Theme Of Companionship In Jane Eyre

Edward Said declares exile to be a terrible, but also enriching, experience. Inherently, this seems paradoxical -- after all, how can something be both abhorrent and empowering? In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, the titular character suffers this kind of isolation from society, and through her isolation develops both a deep desire for human companionship and a fierce independence, and is then forced to grapple with her two incompatible desires. In the beginning of the novel, it is immediately established that Jane Eyre is an orphan. She is set apart from her closest living family, the Reeds, both visually, by the image of a curtain drawn to hide her from her cruel and sometimes physically abusive cousins, and emotionally by their repeated rejections …show more content…
But to have companionship, she must enter a social contract, and to enter a social contract, she must relinquish some of her independence. In Rochester, Jane finds the solution to her dilemma. Rochester, scarred and blinded from the fire Bertha, Rochester’s mad wife, set after Jane abandoned him in the night after their attempted wedding, is, in many ways, her equal. His disability makes him as reliant on her as she would be on him, under Victorian marriage laws -- he cannot walk without assistance, let alone force her to bow to his will. And he is equally as torn between society and independence as she is. He disdains the respectable gentleman’s life in which he ought to live at Thornfield Hall and tend to his tenants and his finances and his wife. Instead, when he could, he lived in Europe, living like the nobles of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s era did. But he also needs that society he so disdains. That society is the one in which he is respected as a gentleman, and which produced the wealth he needs to maintain his lifestyle, both in Europe and at Thornfield and Ferndean. That same society is the one which produced Bertha, whose inheritance saved the Rochester family fortune, and, indirectly, financed his leisurely lifestyle. Where Jane needs independence, Rochester is incapable of taking away her choices, and where both feel the need to be with another person, they have each other and their servants, and even Adele. While perhaps not a perfect example of exile in every sense of the word, Jane Eyre is repeatedly rejected from society, and while being shunned from society may be an experience of insurmountable sadness, only through exile is Jane allowed to gain a better understanding of herself. Because of the inherent paradox in Jane’s character, she finds herself isolated from society, and only by finding a middle ground between her two warring desires can she truly find a modicum of