Logophobia in Jane Eyre

Logophobia in "Jane Eyre"
Author(s): Randall Craig

Source: The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Spring, 1993), pp. 92-113
Published by: Journal of Narrative Theory
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30225382
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Logophobia in Jane Eyre

Randall Craig
On the night before her wedding is to take place, Jane Eyre is troubled by a sense
of foreboding, as she later explains to Rochester:
I continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I continued also the
wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful consciousness of

some barrier dividing us. ... I thought, sir, that you were on the road a long
way before me; and I strained every nerve to overtake you, and made effort
on effort to utter your name and entreat you to stop-but my movements were
fettered, and my voice still died away inarticulate. (309)1
She, of course, cannot know that this oneiric barrier takes the corporeal form of a
Mrs. Rochester currently residing at Thornfield. Were Mr. Rochester to be believed,
his existing marriage to Bertha is nothing more than "an obstacle of custom-a mere
conventional impediment" (247). But Jane's nightmare of inarticulate desire

suggests that more is at stake here than social proprieties, as he seems to believe, or
even ethical norms, such as she grapples with after learning Rochester's uxorial
secret. Another problem and an ineradicable one confronts the lovers: the nature and
(mis)uses of language itself. When she most needs it, Jane is afraid that her voice
will fail her, and throughout Jane Eyre speakers have good reason for concern about
the medium they employ.
Fears about language use take two quite different forms, depending upon whether
it is believed that words are too weak to serve human needs or that human needs are
too frail to survive verbal expression. The former inclination produces a kind of
linguistic skepticism whose nature varies from the conviction that language is
inherently unequal to the demands placed upon it (ontological fear), to the belief that
words are readily misused by mendacious speakers and that such duplicity is
virtually undetectable (pragmatic fear), to the concern that telling one's story
inevitably invokes the irreconcilable claims of truth and plausibility (narrative fear).
The ontological fear of language raises the possibility that experience and articulation are incompatible by nature. Words may fail speakers at any time, not only at
moments of emotional intensity such as those depicted in Jane's nightmare. A less
radical notion is that love and language are at odds in practice rather than in
Logophobia in Jane Eyre 93
principle. The "honeyed terms" (302) of romance are partic
calculated abuse, as the flattering epithets of Celine an
demonstrate. The tales with which courtships are often cond

ing the deceit accompanying professions of love, serve rea
figure of the tale of romance told to them. Hence read
autobiographical narrative, which originate with Jane's learn
story plausible to Miss Temple and are reinforced by Roch
misleading accounts of his past, spread to encompass Jane E
If such are the trepidations deriving from the belief that lan
quite different fears affect those who hold that words poss
to reveal rather than to distort or simply to conceal the truth.
is the conviction that words can turn actions into lies and men
exactly reversing the supposition of the first type of logopho
actions are the proofs of true or false speaking). Language n

seemingly disproportionate to its size. Thus Mrs. Reed will
syllable" (60) from Jane, and Rochester warns her of the dir
careless word" (245). She, of course, discovers firsthand the
word" (342); nevertheless, the silence imposed upon Jane in

fatal word" (342) places her in double jeopardy. Not only d
threaten the integrity of self, but also the inability to make h
with her force of character, leaves no alternative for expre

passionate utterance that-when it does erupt--carries the s
formulations of conventional society and into the inarticulaten
society is quick to associate with insanity-and to use as furt
enforced silence. But rhetorical oppressors, no less than thei

danger. Not only do they typically have the most to lose from
but they are also susceptible to the incoherent excess hear

Rochester's "frantic strain" (345) with Jane.
Afflicted with language fear of either variety, characters
expression and communication. Logophobic lovers of the firs

to the "natural" language of the body as an alternative to
inarticulate" or that "draw you into a snare deliberately laid

all spoken words are either definitionally or intentionally e
lover relies upon "words almost visible" (182), the language
trustworthy than its audible counterpart. A suitor's promise
can be trusted only if corroborated by the eyes, "the faithful i
soul. Apprehensive lovers may even find themselves in the p
accepting silence as the only reliable expression of erotic des
logic, if a glib tongue signals a shallow heart, then Jane's vo

eloquent statement of love.
Logophobic lovers of the second type, fearing language's
speaking rather than for tergiversation, turn neither to body
they seek refuge in the very forms of social confabulation
94 The Journal of Narrative Technique
experiencing the first kind of language fear. Or, when this diversionary tack fai
as it must, they invoke a higher "supernatural" discourse. In the first instance, t
"conventionally vague and polite" (162) language of social interchange is used

conceal awkward or isolating silences. Flirtation in the "key of sweet subdue
vivacity" (197) mutes contrapuntal voices and avoids the double-edged violen
accompanying unbridled expressions of passion. But erotic desire remains un
voiced in these colloquies and ultimately demands a "supernatural" alternative
conventional or mildly unconventional courtship discourse. When Jane can
longer suppress her love, she claims to speak not "through the medium of cust
conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh" (281); when Rochester seems on t
brink of losing her, he appeals to her "spirit ... not [her] brittle frame" (345).
lovers wishfully attempt to circumvent the soul's unreliable interpreters by m
of an unmediated appeal from and to the soul.
In practice, these alternative languages prove to be as problematic as that to wh
they are a reaction. Neither "natural" nor "supernatural" discourse reliably rev
the speaker's spirit; neither affords the certitude of a transcendental signifi

Speakers, therefore, find themselves driven back upon the very communicat
forms from which they sought to escape. Rochester, fearing that the "natur
language of his face will belie his asseverations of good character, has no choice b
to ask Jane to "take my word for it" (167). In the same way, his "supernatural" ap
to her spirit gives way to an attempted carnal embrace (345-46), therein mer
reenacting previous courtship patterns. Language and counter-language prov
liable to the same abuses. Furthermore, Brontd's resorting to a logos ex machin
bring her lovers together at the end of the novel is unlikely to restore reade
confidence in linguistic efficacy. There appears to be no escape from the Babe
competing but equally flawed, equally feared, discursive modes.
Logically, the two forms of logophobia would seem to be mutually exclusi
The beliefs that language does not work and works only too well, that love is b
expressed by silence and by oratorical ferocity, are obviously incompati
Dialogically, however, such is not the case. Logophobic lovers are lost in a lingui
labyrinth rife with competing, contradictory, and ultimately unreliable signs.
communicative mode in Jane Eyre, irrespective of individual fears or belief

escapes the possibility of equivocal and potentially destructive use. No langu
stands outside the confines of the labyrinth orof the narrative itself. This unreliabili
therefore, expands to encompass the narrator and even the author, giving read
themselves ample reason for logophobia.2
The logic of the first type of language fear leaves speakers in an irresolvab
dilemma. As Jane's nightmare suggests, if deep feeling is antithetical to articulat
then by necessity and not simply by choice is the subject of talk limited to t
comparatively superficial experiences amenable to linguistic formulation an
convention. It is not simply that words are insufficiently vivid or precise to
trusted-not merely a matter of finding the right locution to
issue rather is the efficacy of linguistic expression itself, espe
feelings seem to render the individual incapable of speech. J

suffers from this situational aphasia:
It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prom
answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an
always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plaus
is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment. (2
Facile words and plausible pretexts are the currency of social

be conversant in this language, admitting, for instance, that
Reed (262). Nevertheless, she cannot frame heartfelt emotion
does social excuses. Hence her dialogues with Rochester are pe
when she either loses her voice or cannot trust herself to spe
327,425). This inarticulateness is more expressive than langua

