‘Reader, I married him’: Love, Marriage and the Development of Realism in Jane Eyre

Lauren Watson

Despite the best efforts of many literary critics, in the popular imagination Jane Eyre remains a love story. Marxists critics may try to emphasise the early chapters of the novel and the class conflicts articulated by the text, but adaptations continue to portray it as a romantic drama centred around the conflicting desires of its female protagonist. The well-received 2006 BBC adaptation, for example, condensed the ‘Lowood’ section into brief opening scenes, with the series concentrating on the relationship between Jane and Rochester. The last episode concluded with their marriage and a portrait of their extended family- a conclusion which seems ‘natural’ and emotionally satisfying.

However, ‘love’ and ‘marriage’ are ideas defined as much by history as by the urgings of the heart or hormones. This article will look at the portrayal of love and marriage in Jane Eyre, comparing it to the ways in which these same concepts were represented in the 18th century, at the birth of the novel form and the advent of Realism as a genre. It will argue that Jane Eyre illustrates the profound social, cultural and philosophical changes which occurred between the early 18th and the mid-19th century, changes most obvious at the level of character and plot. However, these changes can also be detected at a formal level, as Realism itself shifts from a mode of merely reflecting society in the 18th century to a means of representing the individual consciousness.

In the 18th century, it was comparatively rare to marry out of mutual affection, although it could be hoped that such sentiments would develop later. At the beginning of the 18th century most marriages (amongst landed or moneyed families at least) were based on social utility: they were contracts designed to cement alliances, acquire property, secure social influence and produce an heir - regardless of the feelings of the individuals involved. This was something which satirists of the time parodied, most famously Hogarth’s paintings ‘Marriage a-la Mode’ (1745), in which an arranged marriage between a young earl and a merchant’s daughter brings ruin to both. Similarly, in Daniel Defoe’s novel Moll Flanders (1722), the eponymous Moll adopts this pragmatic approach to marriage. Arranging her own advantageous matches, Moll moves from husband to husband with strategic intent, calculating how each new union will affect her financial position. Far from being deviant, Moll’s mercenary attitude only magnifies behaviour of her betters, in which love comes a distant third behind the social and economic benefits of marriage.

In the second half of the 18th century, this materialist idea of marriage came increasingly under attack. Materialism in this case does not simply mean the accumulation of wealth: more widely, it was the philosophical position that human consciousness was a by-product of the external, physical world in which it existed. Many were troubled by this idea that individual thoughts, beliefs and emotions were determined by their material context – particularly when it came to the holy sacrament of matrimony. As the century progressed the debate about the purpose of marriage raged, and found literary expression in sentimental novels of the period such as Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa. By the late 18th century, marrying for love finally became acceptable, as long as other social parameters were respected. This pivotal moment is captured in the novels of Jane Austen, where the relative importance of material or emotional motives in courtship is central to the plot. Austen’s novels allow both parties to state their case, from the unsentimental rationalism of Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice (1796; published 1813) to

Catherine Moreland’s passionate attacks on mercenary marriages in Northanger Abbey (1803; published 1817). There is no doubt that Austen ultimately privileges heart over head; it is equally true, however, that she is not blind to the financial and social implications of marriage, and these material considerations are also ultimately resolved to her heroines’ benefit.

This social acceptance of marrying for love anticipated the philosophical changes that occurred as the Neo-Classical era gave way to the Romanticism of the early 19th century, when the precept of materialism was replaced by Idealism. Idealism, which asserted the primacy of the subjective mind over external matter, was the polar opposite of materialism and provided the metaphysical foundation of the Romantic world-view. For the Romantics, love was paramount; marriage should not be based upon socio-economic concerns, but solely on emotional and sexual self-fulfilment. It was left to a later generation of 19th century novelists, like Charlotte Bronte, to negotiate these two opposing paradigms and propose a model of marriage which balanced the materialism of the Neo-Classical period with the idealism of the Romantics.

