Subjection at home and abroad : representations of the "other" in Jane Eyre and Villette

Abstract

“Subjection at home and abroad, Representations of the ‘other’ in Jane Eyre and Villette” is about the intersection between post-colonial and feminist literary theories and the partnering intersection in literary works between the subjection of the female ‘other’ and the racial ‘other’. Perhaps the most important question I ask in this thesis is: What does the situation of the female protagonist mean for the novels treatment of the racial and cultural other? The subjection of women and the subjection of foreigners are intricately connected through the ‘othering’ of human beings and human traits. While society keeps telling the two female main characters how they are inferior to men, and expecting them to behave a certain way, their own inner voice says something else. Not comfortable with the identity assigned them as the female “other” to men, they try to establish one on their own. And since they have no other reference point to creating an identity than the way men do it, they start defining the people and habits they feel they are superior to, people who are more repressed than themselves. Difference becomes a negative concept. Both Jane and Lucy focus on what is different between them and other women, and the way they make clear that this difference is negative is in the use of oriental or foreign references, which I label the language of empire. This language of empire becomes the only way that they can express dissatisfaction about the patriarchal system at home. Their employ the patriarchal politics of difference to express a reaction to, and dissatisfaction with, being judged by the patriarchal politics of difference. When female writers use the language of empire in an attempt to carve out an identity in a female hostile environment, it reveals the fears and uneasiness about the society they live in. The traditional use of the colonial space in 19th century texts is as a place of both exoticism and sensuality at the same time that it provides a place to put the fears of the times into. In a feminine and feminist text it becomes a place of female repression, somewhere to place practises that they do not approve of in their own home country. The geographical misplacement of practices that goes against their own sense of justice and integrity is a common form of self preserving in a hostile culture. This mirrors the psychological repression of facets of their personality that goes against patriarchal society’s view of proper femininity, in the way that these facets awake thoughts of rebelliousness against the repressive strictures of proper femininity.