"sad" failure in words bespeaks a praiseworthy capacity to f
occasions would signify only the superficiality of the spoken
love, she could not be in love. Jane Eyre thus poses the romanti
is a particularly credible erotic statement. Speechlessness m

say," but its ostensive dimension-the here and now, the vis
unable to speak--says it all.
The expressive dimension of silence--as well as the pervas
gives credibility to it-is emphasized by Bront' s portrayal of
courtship of the upperclasses, for whom silences are invariab
treat the evasions and half-truths of social expedience as int
language of love. For Rochester and his friends, romantic co
primarily by performances, which may be either literal or fi
song of Donna Bianca and Signor Eduardo illustrates the for
rhetorical contests, the latter. In both cases, their actions are im
reiterative. While she "repeat[s] sounding phrases from book

a style of courtship which ... was ... in its very carelessness
In such dramatic performances style counts more than substa
for very little. Success depends less on what individuals say
impersonate, and, of course, the voice heard most frequently
at Thomfield is Byron's.3
Acting of this kind is but a specific instance of the genera

erotic norm among this class, which is "(what is vernacular
(202). To trail is to elicit unwarranted belief or, especially in th
In the vernacular sense as well as in common practice, tr
misleading, a gullible lover either into or out of marriage. Fo
hopes to trick Jane into wedlock, just as Celine trailed him out o
its literal sense also means the opposite, that is, to follow or tr
to lead, and Brontd fully exploits this ambiguity. Blanche, for instance, thinks t
she is trailing Rochester in the first sense. In actuality he is trailing her in b

senses-in the first, by concealing his own lack of interest in marrying her and
legal proscriptions against his doing so, and, in the second, by exposing
mercantilist motivation for marriage.
The prototype of these seductive performances in Jane Eyre is an occasion o

apparently different nature: Adele's introduction to her governess. Since ad
courtships, however, are merely a specialized and extended form of introduc
this scene presents, along with Rochester's ward, the defining characteristics
romantic discourse. Equally prominent in Adele's recitation to Jane and in lov
conversations with each other is performance. To introduce herself to the
governess, Adele selects a song and a poem from an apparently extensive, sligh
risque repertoire. The former concerns "a forsaken lady" (184) and the disguis
which she plans to gain revenge on her lover. The latter, a fable by La Fontai
illustrates Adele's "attention to punctuation and emphasis, .... flexibility of v

and ... appropriateness of gesture" (134). These aspects of style, exactly thos
deictic and ostensive references lost in novelistic transcription, are more import
to the meaning of the performance than the words Adele mouths. For not only is
what counts in this society, but on this occasion style identifies the speaker as
mother more than the daughter. In effect, this scene introduces Celine, spea
ventriloquially through her daughter. Jane meets, then, not only a little girl-
"miniature of Celine Varens" (170)-but also her mother-the ghostly wom
whose presence explains Rochester's distaste for his ward's "prattle" (161); t
"wronged" woman whose voice blends with Bertha's laugh in aFuries' chorus f
which he unsuccessfully tries to flee; and the fallen woman whom Jane very nea
becomes, despite conscious intentions to the contrary (298).
Unlike Maisie Farange, whose situation resembles Adele's in several impor
ways, Adele can only quote; she cannot speak.4 In impersonating Celine, her o
voice is largely eclipsed. Yet her unselfconscious style, "the lisp of childhoo
(134), is both audible and essential to understanding the performance. In the cont
between the vocative strains of mother and daughter, Jane detects both past
present performances, and she intuits a good deal about Celine: "The su
seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer; but I suppose the point of th
exhibition lay in hearing the notes of love and jealousy warbled with the lisp
childhood" (134). Because the song and recitation are double-voiced, Jane is
to infer the mother's "bad taste" (134) in trailing her daughter for her frien
amusement.
Jane's acuity and sensitivity to the double-voiced quality of performance do not

characterize her reading, however, when her own heart is at stake. When she
observes the love talk of Blanche and Rochester, she is inclined to listen monophonically. For example, during the game of charades, Blanche and Rochester mime
both a wedding ceremony and the ventriloquial courtship of Rebecca by Isaac
through Eliezer. The subject, Bridewell, is replete with ironic echoes concerning
marrying well, the imprisoning effects of not doing so, and th

consequences of ignoring conjugal law. ("Bridewell" is also an e
wordplay when it is agreed that Rochester resembles Bothwel
husband of Mary Queen of Scots. "Both-well" extends the mea
to the situation of the would-be bigamist.) Even more telling
ironies, however, is the structural function of the scene, espe
the issues of language and performance.
The game of charades is both an embedded figure and a spec

typical practice of conversation and courtship. In the game,
as playthings; in lovers' talk generally, they are treated as
disguised as something quite serious. Under the aegis of
attitudes toward the language of love are given free reign. Th
of the game allow words to be severed from one context and ap
to another. The severance is of a distinctive nature: con
significance (yielding in this instance the words "bride" and

literal and arbitrary text ("Bridewell"). Although guessing th
of play, the term has no semantic connection with either the pr
combination of words that constitute it. The visual and referen
"bride" and "well" correct choices has nothing to do with the
reasoning producing the correct answer, "Bridewell." Su
language that sounds right, irrespective of reference. Signi

signifiers refer only to other signifiers.
This situation obtains outside the game whenever courtsh

impersonation and quotation rather than by statement. Word
words; texts and contexts are severed and arbitrarily juxtapose

case in Rochester's gipsy disguise and less obviously so in his
The aristocrats' charades further recall Adele's performance
dramatic impersonation and both feature "notes of love and
child's performance is innocent, her guardian's transformatio
figurative game of charades (in part by using the literal game
ventriloquism of the dramatic performance is compounded
conscious manipulation of texts and dramatis personae. I
tableaux, Eliezer (played by Rochester) speaks ventriloquially f

