected cousin and

governess, she knows her place: “I crept down a stone staircase with the aid of the banisters, to a

narrow low passage, and found my way presently to the kitchen” (Brontë 434). She is

uncomfortable with being a guest because it is unfamiliar; Jane’s status at Moor House dictates

where she is allowed to go: “‘And what business have you here?...It is not your place. Mary and I

sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like to be free, even to license--but you are a

visitor, and must go into the parlour’” (Brontë 438).

Cells permeate Jane’s narrative, beginning with the red-room, in which Jane is

sequestered and in which she “was not quite sure whether they had locked the door; and when I

dared move, I got up and went to see. Alas! yes: no jail was ever more secure” (Brontë 71). Later,

42

Jane encounters the cells of Thornfield Hall that imprison Bertha Mason. Mr. Rochester

remembers relief at security a cell provides, saying: “Glad was I when I at last got her to

Thornfield, and saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room, of whose secret inner cabinet she

has now for ten years made a wild beast's den--a goblin's cell” (Brontë 400). Further, Jane’s

struggle with St. John’s insistent marriage proposal underscores the prison-like effect that union

would have upon her. St. John’s continued proposals elicit a feeling of terror in terms of space.

She entreats St. John to accept her rejection, saying “‘Oh, I wish I could make you see how much

my mind is at this moment like a rayless dungeon, with one shrinking fear fettered in its depths--

the fear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish!’” (Brontë 502). And,

after thinking for so long that she would never marry Mr. Rochester (coupled with her waning

resolve against St. John’s proposals), the sensation of Mr. Rochester calling her leads her to feel

“the wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations of

Paul and Silas's prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed its bands” (Brontë

521-522). And finally, Mr. Rochester suggests that love helped both him and Jane escape their

emotional prison: “Perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine” (Brontë 550).

Jane’s relationship with St. John resembles hers with Mrs. Reed in that punishment via

space and place occurs. First, St. John offers Jane the opportunity to join him in India, which is a

change that Jane would like. When Jane rejects him, he emotionally estranges her by removing

himself from her presence:

That night, after he had kissed his sisters, he thought proper to forget even to shake hands

with me; but left the room in silence. I – who, though I had no love, had much friendship

for him – was hurt by the marked omission: so much hurt that tears started in my eyes.

(Brontë 509)

43

John’s treatment of Jane hurts her so much that she would “much rather he had knocked [her]

down” (Brontë 509), which is how John Reed demonstrated his disdain for Jane. St John then

uses his presence to keep hurting Jane: “He deferred his departure a whole week; and during that

time he made me feel [a] severe punishment” (Brontë 510). He “called Jane as usual each

morning to join him at his desk” (Brontë 510), the effect of which is “refined, lingering torture”

(Brontë 510). As much as St. John’s estrangement causes “a trembling trouble of grief, which

harassed and crushed” (Brontë 510) Jane, she worries that she will lose him as a friend when he

goes to India. And, in a regression to her childhood tendencies, Jane avoids St. John after their

quarrel, saying she “hastened up stairs and [she] saw him entering the garden” (Brontë 516).

Diana and Mary evaluate happiness based on spatial relationships. Diana assigns

significance to St. John and Jane’s relationship because he “get[s] Jane so frequently alone with

him, and keep[s] [her] so continually at his side” (Brontë 514). When Diana learns that St. John

wants to marry Jane, she happily replies, “That is just what we hoped and thought!...And then he

will stay in England” (Brontë 515). Jane is not so happy but feels trapped because “[u]nder

Victorian law, property was transmitted through the male line and one of the only ways women

could obtain shelter was through marriage to a land-owning male” (Lydon 24).

Jane’s relationship with Diana and Mary is opposite to her relationship with Mrs. Reed

and her cousins, and is expressed in terms of space and place. For one, Jane loves the outdoors

where previously Jane was happy to avoid the outside. Jane enjoys Moor-House in part because

she has a natural intimacy with Dianna and Mary. She explains this affinity by how it impacts her

relationship with the space and place in Moor-House. She observes that Diana and Mary “loved

their sequestered home” (Brontë 444), so she too admits, “I saw the fascination of the locality. I

felt the consecration of its loneliness” (Brontë 444). She explicates her feelings on the outside,

saying the elements “developed for me, in these regions, the same attraction as for them” (Brontë

44

444). She, Diana and Mary have been “[entranced] by the same spell” (Brontë 444) to the point

where Jane recalls, “In-doors we agreed equally well [and] I followed in the path of knowledge

they had trodden before me. I devoured the books they lent me: then it was full satisfaction with

them in the evening what I had perused during the day. Thought fitted thought; opinion met

opinion: we coincided, in short, perfectly” (Brontë 444-445).

