Freedom bound in Jane Eyre
The subject has a double meaning: one can be bound for freedom, in the sense of going towards, heading towards, in a movement towards freedom. The sense is also of committed to freedom, and thus the sense of destined for freedom is also present. As such, bound for freedom carries with it a somewhat self-contradictory sense of being bound to freedom, being fated or attached to freedom. Therefore, not being free with respect to freedom. Not free to extricate oneself from being bound to freedom.
This first sense, of going towards freedom, thus converts into another sense that can be heard in the words «freedom bound», which is that «freedom is bound,» freedom is tied up, chained up, enslaved. Freedom has been bound, there is a lack of freedom caused by the presence of some kind of chains or bonds.
Almost immediately, one can see two ways the subject can be understood relative to Jane Eyre as a novel dating from the first half of the 19th century, in other words, relative to certain historical shifts. It clearly narrates, and belongs to a tradition of novels that narrate, a gradual emancipation of women, which one could imagine as beginning with writings such as The Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft in the 1790’s, and reaching a certain stability with the right to vote for women and the freedom in matters relative to sexuality obtained in the twentieth century in certain parts of the world. In its representation of women, Jane Eyre shows and partakes in the struggle women faced in a society where most forms of power were in the hands of men.
The other historical shift relative to the subject is the abolition of the slave trade and the eventual emancipation of slaves that occurred between the beginning and the middle of the 19th century. The abolition of slave-trading and their emancipation does concern the events of the story, given that the Rochester family makes a financial merger with a slave-holding family, the Mason’s. Related to slavery is the British Empire and its dominion over colonies, the wealth generated in its exploitations of islands such as Jamaica, and its domination in world trade as in places like Madeira.
Freedom bound could be understood in opposition to ‘tradition bound’: R, aristocracy, sexism. The Ingram’s and their circle.
The Olliver’s, industrialist-capitalists.
The utter lack of freedom in St John Rivers.
The minor female characters: the Rivers’ sisters (married to clergy/ navy), Miss Temple, Bessie: marriages
Bertha: bad marriage
Grace poole: non marriage
The freedom of CB in the composition of her story: bound to certain conventions (Gothic, Bildungs, governess, fairy tale).
The utter freedom of J when wandering in Chapter 28: destitution is a lack of freedom
The freedom of John Reed to torture his cousin J.
R thinks he is free to do as he pleases, but hte law is the reminder of his wife’s existence (247).
The animals, and in particular birds, as figures of freedom? The trapped bird.
The whole confrontation of Chpter 27, where J refuses R’s pressure, could be read as being ‘freedom bound’, ‘bound and determined’ to live under conditions where she will have the most freedom possible.
‘bound for freedom’ ‘freedom bound up’. Depends on whether the ‘freedom’ is the subject or the object. If freedom is the subject, then there is a passive construction: freedom is bound. If freedom is the object, then something or someone is the subject destined to freedom and freedom is the destination.
«his dependence: just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor» (374). R.
The inheritance makes J a «rich, independentwoman» (370).
R as «fettered wild beast» (367).
Bertha’s leap to freedom (freedom as death). Life as enslavement. («kept in very close confinement» 363).
The «mysterious summons», being bound to do something that is not empirically proveable. J’s lack of freedom prior to the summons, bottom 356, «I stood motionless under my hierophant’s touch. My refusals were forgotten ... my wrestlings paralysed ... Religion called – Angels beckoned – God commanded». Here, J’s freedom is bound, J-the-free is the subject made utterly passive, as an external force takes over. For freedom to be bound, I have to have it. For freedom to be the destination, it has to be à venir, not had save as an aim.
J says to Diana: «Die, to be chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?» (354). Audacious, for CB to put such words in the mouth of J. Marriage, seen from the perspective of the woman, is being a sex toy for the male partner. It is ironic that Diana is reduced to «Die».
Prometheus bound...
«There was no possibility of taking a walk that day» (5): the book begins with a limitation on movement. Freedom as freedom of movement.
The tyrant John Reed, like a slave-driver (8), reinforced by Mrs Reed, «lock her in there» (9), and then by Bessie and Miss Abbot, who tie her up with Bessie’s «garters», called «the necessary ligature», the «bonds» (9). The novel begins with the ligature, the binding, not of Isaac, but of Jane. From lack of movement (but freedom in reading), to punishment for imaginary escape in the form of being tied up, the representation of freedom bound is what the novel begins with. Yet J is not actually tied up, Bessie does not take off her garters, and we do not begin with a scene of sado-masochism (which very much existed in Bronte’s time, one need only read Sacher-Masoch among others). Because J guarantees she will not stir, «in guarantee whereof I attached myself to my seat by my hands» (10). This is a frequently occurring sub-phenomenon of «freedom bound»: rebellion, followed by sanction, followed by J’s own self-constraint. She binds her freedom, or exerts her freedom so as to be the one who monitors herself, rather than suffer the brute violence of the executioners of the law (for e.g., Bessie or Miss Abbot).
The «violent tyrannies» (11) of John Reed are the synecdoches of all that makes J have no personal freedom. She has none because she has no parents, and no belonging. Because she is free of any attachment, she is unprotected, and thus actually bound in her inferior status, which in some regards is lower than that of a servant, since even a servant would have some kinds of rights and a particular status, no matter how servile.
Mrs Reed, J imagines, is also frustrated by being bound, not free to do with J entirely as she would like, because Mrs Reed made a promise to take care of J. «It must have been most irksome to fin herself bound by a hardwrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love» (13). Mrs Reed’s freedom is bound by the pledge she made.
J’s freedom of speech, against Bessie, with Mr. Lloyd: J contradicts Bessie who claims that J had fallen, by telling the truth, that she had been struck down.