Rebecca (played by Blanche). Presumedly, Eliezer is also Roc
Blanche. At least, no one in the room seems hesitant to apply th
(the text) to the lives of the players (the context). This applicat
the structural procedure of charades but reverses its semio

audience restores the missing signifieds by going outside th
game. Rochester plays upon this manoeuver in joking w
whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married
presence of all these witnesses" (214). The joke is on Blan
become the bride in life that she was in the pantomime. Th
"witnesses," who similarly clothe themselves in illusion.
freedom of play, they conflate text and context with impunity. None interpre
scene correctly because all rely on the shared, though unannounced, rules
amorous pursuit and discourse that Rochester exploits.
Even Jane, who knows little about such rules or charades (211), misconstru
many-voiced performance. Although "Jealousy" rather than "Bridewell" mig
the more accurate guess of the charade's meaning, its significance is not conc
and cannot be encapsulated in language. Rochester's objective is perlocutiona

wants Jane to feel jealousy, therefore, to be amenable to his illicit plans. In ter
the dynamics of introduction and seduction, he is both Celine and Adele, that is
jaded director indulging his poor taste and earnest actor confidently courti
audience's favor. That the two voices go undetected is testimony to his ventrilo
skill (although the ultimate ventriloquist is perhaps St. John Rivers, who in co
claims to speak not only for Jane's mute heart [427] but also for God [431]).
instance, however, Rochester misjudges his audience. The joke is ultimatel

him, for as the first tableau tacitly suggests and he himself wittily jokes, he is
married when he woos. When Jane ultimately discovers the two voices th
bigamist of necessity possesses, she very nearly acquiesces to her own traili
An additional aspect of charades returns us to the question of visual langu
an alternative to the pervasive use and distorting echoes of love talk. Cha
emphasize the pictorial over the verbal. Although words are the object of the g
its procedures are pantomimic. Its interest and challenge lie in the skills of
presentation and interpretation. Charades, therefore, are the appropriate ch
a logophobic society whose very commitment to rhetorical performances oc

a mistrust of them. Outside the game, the fear of language and the concom
appeal to the visual are manifest in an endemic tendency to read faces rathe
to trust words. Eyes, Jane tells us, are faithful interpreters of the soul (
Language too often provides either a veneer of social ease hiding poten
disruptive feelings or a facade of romantic grace concealing devious inten
Countenances, on the contrary, provide direct and reliable expressions of fe

The language of looks, for example, helps Jane to interpret her employ
troubled relationship with Mason. While Rochester utters only words of succ
face expresses what his "plausible pretexts" attempt to conceal. But Jane
insufficient attention to the drastic difference between Rochester's bi-lin
messages. She tends to trust looks rather than words; therefore, she monologiz
scene, suppressing its incongruous notes. When she struggles to understan
feelings for Rochester, she concludes that she must love him, becaus
"understand[s] the language of his countenance and movements" (204). She re
to this language when he proposes. Fearing that he "play[s] at farce" (283)
consults his visage, and only after reading his look in the moonlight does she a
the offer of his hand.
Rochester, too, places great value on the unspoken language of faces. In fa

he retells it, a "speechless colloquy" (296) directly leads to his engagement.
confident of his ability to read others' visages, and early on he tells Jane: "b
by the by, what you express with that organ [the eye]; I am qui
language" (167). Although this claim is tarnished by his subse
her eye color (287), he repeatedly relies upon the language of l
talk is often no more than so much conventional nonsense an

Thus when Jane asks if he is not rather capricious in his trea
replies that he can be trusted with women of "clear eye and el
Rochester perhaps refines his society's standard of truthfulne

those statements made in both languages; nevertheless, his ow
proves that neither expressive mode, even in combination, is
Rochester's equivocal use of the language of looks is obvious
to be a gipsy fortune-teller and to construe Jane's character fro
forehead, about the eyes, and in the eyes themselves, in the lines
27). That his own face is blackened and shaded by a hat provi
of his duplicity. In general he seems to take a perverse p
countenance: "it [is] scarcely more legible than a crumpled, sc
He exploits this illegibility to keep interlocutors in disadvanta

expressions are used in the same way as words are, that is, to co
clarify. "[O]ne of his queer looks" (274) easily frustrates Mr

strange and equivocal demonstrations" (251) are equally conf
reader as Jane.
All performances and languages contain the discordant note
audiences to their unreliability. None fulfills generic expecta
recital to Rochester's fortune-telling, which on this occasion lea
fortune being told by his customer.6 The inherent inconsisten

discourse is signalled by the one line of Adele's recitation that
vous donc? lui dit un de ces rats; parlez! (134).? The peremptor
is appropriate to Rochester's discursive method (164, 290, 45
impatient, even aggressive, tone of many of the novel's "parle
line seems strangely chosen if it is intended to illustrate Adele's
The question, "Qu'avez-vous donc?", self-reflexively asks wha

scene, because it is not a question of the kind that defines int
you?"), and it is not uttered by the expected person (Should
Adele?). And, of course, it is not a question at all, but a quotation
introduces a former mistress on a stage already crowded by th
and a fiancee.
The discordant notes echoing throughout Adele's performan
to envelop the narrator and her readers. The choice of this
repeated by Adele and the consequent notes of incongruity

control and skill. But how are readers to respond when the n
precisely the amusement that Celine apparently found in Adel
is in poor taste? The suspicion of the uses to which language
from characters to narrator and author. For example, our rea
euphemism (related by Jane) that describes her mother's runn
a musician as going "to the Holy Virgin" (133, 176) is presumedly no different fr
Celine's enjoyment at "hearing notes of love and jealousy warbled with the lis
childhood." In effect, the scene manifests the kind of dialogical exploitation th
appears to reject. Readers, caught up in a tale of trailing, may begin to suspect

narrator's intentions with regard to them.
The burlesque depictions of Georgiana and Eliza Reed, as well as of the Dowag
and Miss Ingram, are further examples. Readers are apt to enjoy the lampoon of R
Brocklehurst, especially when the sight of curly hair sends him into a fit o
fundamentalist zeal: "Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this hou
does she conform to the world so openly-here in an evangelical, charit
establishment-as to wear her hair one mass of curls?" (96). That his own daugh
boast "a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled" (97) heightens the satire
the scene and the contempt for Brocklehurst. But the narrator, who ridicules
hypocrisy, indulges in it when presenting characters for whom she maintain

degree of animus. The very "top-knots" ordered guillotined by Brocklehurst
also taken by Jane to be a sign of worldliness and superficiality and are used by
narrator to convey disapprobation. Georgiana Reed has "hair elaborately ringle

(60, 257) and interweaves "her curls with artificial flowers" (62); Adele flaunt
redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist" (132, 199); Blanche, whose hai
a "jetty mass of curls" (189) is seldom mentioned without reference to thes

