“I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third story, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it—and, certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement . . . and, best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended—a tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence.
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex” (Charlotte Bronte, 116-117).
This passage, from the middle of Chapter 12 in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, illustrates the main character Jane’s experience of her first few weeks at Thornfield. The genre of writing used here, being fiction writing, favors long passages that go into detail about environments, the characters that live in them, and the emotional states and inner thoughts that exist within them. Since Jane Eyre is the main character, and because she is rather introverted and introspective, we get to know her better than any other character in the book, and arguably we know more about her than most if not all of the other characters in it.
Here, she expresses her feelings of imprisonment at Thornfield, her anger at how women are treated as lesser subjects to men (despite having the same needs and desires as them), and how she uses her imagination to escape being both figuratively and literally trapped as she paces the corridors of the third floor. It is not hard to see how Jane’s feelings might be similar to her creator, Charlotte Bronte’s, as a female writer in the 1800s.
This feeling of imprisonment is a common theme throughout the book, though what exactly entraps her varies. Be it religion, passion without principle, principle without passion, or even society as a whole, Jane rarely feels free, and her only chance at escaping imprisonment is her cool intellect, strong morals, and the ability to curb her tongue until the right moment to truly express herself presents itself. It is also important to note that the things that imprison her are frequently represented as men.
As this is an act of introspection on the part of Jane Eyre, we would expect it to be based entirely in her own experiences, especially due to her isolation at Thornfield. However, she extends these feelings to other women and recognizes that others may have a worse life than her – though, not to Bertha, the wife of Edward Rochester who is trapped in the attic and whose presence is not revealed to her for several chapters. She calls for some sort of rebellion against the false sense of “tranquility” that women are forced into. However, she doesn’t offer a way that these women can start a revolt, and even seems unsure as to how revolutions can form in the populace, but implies that the “millions… in secret revolt against their lot” could be a start (117).
Jane Eyre, herself, is in “secret revolt” for most of the book, and these long passages act as a peek into her anger and feelings of being trapped, and how she uses her imagination and mind to escape her feelings and cope with them.