There Is Not a Shortage of Orphans in Literature

Lloyd-Jones 1

Emily Lloyd-Jones

Eng 324

3/15/09

The Goth and the Cheerleader:

A Comparison of Jane Eyre and Adèle Varens

There is not a shortage of orphans in literature. There are many different types—the innocent Oliver Twist, the flighty Peter Pan, and the spiritually orphaned Maggie Tulliver. Being an orphan gives a character a unique status, because they are free of parental influences. Dirk P. Mattson wrote, “We are attracted to orphans in literature because they are the ‘common people.’ Orphans are heroes and heroines for us. We can identify with them, recognizing their feelings of insecurity as our own.” However, to be an orphan in Victorian times was to be nobody. Parentage and family were important components of the Victorian culture, so losing them often meant losing one’s place in society. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the main character is the most obvious orphan. Without parents, money or beauty, Jane is forced to find her place in society by herself. But there is another orphan in Jane Eyre, and she lives a very different life. Adèle Varens, ward of Mr. Rochester, also lacks parents and the security they would give her. Adèle and Jane are both female orphans in a society that does not look kindly upon either, but both girls grow up to be extremely different people.

What divides Jane and Adèle is not their social situation or physical appearance, but the fact that Jane grew up thinking of herself as an outsider. This gives her a unique outlook on society, because she is just removed enough to view it impartially. If Victorian society was a modern day high school, she would be the goth girl on the fringe of things, watching the ‘in’ crowd and doodling her caricatures of them in a notebook. She coolly examines misogyny, religious hypocrisy and familial cruelty. Jane’s weaknesses—no loving family, money or beauty—eventually become her strengths. Adèlelives without consciously thinking about such things. Going back to the high school metaphor, Adèle would be one of the cheerleaders who simply expect people to like and adore them. Because she genuinely seems oblivious to the social restrictions, the audience would be reluctant to dislike her. Where Jane thinks about life, Adèle simply lives.

Jane Eyre’s childhood with the Reeds is less than pleasant. She grows up knowing her aunt, Mrs. Reed, dislikes her niece and even encourages her children to avoid Jane. This lack of love affects Jane deeply by making her aware of injustice at a very young age. She knows instinctively that she is worthy of love, but no one in her family is willing to give it to her. “All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always brow-beaten, always accused, for ever condemned” (Brontë 20). Jane rages against her situation as a non-member of the Reed family, but knows better than to think it could ever change.

Her position on the fringes of the family does give her one advantage—she can observe the family dynamics without interruption or bias. She can pick out each of her cousins’ foibles and understand why they are still loved, even in spite of their shortcomings, while Jane cannot even read without being scolded. Besides the issue of parentage, there is one majordifference between Jane and her particularly snobby cousin Georgiana: beauty. Jane knows that she is not beautiful, because this is what she is repeatedly told. She overhears a very plain conversation on the subject between the servants Bessie and Abbot. “‘Yes,’ responded Abbot, ‘if she [Jane] were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that’” (Brontë 35).

All in all, Jane’s childhood can be summed up in one word: hell. Jane, as an orphan, has no rights. She depends on her aunt for everything, and is constantly made aware of that fact:

‘You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligation to Mrs. Reed: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poor house.’ I had nothing to say to those words: they were not new to me; my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear; very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. (Brontë18)

Jane is raised by people who barely tolerate her presence and are not afraid to make known their dislike of her. The only person to show her a little kind is the servant Bessie, and even she tries to put Jane in her place, although for very different reasons. Hardened and angered by her family’s treatment, Jane is left with a critical outlook on society.

Jane’s disconnect from societal norms is what makes her an ideal confidant, because she will not condemn those who also stray from those norms. After confiding Adèle’s origins, Mr. Rochester marvels at the ease in which he could tell Jane everything. “‘Strange! he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the point. ‘Strange that I should choose you for the confidant of all this, young lady: passing strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistress to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you” (Brontë175). It is likely that many people, after uncovering Adèle’s scandalous beginning, would have viewed the girl differently. Even Rochester, the poster boy for rebellion, worries that Jane will leave and find a more socially acceptable student to teach. But Jane immediately dismisses the idea.“‘How could I possibly prefer the spoilt pet of a wealthy family, she would hate her governess as a nuisance, to a lonely little orphan, who leans towards hers as a friend” (Brontë178). But as lovable as Adèle may be, she is not the accepting listener that Jane is. She does not have the insight or maturity that Jane did at her age. The traits Adèle possesses are more culturally acceptable—beauty and a little ignorance.