Jane’s assertiveness erupts at Moor House and once again, is expressed in terms of Jane’s

control over space. Spaces become more attractive to her when she has the latitude to clean them

or furnish them. Upon receiving her inheritance, Jane’s first task is to put order to a space where

there was disorder:

My first aim will be to clean down (do you comprehend the full force of the expression?)-

-to clean down Moor House from chamber to cellar; my next to rub it up with bees-wax,

oil, and an indefinite number of cloths, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every

chair, table, bed, carpet, with mathematical precision; afterwards I shall go near to ruin

you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in every room…. (Brontë 488)

Rochester too uses space and place to better himself, or escape his condition. In an effort to be rid

of Bertha, he “conveyed her [to England on] a fearful voyage” (Brontë 400). He then

“transformed…into a Will-o’-the-wisp [and] pursued wanderings…[f]or ten long years” (Brontë

401). Even more significant is that “provided with plenty of money, and the passport of an old

name…no circles were closed” (Brontë 401) to Rochester. He temporarily supersedes his

situation.

The Ship and the Attic

Antoinette returns to the motif of the sea as an escape when, in the belly of the ship

transporting her to England, she “smashed the glasses and plates against the porthole [and] hoped

45

it would break and the sea [would] come in” (Rhys 181). The sea represents escape, perhaps

formed by her memory of Mr. Luttrell escaping by swimming out into the sea. Does Antoinette

realize that the only escape the sea could offer in a ship cabin would be death? The sea’s

safe/dangerous duality permeates her life, even towards the end, and is a reversal of some

prominent mythologies, including that “the sea [which] often symbolizes the mother (in French

the word for sea, la mer, is a homonym of la mère, mother)” (Stein and Niederland 142).

And, just like previously, Antoinette turns to someone other than herself to facilitate her

escape. In the ship’s cabin, a man offers Antoinette a potion to control her: “‘The third man said

drink this and you will sleep. I drank it and I said, ‘It isn’t like it seems to be.’…and then I slept”

(Rhys 181). In this way, Antoinette’s earlier unsuccessful efforts to make Rochester love her with

obeah are detrimental. This is similar to when Rochester wakes after receiving the love potion.

He thinks he has “been poisoned” (Rhys 137) and must escape the dwelling. He remembers, “I

found myself at last near the ruined house and the wild orange tree” (Rhys 139) and then sleeps

with Amélie, the ultimate betrayal to his wife. So, just as Rochester severs himself from

Antoinette when he woke after the love potion, so too the island is severed from Antoinette when

she wakes: “When I woke it was a different sea. Colder” (Rhys 181). Not only was the sea

different, but Antoinette is in another country. And, “crossing an international

border…may…mean a search for a bounteous early mother who will unconditionally accept and

embrace the child” (Stein and Niederland 145), something that Antoinette has always lacked.

All of Antoinette’s unsuccessful journeying leads her to the attic and emphasize that “madness or

moral frailty are often used as the literary device for representing this

homelessness/hopelessness” (Shurmer-Smith and Hannam 43). Antoinette experiences the cell

motif in the opposite way that Jane does. Where Jane’s cells are emotional, Antoinette is

physically imprisoned. In the attic Antoinette is literally behind “thick walls [in a] very cold

46

[room with] one window high up [that] you cannot see out of” (Rhys 178-179). Like an inmate,

her privacy is removed: “My bed had doors but they have been taken away” (Rys 179). She has a

guard, Grace Poole, who “sleeps in [her] room” (Rhys 179). This lack of freedom and privacy

translates to a very palatable lack of identity. Antoinette says, “There is no looking-glass here and

I don’t know what I am like now” (Rhys 180). Where Jane earns her birthright, Antoinette

remembers, “they have taken everything away” (Rhys 180), which continues to deteriorate her

identity. In one breath, she links her identity with her location when she wonders, “What am I

doing in this place and who am I?” (Rhys 180). Because she does not know where she is, she

does not know who she is. In this way, the attic space defines her in that her presence within it

guarantees she can have no identity other than the one Rochester gives her.

Antoinette denies she is in England because she had associated England with a more

positive outcome: “Places may become associated with certain eras or particular events, to the

extent that, in part, the present identity is forged in conscious interaction with the past” (Shurmer-

Smith and Hannam 46). And, mirroring her mother’s aimless wanderings on the glacis, so too

Antoinette wanders in the passages of Thornfield: “I took the keys and went into the passage…”

(Rhys 182). Even then, she stays somewhat within the boundaries established for her in that she

does not let anyone see her, and she cannot see into the rooms. In fact, she images they are made

of cardboard and muses, “I wish I could see what is behind the cardboard” (Rhys 181).