"[c]raven ringlets" (191, 196, 201, 207, 214); and Rosamund Oliver, too, displ
"the ornament of rich, plenteous curls" (389, 391, 393, 395). If with Miss Tem
we laugh at Brocklehurst (appropriately her silent mockery takes the form o
"involuntary smile that curled" her lips [96]), must we then not include the narr
in our critical amusement?'
Even more problematic, however, is the novel's presenting an interpretive n

that is inaccessible to its readers. Adele's introduction implicitly introduces
hermeneutics of performance that can be applied to dramatized discourse in gene
and especially to recitational courtship. To hear only a speaker's voice and to ig
the voice of quotation is necessarily to misconstrue the scene. Audiences and

auditors must be sensitive to at least three factors: utterance (the speaker), text
source), and context (the situation). Readers, however, are denied acces
utterance and may at best guess about the narrator's texts. Writing occludes
ostensive reference essential to interpretation. The novel thus posits a hermene
ideal that can never be applied to novels themselves. While readers may be insulat
to some extent from the trailing by characters, they are all the more susceptible
the "sweet lies" (190) of the narrator.
Unlike conventional autobiographies, Jane Eyre does not begin with an accou
of the protagonist's birth or earliest memory. Rather, the novel opens with
reserved heroine's discovery of "quite a new way of talking" (71). Jane's ini
words, like Adele's recitation of LesLigues des Rats, sound the note that somet
is wrong: "What does Bessie say I have done?" (39). When John
for "impudence in answering mamma" (42), Jane likens him t
emperors, a comparison drawn "in silence, which I never thou
declared aloud" (43). But when she does speak out, the "infantin
is imprisoned in the Red Room. Her voice will not be muted, h
verbal rebellions are even more explosive. First, in a "stra
declaration" (59), she renews and expands her attack upon the R
refusing to be banished to the nursery-a place of enforced chil

solitary confinement-she disruptively intrudes upon the adult
routing her aunt from the breakfast-room. In this scene, Mrs. Re
"in a tone which a person might address an opponent of adult age
reduced to murmuring "sotto voce" (68). The force of Jane's tira
aunt continues to suffer from it on her deathbed: "I feel it q

understand: how for nine years you could be patient and quie
treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence" (26
Mrs. Reed identifies a pattern of quietude infrequently but conv
by speech that characterizes Jane throughout her life. Such violen
her interlocutors' logophobia. While she describes herself

Lowood and is called "no talking fool" (181) by Rochester
irrepressible in certain circumstances. First with Mrs. Reed a

Rochester, she cannot refrain from speaking:
it seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will con
their utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no c
Speak I must. (68)
An impulse held me fast-a force turned me round. I said-or som
me said for me, and in spite of me-(273)
I said this almost involuntarily ... The vehemence of emotion, stirre

and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full
asserting a right to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and rei
yes-and to speak. (279-81)
The direct, passionate, and preternaturally coherent speech t
impulses stands as the opposite to the loss of voice that Jane o
ences at times of deep feeling. At these moments, nothing
Rochester calls "the Lowood constraint... controlling your featu
voice" (169). The "infantine Guy Fawkes" speaks out to resist

efforts of her employer, when he suggests packing her off to
benefactor, when Rivers proposes taking her to India. She refus
of marriage; she subverts the protocol of the former's. Rochest
much exaggeration, that " by the by, it was you who made me the offer" (291)-a
offer she repeats at Ferndean, "rashly overleap[ing] conventionalities" (460). As i

the scenes of Adele's introduction and Rochester's fortune-telling, the unexpecte
person asks the questions. In this instance-to reverse the earlier formulationmight be said that if Jane does not speak love, she cannot be in love.
This engagement is consistent with Jane's and Rochester's unorthodox court-
ship. The "blunt sentence[s]" (68) that shocked Mrs. Reed are their ordinary form
of intercourse, and their colloquies are a counterpoint of his "impetuous republican
(308) and her "ready and round" (341) answers. Rochester refuses to be constrain
by the norms of polite conversation, exclaiming, "Confound these civilities!" (161
He asks Jane to "dispense with a great many conventional forms and phrases" (16
because they stifle spontaneity and frustrate naturalness (170). Her disregard of
discursive amenities ultimately rivals his: "The sarcasm that had repelled, the
harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish
their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively
insipid" (217). This harshness is more than a matter of style. The medium becom
the message when Jane credits the sincerity of his marriage proposal precisel
because of its "incivility" (283). Non-conventional and even rude language becomes the sign of truthfulness and the means of intimacy.9
This method of courtship may insulate the lovers from the searing expressions o
love for which Jane Eyre is famous, but it also enmeshes them in the rhetoric
jousting that Rochester and Blanche used to disguise their cool dislike. Both t
pretended and the intended courtships yield lively dialogues pitting the interlocu
tors as verbal antagonists. Wooing begins to resemble a military rather than
romantic engagement, one whose objective is maintaining distance rather tha
establishing common ground. Jane, for instance, deliberately employs a "needle
repartee" (301) to frustrate any show of love: "I whetted my tongue" (301). It is
wonder, then, that Rochester complains that "under the pretence ... of stroking an
soothing me into placidity, you stick a sly penknife under my ear!" (162, also se
306). The effect of this courtship of sharp tongues and pointed conversations is
make distance and detachment the indices of love. Their amorous exchanges a
hardly the "kindly conversation" (333) that Rochester claims to have missed wi
Bertha and that we never see with Blanche. They constitute, rather, another instan
of manipulation and antagonism, albeit a highly eroticized one.
Both courtships--the pretended and the intended-are conducted by perfor-
mance. With Blanche the method is imitative, a courtship by quotation. With Ja

the method is inventive; their discourse is characterized by imaginative conceits
which she typically figures as a fairy and he as an Oriental emir. In the most extend
of these metaphors, Rochester spins a tale of life on the moon, with pink clouds fo
clothing and manna for sustenance. Jane tells Adele "not to mind his badinag
(296), but she herself would do well to borrow from her pupil's "fund of genuin
French skepticism" (296). For his wish to leave the "common world" (296) behin
also expresses his desire to ignore common customs and laws. He is, in more way

that Adele understands, "un vrai menteur" (296).
Rochester's wish for a transcendent existence recalls the "supe

to which he and Jane intermittently have recourse. Are thes
passionate protestations any more true or effective than the ro
which they so vividly stand out? John Kucich has suggested
"passionate displays are calculated both to conceal rather than
nature of desire, and to assail the strategic reserve of others
addition, direct and passionate speech is voiced at significant ri
leads to social ostracism at the least and to physical and emotio
worst. The speaker need not have the book thrown at her, as Ja
know that "criminal conversation" exacts a social penalty.
effects of unlicensed expression are even more traumatic. "A c
its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine-wit
afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction" (69).
anger to Mrs. Reed, Jane feels "poisoned" and is unable to find
her books or in nature. Her victory is an "aromatic wine it seem

warm and racy; its after-flavour, metallic and corroding" (70)
This metaphor is also used to describe Jane's adult experience, f
she confesses her love to a man she knows is married. Speaking h
carries her into acting on it. But she resists being swayed by R
that running off to his "whitewashed villa on the shores of the M
if not a form of going to the Holy Virgin, at least violates no

become his mistress, he argues, will be to "transgress a mere h
being injured by the breach" (343). She resists only by recallin
was sane, and not mad-as I am now ... I am insane-quite insan
running fire" (344). The figure of speech with which Jane describ
occasion is related to that she applied to her childhood experien