That Bronte inherits a distaste for arranged marriages is evident from her portrayal of the relationship between the Rochester and Bertha Mason. Rochester’s first marriage could be illustrated by Hogarth’s engravings; it is a union doomed to fail through the financial machinations of the families involved. However, this marriage is not simply a product of 18th century materialism. It is also a product of the romantic idealism of the early 19th century. The young Rochester, like Byron, is enraptured by Bertha’s beauty and exotic sensuality. But this is not ‘She Walks in Beauty’, Byron’s lyrical evocation of love-at-first-sight. It is more like Coleridge’s horrific ballad ‘Christabel’; Rochester goes to bed with a beautiful woman and wakes up with a ‘vampire’. It is evident from the breakdown of this relationship that neither materialism nor idealism in themselves provide the basis for a healthy marriage.

But what shapes Jane’s matrimonial choices? As an orphan, Jane is free from parental control; she has an active role in her own fate and is able to articulate her dilemma. There is a conscious struggle within Jane between the forces of passion and conscience, between romantic desires and social obligations. In most adaptations of the novel, this vacillation is framed as being simply a part of Jane’s psychology, a product of her personality or her upbringing. But it can also be seen within an historical context, with Jane as the unwitting inheritor of those conflicting views of love and marriage that emerged during the long 18th century: marriage as an act of personal fulfilment versus marriage as a social instrument. Does she follow her heart and marry Rochester, or does she marry Rivers for the greater social good (albeit for spiritual, rather than financial, reward)?

-Jane, and the novel, eventually settles on a post-romantic bourgeois model of marriage; the domesticated, economically-independent nuclear family bonded by mutual affection. Jane marries her superior for emotional rather than economic reasons, but that love does not contravene society’s legal or moral codes. Jane and Rochester’s marriage represents a Victorian equilibrium between idealism and materialism, a compromise which still perhaps influences our modern-day conceptions of marriage. However, this shifting conception of marriage – from materialism, to idealism, to Victorian synthesis- doesn’t just exist at the level of plot and character. It is also mirrored at a formal level, specifically in the development of Realism as a genre.

In his account of the rise of the novel, Ian Watt states that 18th century novels typify ‘Formal Realism’. By this he means that the novel functions as a realistic reflection of both society and the individual subject, presenting ‘a full and authentic report of human experience’. However, the novel had not yet realised its full potential: whilst successfully detailing the external world of early 18th century, early novels like Moll Flanders often fail to present a convincing account of the inner life of their protagonists. If the early 18th century viewed the sensibilities of the individual as subservient to the socio-economic advantages of marriage, it is hardly surprising that the embryonic realism of these early novels should share something of this materialist approach. Novels at this stage were less invested in the emotional development of individual characters; they treat their characters as currency, to be disposed of as casually as Moll disposes of husbands once they have fulfilled their narrative use. The historical conditions were not yet right for a Realism that could successfully accommodate social observation with subjective individual experience. This was to develop in the post-Romantic period, with novels like Jane Eyre and the beginnings of ‘Psychological Realism’.

Jane Eyre is a narrative of emerging self-consciousness, of one woman’s struggle to negotiate spiritual and sexual desires as she journeys towards emotional maturity. In this sense, it is recognisably a Romantic text. The novel revolves around the subjectivity of a protagonist who, in turn, gives psychological depth to most of the novel’s other characters. Just as Moll Flanders unwittingly mirrors the hard-nosed materialism of its heroine, so too does Bronte’s novel share its heroine’s preoccupation with analysing the minds of others. Both Jane and the novel subscribe to Romantic idealism, and its privileging of imagination and intuition as the primary means of understanding the world.

However, the novel also incorporates some digressions into social criticism and is not above introducing more two-dimensional characters, such as Brocklehurst, for satirical purposes. Here, the desire to provide psychological depth is abandoned in order to launch a devastating critique on an institution of which Bronte had personal experience. Lowood’s regime is recorded in fine material detail, rather than the more abstract ‘romantic’ discourse used to represent thoughts and emotions elsewhere in the novel. The text also uses ‘Jane’ as a vehicle for making contentious political statements (notably in her famous battlements speech) in the same way as ‘Moll’ is used to articulate the satirical intent of Defoe, even if these sentiments don’t always sit easily with the character’s development. It is perhaps at these points, where social institutions such as religion, education and politics are scrutinised, that Bronte’s novel reneges on idealism and reveals its materialist legacy, its indebtedness to the 18th century.

In conclusion, it could be argued that Jane Eyre concludes with two successful marriages. Not just that of Jane and Rochester, but also in the way that the novel marries materialism with idealism, social critique with psychological individualism. This was a marriage achieved through the development of Realism as a genre during the 19th century.