"The healthy heart of England": Global Perspectives and Distant Shores in Jane Eyre

I this article I argue that although Jane Eyre remains firmly situated in the domestic space of northern England, the evocation of distant worlds, from Continental Europe to the West Indies, is crucial. The confrontation with far away geographical spaces and cultures and the attendant shaping images of exposure and confinement, plays an important role not just in the definition of male and female subjectivity, but as a powerful vector of Charlotte Brontë’s complex and ambivalent attitude towards whatever is foreigner and non English. This is particularly evident in the characterisation of Rochester, a figure largely reminiscent of Lord Byron and of the priviliged, arrogant and accursed heroes populating his works. Like Byron, he is a passionate and disillusioned man and, most importantly, restless. When he launches into the story of his sexual transgressions and past errors after his ill-fated marriage, one sees how the equation between libertinism and wandering is clearly established. In the end, however, Britain’s integrity and moral superiority over foreign countries are clear. The romantic appeal of travel with all the possibilities for youthful self-indulgence and erotic transgression that it entails is over for the “rest-seeking and repentant” Rochester who recognizes in the chaste, sensitive, intelligent and highly principled Jane the antiwoman to the Continental ladies and especially to Bertha. It is appropriate that the last movement takes place in the rural retreat at Ferndean, a site of quiet domesticity whcih becomes the paradigm of the lovers’ inner space, and their rediscovered native Eden.