Of the earlier scene she says:
A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have b
emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs Reed; the
black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented
my subsequent condition, when half an hour's silence and ref

shown me the madness of my conduct. (69-70)
Later, when her hopes of marriage are dashed, she thinks:
Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent expectant woman ... was a co
girl again. ... A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a whit
storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts
blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lane
night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden
the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragran

between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in
wintry Norway. (323)
Whether black or white, the landscape of the soul after such passionate explosion
is cold and barren-as cold as England must seem to someone from the West Indie
as barren as "old thorn trees" (131) must appear to a woman accustomed to tropic
groves.
Bertha, of course, is the extreme of the madness of uncontrolled passion and
expression, but Rochester is no less susceptible to bouts of insanity.'0 In genera

Grace Poole's description of Bertha seems more appropriate to her husband, wh
is consistently "rather snappish, but not 'ragious" (321). He also has period
outcries rivalling Jane's and Bertha's in intensity and violence. After the public
revelation of his secret thwarts the plan to take a second wife, he too becomes craze
"His voice was hoarse; his look that of a man who is just about to burst a
insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild licence" (330). Rochester
"flaming glance" is like the "draught and glow of a furnace" (344) and poses a
greater threat than Bertha's pyromania. Jane, in fact, fears that her disappearan
will drive Rochester insane (454). If the possibly hyperbolic innkeeper is to be
believed, the master of Thornfield does become "savage--quite savage on h
disappointment: he never was a mild man, but he got dangerous, after he lost he
(452). Whether its effects are railing and insanity or merely trailing and duplicit
expressing love in Jane Eyre is a risky proposition.

Logophobia is an endemic phenomenon, spreading from the central character
the narrator and even to the author herself. The nascent vocal power of the
protagonist coincides with the initial appearances of the autobiographer, Jane Eyre
and of the novelist, Currer Bell. The fledgling author's tentative assertions of se
closely resemble those of the youthful protagonist. When BrontS refers to Curr
Bell as "an obscure aspirant" and a "struggling stranger" (35), one must think o
Jane, who is surely both of these things, both as young orphan when the novel open
and as a novice author when it closes. Her autobiography, written after ten years o
married life, confirms the pattern, noted by Mrs. Reed, of her "break[ing] out all fi
and violence" in the tenth year of their acquaintance. A habitually quiet demeano
combined with unexpectedly vehement language, contributes to the Reed household
feeling that Jane is duplicitous. Given the "fire and violence" of the novel itsel
readers may harbor similar suspicions.
Despite their prejudice, the Reeds are fully justified in suspecting, if n
duplicity, then at least dissimulation, from Jane. Abigail Abbott expresses th
general sentiment when she says, "I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover
(44). For instance, as Jane awaits John Reed's blow, she entertains herself by
"mus[ing] on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently de
it" (42). Her silent mockery of the master, which is never uttered, is, however
plainly heard in the narrator's tone: "Habitually obedient to John, I came up to h
chair: he spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he co
without damaging the roots" (42). The incipient but silent wit o
child receives expression in the hyperbole and caricature of t

narrator, who settles the girl's debt against her persecutors." T
tongue thrust out to the point of damaging the roots is the product
of a sardonic adult, indeed, the very "whetted tongue" that Jane a

Rochester and more unmercifully to characters like the Reeds.
Further indication that the adult narrator is capable of the "dan
(50) suspected in the child is the occasional inconsistency in t

example, Jane tells the story of the wronged but generously p
returning to her aunt's deathbed: "Forgive me.... If you could be
no more of it, aunt, and to regard me with kindness and forgiven
full andfree forgiveness" (267-68, my emphasis). She claims, som

the fact, that the "gaping wound of my wrongs was now... quit
even twenty years later, Jane can neither overlook nor forgive Mr
So importunate is her resentment that she actually addresses the
story: "Yes, Mrs Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of ment
ought to forgive you" (52). Her "ought" clearly indicates that sh

her aunt, whatever impression she wishes to convey by dram
conversations.
In the course of her autobiography, Jane claims to be "merely

(140), and she jokes with this idea when offering a mock apolog
reader ... for telling the plain truth" (141). Such jokes, as Roche
a way of redounding upon the teller. Readers are likely to suspect
from plain, especially since the narrator occasionally treats t
habitually do each other. For instance, the "illustration" (449) of h
seeing the ruins of Thornfield has precisely the effect of Roch

confuses rather than clarifies, encouraging readers to the mista
Rochester is dead. The joke is, of course, on readers, who
implicated in forms of humor shown to be in poor taste. But it is a
who, by reinforcing the logophobia rampant on the level of ac

becomes subject to it.
The novel provides several examples of disingenuous narration
herself "a plain, unvarnished tale" (190) concerning an "indigen
plebeian" (191) in order to destroy romantic illusions about Roc
made aware of the ulterior motives that narration can serve. Jane
in a similar way, as Annette Tromly has shown: "Jane creates
Rochester, Blanche, Rosamund, and herself] to contain and contr

own and others') rather than to represent her subjects" (Troml
taken in by this self-conscious pictorial manipulation, at least

readers should not be surprised to discover narrative used in
adopts the pose of humility and self-effacement when she apologi
autobiography of an "insignificant existence" (115). But this sta
autobiography itself, the writing of which entails no small act of
state that the life she tells is "insignificant," but her explanation of the narrative a
editorial method suggests otherwise: "I am only bound to invoke memory wher
know her responses will possess some degree of interest" (115). Writing her ow
story is the conscious and natural culmination of the signature that unconscious
announces her identity to St. John; it is an adult version of the edited tale told to M
Temple to defend herself against the charge of deceit. The narrative, readers ma
suspect, is less autobiography than apologia.