Adèle’s slightly more typical personality is due to her slightly more typical upbringing. Unlike Jane, she never has to deal with her family’s rejection. Although her mother did abandon her with Mr. Rochester, there is no proof that Celine ever abused Adèle like Mrs. Reed did with Jane. As a result, Adèle is very comfortable with herself, as proven by the way she greets Jane for the first time. Excited by her governess’s ability to speak French, Adèle jubilantly performs a song and recites a poem, something that bookish Jane would probably never have done at that age (Brontë 128). Jane grows to like her pupil, thinking that “she had no great talents, no marked traits of character, no peculiar development of feeling or taste which raised her one inch above the ordinary level of childhood” (Brontë 134). But while Jane might have been a more intelligent child, Adèle has something else—she sees herself as beautiful.

As Paul Pickrel states, “Jane is very little interested in her appearance. Once or twice she wishes herself prettier, but in brief period of [Rochester and her] happiness before she finds out about Bertha she steadfastly refuses to let Mr. Rochester adorn her, apparently out of loyalty to her own modest plainness” (Pickrel 173). Jane’s refusal to let Rochester pamper her could be seen two ways—first, as a refusal to be indebted to him, or secondly, because beauty is a certain way to be accepted into society and that is something Jane does not desire. By becoming beautiful, Jane would have to allow herself to be restrained by Victorian expectations. Her plainness is partly what allows her to act so freely. Adèle, unlike Jane, does not trade beauty for freedom. She, like a typical little girl, enjoys playing dress up:

Ere long, Adèle’s little foot was heard tripping across the hall. She entered, transformed as her guardian had predicted. A dress of rose-coloured satin, very short, and as full in the skirt as it could be gathered, replaced the brown frock she had previous worn […] And spreading out her dress, she chasséed across the room; till having reached Mr Rochester, she wheeled lightly round before him on tiptoe. (Brontë 171)

Adele is obviously not self-conscious about her looks. Whether or not she is beautiful becomes of little consequence—she thinks herself gorgeous, so that is how she expects people to react to her.

The contrast between Jane and Adèle is most obvious when Jane makes her pupil and herself presentable for Mr. Rochester. “I brushed Adèle’s hair and made her neat, and having ascertained that I was myself in my usual Quaker trim, where there was nothing to retouch—all being too close and plain, braided locks included, to admit of disarrangement” (Brontë 159). The one time Jane looks into a mirror and critically examines herself, she is so distanced from the reflection that she almost does not recognize herself. Women tend to be less able to separate their physical bodies from their self-identities, so an image reflected in a mirror can carry great weight for a woman. Jane is able to look into a mirror and see the reflection as something other than herself. “Jane has taken a step, however unconscious, toward a radical freedom” (La Belle 54). If Adèle were to look in a mirror, she would probably see a beautiful creature staring back at her. She is unable to see her reflection as anything else but an image of herself. Her games of dress-up, her singing and recitation of poems all indicate a blithe confidence in her appearance.

Charlotte Brontë gave her readers two types of orphans in Jane Eyre. There is Jane, a plain girl who was abused both physically and verbally during her childhood. Adèle is Jane’s foil—an example of what Jane might have become if there had been no hardships in her life. Adèle possesses many things that Jane can never have. As a socially acceptable orphan, she is raised to join the ranks of other socially acceptable women. Jane, who was raised without these restrictions, gains a unique view of how society works and this puts her in an ideal position to criticize it. Women during Victorian times were not meant to be as intelligent or critical as Jane, so if Adèle is to take her place in Victorian society, she must sacrifice any chance at self-awareness.

Works Cited

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Penguin Group, 2006

La Belle, Jenijoy. “Mutiny against the Mirror: Jane Eyre and Mill on the Floss.” PacificCoast Philology. 20(1985): 53-56.

Mattson , Dirk P. "Finding Your Way Home: Orphan Stories in Young Adult Literature." The Alan Review 24(1997): 17-21.

Pickrel, Paul. "Jane Eyre: The Apocalypse of the Body." The JohnsHopkinsUniversity Press 53(1986): 165-182.