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Amanda Smith
Nick Lord
ENGL1800
19th May 2016
QuesBon 5
The Representa,on Of Marriage In The Victorian Realist Novel

The Victorian realist novel claims to mirror life rather than create art. Jane Eyre and Great

Expecta.ons are two realist Victorian novels that examine the connecBon between personal desire and
social responsibility through the social insBtuBon of marriage. When analysing the relaBonship between
individual autonomy and social stability in Jane Eyre and Great Expecta.ons, the evidence provided by the
texts and addiBonal research suggests that the marriage between the protagonists only occurs aPer they
have developed a clear and rm idenBty. When the characters are nancially and socially independent, they
are autonomous in their decision to marry and it is an advancement of their own self-fashioning. At the
same Bme, they uphold social standards by conforming to societys expectaBon for marriage to be entered
into by people of the same social class. By examining the subjecBviBes of Jane and Mr Rochester in Jane
Eyre, and Pip and Estella in Great Expecta.ons, it can be argued in both cases that they only married once
perverse relaBonships had evolved into proper ones.

Jane Eyre is wriXen as an autobiography of a young woman in Victorian England. She is an orphan

who is raised to believe that she has liXle worth because of her lack of money and close familial
connecBons. Shunned by her aunt and cousins, Jane longs for appropriate connectedness and
companionship. Jane conforms to societys expectaBon that women mask their selYood in order to
maintain social stability and cohesion (Maier). Throughout the novel, the reader experiences the lack of
respect Jane silently receives in society. As a governess, her posiBon is only slightly higher than that of a
servant. When her wealthy employer, Mr Rochester, asks to marry her, Jane blindly follows her desire for
love. She has not truly developed her own idenBty at this point and her desire to feel loved outweighs her
sense of reason (Maier). Even at this point in her personal development Jane desires equality in love and
marriage regardless, and as a result of, her perceived social status. This is expressed in the passage:

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I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, convenBonaliBes, nor even of
mortal esh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the
grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we are (Bronte, 216)!
APer becoming engaged to Jane, Mr Rochester uses his power and inuence over her to redene her by his
ideal of what a woman should be. He spends large amounts of money, mostly for jewellery and clothes, to
recreate her image according to his own beliefs. Jane refuses these giPs, feeling they would bury her
idenBty, development, and self expression (Maier). Approaching the wedding, Jane dreams of guarding a
child, which is strongly suggesBve of her own childhood circumstances. This reects Janes desire to change
her circumstances from dependence on Mr Rochester to independence (Maier). As the wedding draws
closer, Jane becomes less certain of her own idenBty. She sees a robed and veiled gure, so unlike my usual
self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger. Without realising it, Jane compromised her
independence through her engagement to Mr Rochester (Farkas 49-69). Without a clear grasp on her own
idenBty, Mr Rochesters more dominaBng personality would have conBnued to overshadow her. APer the
wedding has been interrupted by Richard Mason, revealing the existence of Mr Rochesters mad wife
Bertha, Jane realises her mistake in agreeing to marry someone of a much higher class than herself (Farkas
49-69). These incidents are the means of her transformaBon into a subject who acBvely seeks individual
expression. Eventually, she only again agrees to marry Mr Rochester once her individual autonomy and
social stability are aligned (Farkas 49-69).

APer eeing Thorneld, Jane stumbles upon her cousins at Moor House. This fulls her desire for

love and aecBon within a family. While she is there, St John Rivers proposes that she accompany him to
India as his wife and fellow missionary. While she does not love him, Jane is tempted to succumb to an
unhappy relaBonship out of a sense of duty to society. However, she knows it would be self destrucBve to
her happiness and idenBty so she rejects the idea of the subordinaBon of romanBc desire to religious duty
(Farkas 49-69). If she had accepted St Johns proposal, she would have ended up locked away like one of his
possessions. Having come close to losing her idenBty through marriage before, she realises how important
it is to resist St Johns aXempt to recreate her according to his own expectaBons (Farkas 49-69). She
explores the idea in this passage:

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I should suer oPen, no doubt, aXached to him only in this capacity: my body would be under
a rather stringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be free. I should sBll have my unblighted
self to turn to: my natural unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of
loneliness but as his wifeat his side always, and always restrained, and always checked
forced to keep the re of my nature conBnually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never
uXer a cry, though the imprisoned ame consumed vital aPer vitalthis would be
unendurable (Bronte, 347).
Both her rst proposal from Mr Rochester, and the proposal from St John Rivers, suggest a perverse
relaBonship between individual autonomy and social stability. In the rst case, Jane almost succumbs to the
autonomy of desire despite a lack of social stability through equality. In the second case, Jane would be
sacricing personal autonomy in the interests of duty to social stability in an unhappy marriage of
convenience (Farkas 49-69). She desired companionate marriage and would not seXle for less simply
because of societal expectaBons. With familial connecBon with the Rivers and her new inheritance
established, Jane is independent and self sucient enough to marry Mr Rochester within a balanced
framework of personal desire and social responsibility(Farkas 49-69). The destrucBon of Mr Rochesters
primary estate and his blindness contribute to also the percepBon of social equality within the marriage and
to the actual personal equality between Jane and her husband (Farkas 49-69). He is no longer interested in
redening her. A proper relaBonship between individual autonomy and social stability has been achieved.