Currer Bell sustains this pose of insignificance, deprecatingly describing he
novel as "a plain tale with few pretensions" (35). Perhaps we are intended to respon
with impatience, as Rochester does when Jane is formally introduced to him: "O
don't fall back on over-modesty" (153). But readers of the "unknown a
unrecommended Author" (35) are likely to be suspicious of the unimposing perso
presented by Currer Bell (the pseudonym itself is a kind of "cover"), especial

when an expression of gratitude to Public, Press, and Publishers, which seeming
augments her facade of docile self-effacement, is immediately followed by an
acerbic attack upon the "timorous or carping few" (35) who find the novel an affro
to religion and morality. Brontd's subsequent response to a critic, which she

describes with sarcastic understatement as "a quiet little chat" (Quarterly 444
evinces the same rhetorical strategy. Her verbal attacks are hardly "framed to tick
delicate ears" (36), and readers are justified in suspecting that what Rochester
described as Jane's "sly penknife" is but another name for the author's sly pen.
Presented with a tale of sensational incident and strong feeling, readers are place
in a position resembling the protagonist's when she watches the arrival of Rocheste
and his guests at Thornfield. Exposed to a fascinating, foreign, but forbidden worl
she experiences
an acute pleasure in looking--a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold,
with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man
might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops
and drinks divine draughts nevertheless. (203)
Or perhaps like St. John Rivers, we indulge ourselves in a tale of "love rising li
a freshly opened fountain" (399)--though we in all likelihood lack this "cold, ha
man['s]" (400) prophylactic pocket watch. Thoughts of Rosamund Oliver are to hi
like a "sweet inundation" of pastoral fields "assiduously sown with the seed of go
intentions, of self-denying plans. And now it is deluged with a nectarous flood--th
young germs swamped--delicious poison cankering them" (399). His plans surviv
the seductions of art-both Jane's drawing of "the Peri" (389) and her narrative
conjugal contentment. Readers, however, are unlikely to succumb, for the narrat
toys with us as impishly and as mercilessly as Jane does with St. John, enticing
with divine draughts of fiction, sweeping us away upon a flood of nectarous words
The emblem of Jane's and Rochester's passion is the "lightning-struck chestnu

tree" (469). From its "strong roots... unsundered below" (304) a fruitful conjug
union emerges-after providential punishment by fire. The emb

ascetic desire is the "overshadowing tree, Philanthropy" (401)
stringy root of human nature" (401) a mighty missionary devel
like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste" (477)-at least afte
and training" (401). Perhaps unnoticed after the gods of orthod
the gardener's task, however, is the poetic "upas tree" (328), t

reader's aesthetic experience. Its "delicious poison" is language
our fears about words and their uses may be as a result of Charl
is precisely because of that art that we have "surfeited [ourselves]
swallowed poison as if it were nectar" (190).
Jane herself experiences the pleasure of devouring books wh
End (376), but this gratification would not seem to explain why sh
one. The personal incentives for self-assertion would seem to ha
when she acquires wealth and relations through inheritance, fol
family through marriage. Furthermore, one would expect Jane, w
slate" (97) had previously exposed her to opprobrium, to avoid t
again. In the first thirty years of her life she pens little more
advertisement and several letters with explicitly practical purp

keep a journal and, unlike Richardson's Pamela (whose situatio
sembles her own), she shows no epistolary aptitude.13 Even a
Lowood, she must admit to having read "[o]nly such books as ca
they have not been numerous, or very learned" (155). How, then
for the emergence of the autobiographer from a character neit
reader?
One possible explanation is that writing serves to maintain a sen
that has typified Jane's relationship to her employer, lover,

Throughout their courtship, she attempts to sequester herself f
avoids him on the evening that he proposes (276), resists setting
(287), dreads its arrival once it has been set (303), and wishes th
on the night before the ceremony is to be performed (307). T
reluctance we might turn to Julia Kristeva's analysis of the erotic
Song of Songs. Although allusions to this book are not among
references to the Old Testament, it offers a number of parallels t
of which can be described in terms of the barriers figured in
dream. For instance, in both texts an economic gap exists between
social status and a privileged man. The rhetorical structures o
oppositional: in both love is expressed by a counterpoint of v

powerful and powerfully erotic poetic dialogue. A third obstacl
juridical. The Song of Songs and Jane Eyre address the anarchic th
and its inclusion within the structures of convention, law, and
Kristeva focuses on the elusive and inaccessible nature of the l

and concludes that "the absolute tension of love for the Othe
centrally important:

Supreme authority, be it royal or divine, can be loved as flesh while remaining
essentially inaccessible; the intensity of love comes precisely from that

combination of received jouissance and taboo, from a basic separation that
nevertheless unites. (Kristeva 90)
The "separation that unites" has consistently defined Jane's and Rocheste
situation. Initially, a social proscription divides employer and "paid subordinate
(165). When that gap is overcome by betrothal, she reimposes the econom
obstacle and implements various rhetorical strategies to "keep [him] in reasonab

check" (302). At the very moment that she admits that Rochester has become an id
eclipsing her view of God, she resolves to "maintain that distance between you a
myself most conducive to our real mutual advantage" (301). And just when th
advantage is about to be compromised by marriage, the lovers are separated b
Rochester's pre-existent marriage-a legal hiatus made literal by Jane's parado
cal expression of love, her flight from Thornfield. Marriage threatens the tensi
generating erotic intensity. If the condition that spawned their passion is to
sustained, fulfillment must remain in the future.
An appropriate figure of Jane's and Rochester's love, therefore, is the promis
the linguistic act whose very premise is incompletion and whose force resides in th
tension between desire for and distance from the promised act. When Rochester as
Jane to "[p]romise me one thing," she replies, "I'll promise you anything, sir, th
I think I am likely to perform" (254). In saying this, she alludes to the predicti
rather than the obligational dimension of promising. Emphasis is shifted to t
inherent futurity that is predicted by promises and that sustains their significanc
Promises in Jane Eyre are not so much descriptive of the emotions that give rise t
them as they are constitutive of the anticipatory anxiety upon which those emotio
depend. They speak not of the present, and even less of a fixed point in the future
but of the dynamic indeterminacy defined by these points. There is no bette
example of this than betrothal, which by its very nature enacts a separation-in tim
as well as between intention and action-whose premise is unity. The promise

marry both negotiates and sustains the contradictions between now and then
between the erotic and the social, between jouissance and taboo. As Kristeva put
it
Love in the Song of Songs appears to be simultaneously in the framework of

conjugality and of a fulfillment always set in the future. ... One is thus faced
with a true dialectical synthesis of amorous experience, including its universally disturbing, pathetic, enthusiastic, or melancholy aspect on the one hand,
and its singularly Judaic feature on the other-legislating, unifying, subsum-
ing burning sensuousness toward the One. (Kristeva 98)
Promising is less a synthesis than a dialectical suspension. The marriage promise

places Jane and Rochester in an erotically charged, but essentially ambiguous
relation. Their cohabitation is neither concubinal nor conjuga

ence is indulged by deferment and circumscribed by language.
conversing itself becomes an erotic activity. Jane, for instance,
and soothing him by turns" (187). On the other hand, promissor
in the logophobia to which all utterance is subject.
Throughout the novel promising is consistent with the rhe
Promises are typically misleading, not because they will not be
they do not purport to be acts of courting at all. For example,
Rivers elicit or make promises concerning Jane's future employ
the pretense that he will marry Blanche and that Jane must
Rochester asks that she promise to "trust this quest of a situation
responds in similar fashion to her wish for honest employmen