Antoinette’s recurring dreams transcend the boundary between being awake and being

asleep because they represent what is real, and what is not. While in the convent, “the thought

of…[Annette] is mixed up with… [Antoinette’s] dream” (Rhys 61). Annette is real but her

presence in Antoinette’s life is not. Later, a debate between Amélie and Rochester underscores

this same transient nature of the boundary between what is real and what is not, and how it is

applied to locations:

47

‘Is it true,’ she said, ‘that England is like a dream? Because one of my friends who

married an Englishman wrote and told me so. She said this place London is like a cold

dark dream sometimes. I want to wake up.’

‘Well,’ I answered annoyed, ‘that is precisely how your beautiful island seems to me,

quite unreal and like a dream.’

‘But how can rivers and mountains and the sea be unreal?’

‘And how can millions of people, their houses and their streets be unreal?’

‘More easily,’ she said, ‘much more easily. Yes a big city must be like a dream.’

‘No, this is unreal and like a dream,’ I thought. (Rhys 80-81).

Dreams in the attic finally prompt her to action since this boundary is no longer navigable.

Antoinette remembers, “in my dream I…got up, took the keys and let myself out” (Rhys 187) and

goes on to experience the culmination of all the dangerous places of her childhood. She dreams

about the dangerous marriage by way of “the veil over [her] face” (Rhys 188) which could either

refer to her marriage, or the time she steals Jane’s veil, since Rochester’s marriage to Jane is

another emotional assault against Antoinette. She dreams about a room that is like “a church

without an alter” (Rhys 188) which hearkens images of the convent – another place that she was

supposed to be kept safe, but really just became a holding cell before her marriage to Rochester.

She dreams of Aunt Cora’s room and the tree outside and the shadows of the leaves” which is

reminiscent of Coulibri burning, where the trees outside the window warned them. She dreams of

being “out on the battlements [where] it was cool and [she] could hardly hear” (Rhys 189) the

people shouting, which is reminiscent of Coulibri burning. Then, in one final vision, she dreams

of the spaces and places she tried to navigate through, the elements with which she tried to

improve her situation, and the people with which her interactions led to her demise. In this way,

the attic manifests “local configurations of power [which] cause[s] a certain sense of time to be

48

written into places, always to some extent destroying, blurring, retrieving, incorporating and

reworking many traces of other times” (Shurmer-Smith and Hannam 46). Antoinette remembers:

Then I turned round and saw the sky. It was red and all my life was in it. I saw the

grandfather clock and Aunt Cora’s patchwork, all the colours, I saw the orchids and the

stephanotis and the jasmine and the tree of life in flames. I saw the chandelier and the red

carpet downstairs and the bamboos and the tree ferns, the fold ferns and the silver, and

the soft green velvet of the moss on the garden wall. I saw my doll’s house and the books

and the picture of the Miller’s Daughter. I heard the parrot call…and the man who hated

me was calling too...[and] I saw the pool at Coulibri. Tia was there. (Rhys 189-190)

Antoinette’s narrative ends here. But, in fact, we know from Jane Eyre that the dream Antoinette

just describes is the true ending of the story and her life.

49

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION

Both Jane’s and Antoinette’s separate journeys end with a return to the locations of their

formative years. For Jane, this is by Rochester’s side since the influence of his love was enough

to outweigh the detrimental effects of a childhood without affection. Antoinette returns to

Coulibri, to the bathing pool and to Tia, who was perhaps her first friend. Why does Antoinette

return to Tia and not to Rochester and their short-lived honeymoon bliss at Grandbois? Perhaps

because, even at its best, it was not legitimate and her friendship with Tia (though equally short-

lived) was real. However, this is where their similar journeys end. Antoinette is a product of

“colonial (and former colonial) societies…where land has been appropriated, a strong sense of

ownership and defence may persist through succeeding generations” (Storey 15). Because of this,

she never conceals or escapes from her family’s legacy; she has the unfortunate “condition of the

individual who knows that her own past and home is a stigmatized one and yet she cannot reject it

because in doing so she would reject her own childhood and youth, that is, herself” (Shurmer-

Smith and Hannam 43). In contrast, Jane never grew up with a sense that she deserved an

inheritance or land. She also, unlike Antoinette, never insisted on staying in a space she found

dangerous. Jane approached her journey pragmatically because “locations on either side of a

boundary represent varying degrees of attractiveness according to the bounded space being

considered” (Cox 132). In this way she was never truly placeless or homeless because with each

change she deliberately advanced herself, and “placelessness…is ‘a weakening of the identity of

places to the point where they not only look alike, but feel alike and offer the same bland

possibilities for experience’” (Hubbard 17). As Jane’s location changes, so do her possibilities

increase exponentially. Tragically, Antoinette loses her identity because she so strongly tied it to

the physical spaces and places of her childhood, ensuring her demise because “‘sense of place’

may be associated with places…associated with positive experiences. Equally, places in which

50

bad experiences happened, or in which tragic events occurred may be seen in quite negative

terms” (Convery, Corsane, and Davis 1-2). Had her childhood been not so fraught with trauma, or

had Antoinette not defined herself by the spaces and places around her, there may have been

another ending to her love story with Rochester. This failure by Antoinette supports the idea that

“colonial discourse has always represented the other as a passive and malleable being who cannot

be the maker of his or her own history” (Mardorossian 21).