In both Jane Eyre and Great Expecta.ons unrequited love is fullled and there are key changes in

the lives and idenBBes of the protagonists. By the end of both novels, the characters have developed
deeper self-awareness and make appropriate autonomous decisions (Grass 617-641). Like Jane, Pip and
Estella are both orphans. This is inuenBal in their respecBve childhoods and in the idenBty they each form
as they grow up (Grass 617-641).
The rst person narraBve in Great Expecta.ons explores the male bildungsroman genre of the novel (Grass
617-641). Pip entertains a fantasy of being a gentleman in high society. He has a deep ambiBon to become
educated and sophisBcated enough to be an appropriate match for his childhood love, Estella (Dickens).
Estella is the ward of Miss Havisham; who has been driven mad by heartbreak. She raises Estella to break

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the hearts of men as revenge for what was done to her. Miss Havisham intends for Estella to break Pips
heart but he conBnues to love her despite her cold treatment of him (Dickens). Despite receiving a large
fortune from an unknown benefactor, Pip is sBll deemed unsuitable for Estella in the eyes of Miss Havisham.
Miss Havisham regards Estella as a commodity to be bartered with on the marriage market, and eventually
Estella is married to Drummle. Drummle treats Estella with cruelty and brutally (Dickens). This marriage
illustrates a perverse relaBonship between individual autonomy and social stability. While Estella does her
duty by marrying someone of high class, she is deeply unhappy in her marriage (Grass 617-641). It is also
discovered that Estella is the daughter of Magwitch, an escaped convict, and is therefore inferior in class to
her husband. She is now more equal to Pip, who lost his fortune when Magwitch was sentenced to death
(Dickens). Pip has made peace with his social standing, discovering that social and educaBonal aXainment
can not be equated with a persons worth and that true moral character is to be valued above social
standing (Dickens). Through her marriage, Estella changes from a cold-hearted girl into an independent
woman who learns to trust her own feelings, rather than to shadow Miss Havisham's. When the two of
them meet at Miss Havishams ruined brewery, Estella admits: I am greatly changed. I wonder you know
me (Dickens 357). Pip also noBces the dierence in his childhood love:
The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescribable majesty and its
indescribable charm remained. Those aXracBons in it, I had seen before, was the saddened
soPened light of the once proud eye; what I had never felt before, was the friendly touch of
the once insensible hand (Dickens 357).
Pip sBll sees the girl he fell in love with, but having discovered his own idenBty, realises that Estella is now
more loveable than the cruel girl he rst met. Estella admits that her earlier treatment of Pip was wrong,
and she remembers what she had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth (Dickens 358). Pip
has learned to disBnguish between love and social advancement, and Estella has been bent and broken
into a beXer shape (Dickens 358), and because of this, they nally achieve a proper relaBonship between
individual autonomy and social stability. This is symbolised further by their meeBng at, and then leaving,
that ruined place (Dickens 358).

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Jane Eyre and Great Expecta.ons both examine the connecBon between personal desire and social

responsibly through the social insBtuBon of marriage. Both novels analyse the relaBonship between
individual autonomy and social stability; and show examples of a both a perverse and proper relaBonship. A
once perverse relaBonship is transformed into a proper one as the subjecBviBes of Jane and Mr Rochester
in Jane Eyre, and Pip and Estella in Great Expecta.ons, are developed and their individual idenBBes are
cemented. By the end of the texts, the characters are autonomous in their decision to marry and their selffashioning is advanced to the point that they have upheld social standards to marry within their own class
whilst sBll fullling their own desires.

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Works Cited:
Bront, CharloXe and Richard J Dunn. Jane Eyre. New York: Norton, 2001. Print.
Dickens, Charles and Edgar Rosenberg. Charles Dickens Great ExpectaBons. New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton,

1999. Print.

Farkas, Carol-Ann. ""Beyond What Language Can Express:" Transcending The Limits Of The Self In Jane

Eyre". Victorian Review 20.1 (1994): 49-69. Web.

Grass, Sean. "COMMODITY AND IDENTITY IN GREAT EXPECTATIONS". Victorian Literature and Culture 40.02

(2012): 617-641. Web.

Maier, Sarah E. "Portraits Of The Girl-Child: Female Bildungsroman In Victorian FicBon". Literature Compass

4.1 (2007): n. pag. Web.