spirit, I promise to aid you, in my own time and way" (375). E
both intend marriage. Thus their promises can only be fulfille
suitors reverse the strategy of Don Juan, who promises to marry
so. In effect, Rochester and Rivers promise not to marry in or
opposite strategies, however, yield an identical result: suspici
guage.'4
By having Jane write the story of her life, Bronta reasserts the distance and
futurity encoded in promises and threatened by marriage. Jane's autobiographical
voice resists the legitimizing and monologizing force of married life, despite her
claim that she and her husband are in "perfect concord" (476). She supports this
conclusion by observing that she and Rochester "talk, I believe, all day long" (476).
Readers who recall that "tete-a-tete conversation" (299) has previously served as
a kind of hand-to-hand combat will not be surprised by this garrulity, but they may
well question Jane's profession of "perfect concord." Given the teasing in- and
misdirections with which she tells Rochester of her life after leaving Thornfield (all
with the aim of eliciting "his old impetuosity" [470]), readers have every reason to
suspect that Jane's voice is once again used to establish the eroticized distance that
typified her betrothal. Furthermore, the Biblical metaphor applied to this marital
unity is double-edged. Jane says that she has become "bone of his bone and flesh
of his flesh" (476, Genesis 2:23). This figure of speech ingeminates the tension
between the sacred and the profane heard previously in Rochester's supernatural
discourse and reinforced by his telling Jane that she, not the "beneficent God" to
whom he appeals for her return, is "the alpha and omega of my heart's wishes"
(471). Her narrative, then, suggests a counterpoint to the happy hum of conjugal
conversation. To write her story is to bring it into question, for she can escape neither
logophobia, which the internal tales of love dramatize, nor the dialectic of distance
and desire, to which all such tales are subject.

As Jane's summary allusion to Genesis suggests, Eve stands behind this wifely
narrative, in addition to the Shulamite maiden and to Delilah." When Rochester
fears Jane's questions, he both pleads and threatens: "for God's sake, don't desire
a useless burden! Don't long for poison--don't turn out a downright Eve on my
hands!" (290). His upright wife does prove to be a "downright Eve," however, an
in ways that Rochester cannot envision. The "apple of his eye" (476) offers reader
a seductive narrative fruit that threatens the complacency and univocal power
authority. Brontf's Eve, like the heroine of the Song of Songs, "by her lyrica
dancing, theatrical language, by an adventure that conjugates a submission to
legality and the violence of passion" (Kristeva 99-100), leaves readers with the
ambivalent knowledge that her language is as unreliable as it is nectarous.
State University of New York
Albany, New York
NOTES
1. All parenthetical references, unless otherwise specified, are to Jane Eyre.
2. There have been a number of excellent readings of Jane Eyre in recent years. I wo
like to acknowledge the three by Bodenheimer, Hennelly, and Kucich, as having
particularly helpful to me. I would also like to recognize the students ofmy Britishno
classes who have provided stimulating discussions of Jane Eyre. I mention in parti
an insightful essay on style and the language of courtship written by Sandra Deel
3. The Corsair song itself suggests Byron's presence in Jane Eyre. Byron's influen
Brontd has been widely discussed. See Bloom, Schorer, Stone, and Beaty.
4. Jane alludes to the limits of childhood perception and expression in terms suggestiv
James's "Preface" to What Maisie Knew: "Children can cannot analyse their feelin
and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know nothow to express the r
of the process in words" (56, also see 66).
5. In addition to reading Rochester's face, Jane interprets Blanche's (197-98), Mas

(219), Mrs. Reed's (259), and St. John Rivers' (371). Other characters who rely on
language are Helen Burns (101), Mrs. Ingram (206), Mrs. Fairfax (293), and St. J
Rivers (366, 380, 382). (Bronta's interest in phrenology has been well-documented
her biographers. See Chase. For alistof phrenological allusions in the novel, see Dor
Roberts.)
6. Rochester, who has previously (and deviously) suggested through the charades that
marriage is a prison, now hears that story read to him. Jane tells the gipsy that the stories
of wealthy lovers "run on the same theme--marriage; and promise to end in the same
catastrophe-marriage" (228-29).
Other performances are characterized by similar incongruities. The charades, for
instance, contain a revealing anachrony in which a wedding (Tableau I) precedes a

courtship (Tableau II), as of course it does in real life for Rochester.

7. The question is asked by a rat of a mouse that seeks the protection
against a voracious cat. In addition to the rhetorical incongruities of
choice of this fable is itself unsettling since the rats, who in self-inte
arrive too late to prevent the cat from eating a mouse.
8. There are few references to the hairstyles of more sympathetic
Temple or Diana and Mary Rivers. Those that do occur typically re

of coiffure (79). The exception are allusions to Diana's "thick cur
9. RobertBemard Martin also makes this point: "Brusqueness, teasin
throughout the novel have always been the mark of sincerity" ( Mart
not, however, question the adequacy of such discursive modes.
10. While Jane can be "a mad cat" (44) and has, by her own admission
insanity (44, 344), Bertha seems chronically to be a "wild animal" (
"lucid intervals of days--sometimes weeks" (336). "[O]ral od

shrieks (235), gibberish (242), yells (322), curses (334), foul v
constitute her primary language. Of the many readings of Bertha's
significance in the novel, John Maynard's is particularly relevant i
is also a monster of excess--far surpassing her prototype Zenobia.

was conceived from Brontd's own awareness of the interconnectio
excess and the suppressive forces it can call up. .... She seems c
Victorian idea of woman falling, when she falls, into comple
punishment follows the Victorian association between sexual exces
her mad curses are about the hidden life of the body: 'such lang
harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she ' " (Maynard 106-7)
11. Although these hyperbolic "three minutes" have been read as
youthful perception and articulation, it seems more likely that this
sions are the sarcastic accounts of a mature voice. Temporal exagg
exclusive province of children and are found in the narrative when
example, in her account of the dilatory postmistress at Lowton

typically appear either in broad caricatures of figures like John R
whose public denouncement of Jane as a liar is punctuated with a d
full ten minutes (98)-and Blanche Ingram.

