by John W. Paulus

Created on: February 28, 2008

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, (New York: Scholastic, 1962).

One of the most striking characterizations in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is that of Rochester's first wife, Bertha Mason. Bronte's presentation of Bertha's madness, both in its nature and its symptoms, offers a unique window into the Victorian view of mental illness. Bronte's assessment, that Bertha's madness is related to her family heritage, while it borders on racist, anticipates genetic theories of madness. Further, in typical Victorian fashion, Bronte suggests a distinctively moral component to Bertha's madness. Perhaps most significant is the picture that Bronte presents of the state of mental health asylums, their effectiveness, and their practices. In many ways, an examination of madness in Jane Eyre supports the conclusions of Michel Foucault about the Victorian (and modern) view of madness proposed in Civilization and Madness.

Bronte presents Bertha as an almost soulless animal. Jane narrates, "The maniac bellowed; she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors" (Bronte, 321). Bertha embodies the "other" as set against the "self" of respectable society. Bertha is isolated from the community, hidden away like lepers of old. Michel Foucault describes this Victorian picture of madness, and suggests that, with the end of leprosy, the mad were relegated to the space outside of the community once occupied by lepers (Foucault, 6).

Rochester describes his early experiences with Bertha's madness. He describes an incident in which,
"my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with such language! - no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word - the thin partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries" (Bronte, 338).

Thus, the maniac cannot communicate at all with the community. When she does attempt to communicate, it comes across only as foul curses and wolfish cries. Here again, Foucault's Madness and Civilization comes to mind. Foucault proposed that, "modern man no longer communicates with the madman," and that there no longer exists a dialogue between reason and unreason (Foucault, 279).

Rochester notes that, since physicians diagnosed Bertha's madness, "she had, of course, been shut up" (Bronte, 338). For the Victorian mind, according to Foucault, it was not enough to just separate

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