The conversation with Mr Lloyd shows that J does not want liberty if it means destitution: «i was not heroic enough to purchase liberty as the price of caste» (20). She opts for school, rather than going to live with relatives. She continues to stay with her status as orphan, rather than take the family structure and relief in that way. She declines «begging». J does not take a certain kind of freedom (which would involve family links) because it would, she thinks, entail poverty. Freedom with poverty is worse than being bound and a possibility for self-enhancement (a school).
J’s freedom of speech, taking the form of her standing Mrs Reed down, invoking the ghost of J’s parents and of her uncle (22-23), is such that something involuntary in her speaks. There is something in J that is stronger than her own will. This something is is free to do what it pleases.
CB’s «freedom bound» in terms of what she can and cannot say, allow herself to write, reveal to readers, can be seen when the first description of Mr Brocklehurst is given: CB (and J) do not go so far as to explicitly state that he is a giant phallus, a sort of totemic phallus, readers be they in Bronte’s time or in another time, can deduce that he is indeed that. Freedom to suggest may seem like total licence is bound or restrained, yet the constraint on the freedom of language creates more of a dynamic in the narrative and for readers, giving a certain amount of freedom to readers as they make the extra step in their imaginations.
«Freedom bound» names reading, the practice and operation of reading. To read, a certain freedom is necessary, in order for there to be reading. A reading without any freedom (of interpretation, of choice, of preference or privilege, of selection and election) would not be a reading: it would be a sort of photocopy or a word-for-word reproduction. A reading with total freedom however (to find meanings where there are none, to introduce wild associations), that did not respect the letter of the text, would also not be a reading: it would be a free association so free as not to be bound to the text. Reading is the experience of freedom bound, being bound to freedom.
J’s freedom is itself bound, it binds itself. Its expression is almost simultaneously its conversion into guilt and thus lack of freedom. «Ere I had finished this reply my soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty» (30). Freedom, liberty, is the breaking of all bonds. Freedom is freedom to say the «truth» (30) to Mrs Reed, yet this freedom almost immediately is constrained. First in the form of «pang of remorse and chill of reaction» (31), then the image of a «ridge» on «fire» followed by the «black» «blasted» «ridge» after the fire is burned out. This then becomes J’s temptation to go ask for Mrs Reed’s « pardon», which J does not do since she knows she will be even more scorned for this caving-in to Mrs. Reed. Freedom is unbound, guilt ensues, yet J has learned not to ask for forgiveness for her freedom. Freedom is thus indeed unbound from what binds it, namely guilt. In fact, J does not make an act of contrition, although she is seized with the inclination to do so. Her real freedom might be in the second moment when she is able to affirm the burst bonds, and not adopt self-contradictory behavior (accept her freedom, and accept her triumph).
The Lowood section of the book might be remarkable, given the subject, in terms of how Helen Burns invokes the notion of duty, forbearance and endurance, as the modes of action, and how these do not recognize any notion of freedom or self-expression. «your duty to bear it» (47), «this doctrine of endurance», are the way what Helen Burns embodies are called. This involves not invoking one’s situation, claims, rights, but collapsing them entirely into their opposite, which is the notion of being bound: bound to endure, bound and not free.
The contest or at least contrast between Brocklehurst and Miss Temple displays the subject of freedom bound, insofar as Brocklehurst can be taken as total constriction, total constraint, the utter binding of the freedom of others – in his desire to deprive children of the right to eat, whereas Miss Temple, in the decision she unilaterally takes to give the children better food when their food was uneatable, acts in accordance with a certain sense of freedom, that involves disobedience. Miss Temple is certainly upbraided for the liberty she takes, but the fact is that the children did get their meal. Likewise, we are told that the girls with curls must have them cut off. In fact, we do not see them lose their curls in the text, although we do in various movie adaptations. Miss Temple represents a freedom within certain bounds, one might say. Within limits, she is able to do what she wants, infringing upon the rules, allowing bheaviors or actions that are not allowed, which she gets away with. Moreover, it is Miss Temple who vindicates J of the calumny of being called a liar, just as it is nature that intervenes – in the form of an epidemic that wipes outmany children – leading to Mr. Brocklehurst’s disgrace and loss of power. If we tried to translate these diegetic incidents to a meta-diegetic level, we could say that Bronte is using her sense of poetic justice to right the wrongs of society: the Reeds suffer in the end, and Brocklehurst (as well as Rivers) is discredited, whereas the advocates of freedom (spearheaded by Miss Temple) are in the end victorious. (Note that Miss Temple publicly clears J, in front of the entire school; even if we have to assume that Brock is not present, it remains very clear that he is entirely disavowed by such a public action.) Thus, although it is Brocklehurst who is the Law, and who enforces its constraints, it is the same man who seems to have total freedom to do so. Miss Temple seems to be forced to comply with his demands and even whims, thus seems to enjoy no freedom, yet all of Brocklehursts’ actions backfire on him, and Miss Temple is free to undo, in systematic fashion, what he has done. What this suggests is that total freedom, which would seem to be unchained, unlinked to either time or history – Mr Brocklehurst seems to have absolute freedom – turns out to be very ineffectual, in a sense entirely fictive, and, moreover, it is Brocklehurst who is severely curtailed, reprimanded, in his status. In contrast, bound freedom, as embodied most clearly by Miss Temple, is inscribed in time and in history; its achievements are slow, gradual, distributed across time and across actions or events each of which is not absolute or total but rather linked, bound, enchained to contexts. Yet what emerges is that Miss Temple is the figure who is vindicated. In this way, «freedom bound» as a subject is a way of understanding how it is that CB advocates a kind of freedom that is always taking place in history, is never absolute, and her debunking of Brocklehurst is a debunking of notions of absolutism or ahistorical status.