In addition, Brontd usually signals the natural exaggeration of
to the deliberate irony of an adult. For instance, she contradicts J
journey to Lowood is of a "preternatural length," requiring "trave
miles of road" (74), by informing us that the school is fifty miles
Indeed, the child-like perception of her journey is accentuated
summary of her next trip (from Lowood to Thornfield), which is tak
when she is considerably more mature (125). Of her next journey,
Gateshead, nothing at all is said (255).
12. Tromly also argues that Jane's narrative is not to be fully trusted, but she excludes Bron
herself from this criticism: 'Throughout the novel Jane's active artistic imagination
shapes the image she presents of herself; clearly Brontd does not intend the reader t
accept the limitations of romantic self-portraiture uncritically" (43).
The extent to which the narrator misleads readers is discussed by Hennelly. H
concludes that as a narrator Jane is neither " 'relatively reliable' like Moll Flanders no
'relatively unreliable' like Molly Bloom. She is somewhere in between the two, bu
more like Molly than has been acknowledged" (Hennelly 704).
Earl A. Knies holds the opposing view: "This complete honesty, this perfect candor
then, provides a structure upon which the reliability of thenarrative is built"(Knies 112)
13. Janet Spens and Jerome Beaty have traced the similarities between Richardson's and
Bronta's novels.
14. Rochester's request that Jane promise to sit up with him on his wedding night (248)
similarly false. When he keeps her to this promise (307), circumstances have change
considerably, for it is Jane not Blanche who is the prospective bride.
Rochester also speaks falsely when Jane asks him to promise "that I and Adele shall
be both safe out of the house before your bride enters it" (254). His bride, of cours
already lives there, so his agreement is doubly misleading because of the incorrec
supposition that it sustains.
15. Delilah figures as the archetypal temptress in both Jane's and Rochester's imagination
(289, 330, 456). See Sullivan, 192-98.

WORKS CITED
Beaty, Jerome. "Jane Eyre and Genre." Genre 10 (1977): 619-54.
."Jane Eyre at Gateshead: Mixed Signals in the Text and Context." VictorianLit
and Society: Essays Presented to Richard Altick. Ed. James R. Kincaid and Alb
Kuhn. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984. 168-96.
Bloom, Harold. "Introduction." Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Ed. Harold Blo
York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. "Jane Eyre in Search of Her Story." Papers on Lang
Literature 16 (1980): 387402.
Bront#, Charlotte. "A Word to The Quarterly." Jane Eyre. Ed. Richard J. Dunn. N
W. W. Norton, 1971.
. Jane Eyre. Ed. Q. D. Leavis. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.
Chase, Karen. Eros & Psyche: The Representation of Personality in

Charles Dickens, and George Eliot. New York and London: Meth
Hennelly, Mark M., Jr. "Jane Eyre's Reading Lesson." ELH 51 (1984
James, Henry. "Preface." What Maisie Knew. New York: Charles Scr
Knies, Earl A. The Art of Charlotte Bronte'. Athens: Ohio University P
Kristeva, Julia. Tales of Love. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Co

Press, 1987.
Kucich, John. "Passionate Reserve and Reserved Passion in the Works of Charlotte Bront#."
ELH 52 (1985): 913-37.

Martin, Robert Bernard. The Accents of Persuasion: Charlotte BrontFY's Novels. London:
Faber & Faber, 1966.
Maynard, John. Charlotte BrontdY and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1984.
Roberts, Doreen. "Jane Eyre and 'The Warped System of Things.' " Reading the Victorian
Novel: Detail into Form. Ed. Ian Gregor. London: Vision, 1980. 131-49.
Schorer, Mark. "Jane Eyre." The World We Imagine: Selected Essays by MarkSchorer. New
York: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1968. 80-96.
Spens, Janet. "Charlotte Brontd." Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association
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Stone, Donald D. The Romantic Impulse in Victorian Fiction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.
Sullivan, Paula. "Rochester Reconsidered: Jane Eyre in the Light of the Samson Story."
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Tromly, Annette. The Cover of the Mask: The Autobiographers in Charlotte Brontf's
Fiction. ELS Monograph Series 26. Victoria, B.C.: University of Victoria Press, 1982.

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Logophobia in "Jane Eyre"

Author(s): Randall Craig

Logophobia in Jane Eyre

wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful consciousness of

fettered, and my voice still died away inarticulate. (309)1

conventional impediment" (247). But Jane's nightmare of inarticulate desire

Logophobia in Jane Eyre 93

principle. The "honeyed terms" (302) of romance are partic

calculated abuse, as the flattering epithets of Celine an

demonstrate. The tales with which courtships are often cond

figure of the tale of romance told to them. Hence read

autobiographical narrative, which originate with Jane's learn

story plausible to Miss Temple and are reinforced by Roch

misleading accounts of his past, spread to encompass Jane E

exactly reversing the supposition of the first type of logopho

actions are the proofs of true or false speaking). Language n

word" (342); nevertheless, the silence imposed upon Jane in

threaten the integrity of self, but also the inability to make h

with her force of character, leaves no alternative for expre

formulations of conventional society and into the inarticulaten

society is quick to associate with insanity-and to use as furt

enforced silence. But rhetorical oppressors, no less than thei

but they are also susceptible to the incoherent excess hear

Afflicted with language fear of either variety, characters

expression and communication. Logophobic lovers of the firs

inarticulate" or that "draw you into a snare deliberately laid

can be trusted only if corroborated by the eyes, "the faithful i

soul. Apprehensive lovers may even find themselves in the p

accepting silence as the only reliable expression of erotic des

logic, if a glib tongue signals a shallow heart, then Jane's vo

Logophobic lovers of the second type, fearing language's

speaking rather than for tergiversation, turn neither to body

they seek refuge in the very forms of social confabulation

94 The Journal of Narrative Technique

as it must, they invoke a higher "supernatural" discourse. In the first instance, t

"conventionally vague and polite" (162) language of social interchange is used

In practice, these alternative languages prove to be as problematic as that to wh

the speaker's spirit; neither affords the certitude of a transcendental signifi

expressed by silence and by oratorical ferocity, are obviously incompati

labyrinth rife with competing, contradictory, and ultimately unreliable signs.

communicative mode in Jane Eyre, irrespective of individual fears or belief

dilemma. As Jane's nightmare suggests, if deep feeling is antithetical to articulat

Logophobia in Jane Eyre 95

trusted-not merely a matter of finding the right locution to

issue rather is the efficacy of linguistic expression itself, espe

feelings seem to render the individual incapable of speech. J

It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prom

answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an

is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment. (2

Facile words and plausible pretexts are the currency of social

Reed (262). Nevertheless, she cannot frame heartfelt emotion

does social excuses. Hence her dialogues with Rochester are pe

327,425). This inarticulateness is more expressive than langua

is a particularly credible erotic statement. Speechlessness m

rhetorical contests, the latter. In both cases, their actions are im

reiterative. While she "repeat[s] sounding phrases from book

Acting of this kind is but a specific instance of the genera

(202). To trail is to elicit unwarranted belief or, especially in th

In the vernacular sense as well as in common practice, tr

misleading, a gullible lover either into or out of marriage. Fo

96 The Journal of Narrative Technique

she is trailing Rochester in the first sense. In actuality he is trailing her in b

The prototype of these seductive performances in Jane Eyre is an occasion o

romantic discourse. Equally prominent in Adele's recitation to Jane and in lov