Political, social, and financial impact cannot be ignored because “places are socially

constructed by the people who live in them and know them; they are politicized, culturally

relative, and historically specific multiple constructions” (qtd. in Low 641). Both Jane and

Antoinette are marginalized characters whose status impedes their mobility. Not only do Jane and

Antoinette define themselves using external features (as in where they are physically located), but

they also “undergo developmental changes by way of their own internal self-organization”

(Backhaus xi). Their self-organization is, in other words, their identity or their self-definition. At

first, others organize, or define Jane negatively in relation to other people before Jane takes

control and organizes herself positively. Initially she is poor as compared to Mrs. Reed and her

cousins; sullen as compared to Georgiana and Eliza; plain as compared to Blanche; and lacking

religious fervor as compared to St. John. However, once Jane’s developmental changes culminate

she defines herself. She becomes educated by way of going to Lowood; romantically loved by

way of going to Thornfield; adored by family and independently wealthy by way of going to

Moor House; and assertive by way of returning to Thornfield and then finding Ferndean.

Antoinette’s developmental changes do not contribute to positive self-organization or self-

definition because “by foregrounding the West Indian racial and social divisions, Rhys… shows

[Antoinette]…as constituted within and by the processes of colonization and imperialism” (64).

These colonial and imperial processes are, more specifically, Antoinette’s misguided trust of the

51

island as safe, her tendency to rely on others to save her, and her insistence on staying within or

returning to dangerous places. Linda McDowell writes,

It is socio-spatial practices that define places and these practices result in overlapping and

intersecting places with multiple and changing boundaries, constituted and maintained by

social relations of power and exclusion. Places are made through power relations which

construct the rules and which define boundaries. These boundaries are both social and

spatial – they define who belongs to a place and who may be excluded, as well as the

location or the site of the experience. (Hubbard 18)

In sum, Antoinette’s processes are detrimental and inescapable whereas Jane’s are liberating.

52

Works Cited

Backhaus, Gary, and John Murungi, eds. Tensional Landscapes: The Dynamics of Boundaries

and Placements. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2003. Print.

Ballantyne, Tony, and Antoinette Burton, eds. Introduction: The Politics of Intimacy in an Age of

Empire. Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire.

Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009. 1-28. Print.

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Richard Nemesvari. Ontario: Broadview Press Limited, 1999.

Print.

Carter, Erica, James Donald, and Judith Squires, eds. Space and Place: Theories of Identity and

Location. London: Lawrence & Wishard Limited, 1993. Print.

Convery, Ian, Gerard Corsane, and Peter Davis, eds. Introduction: Making Sense of Place.

Making Sense of Place: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press,

2012. Print.

Cox, Kevin R. Man, Location, and Behavior: An Introduction to Human Geography. New York:

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1972. Print.

Hubbard, Phil, et al. Thinking Geographically: Space, Theory and Contemporary Human

Geography. New York: Continuum, 2002. Print.

53

Joseph, Margaret Paul. Caliban in Exile: The Outsider in Carribean Fiction. Connecticut:

Greenwood Press, 1992. Print.

Low, Setha M. “Towards an anthropological theory of space and place.” Semiotica 2009.175

(2009): 21-37. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Web. 22 February 2015.

Lydon, Susan. “Abandoning and Re-inhabiting Domestic Space in Jane Eyre, Villette and

Wide Sargasso Sea.” Brontë Studies 35.1 (2010): 23-29. Maney Online. Web. 22

February 2015.

Mardorossian, Carine M. Reclaiming Difference: Caribbean Women Rewrite

Postcolonialism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. Print.

Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1966. Print.

Shurmer-Smith, Pamela, and Kevin Hannam. Worlds of Desire, Realms of Power. A cultural

geography. London: Hodder Headline PLC, 1994. Print.

Stein, Howard F., and William G. Niederland. Maps from the Mind: Readings in

Psychogeography. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989. Print.

Storey, David. “Land, Territory and Identity.” Making Sense of Place: Multidisciplinary

Perspectives. Ed. Convery, Ian, Gerard Corsane, and Peter Davis. Woodbridge: The

Boydell Press, 2012. 11-22. Print.

54

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. New

Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1974. Print.