Circular Evolutions of Imaginative Maturation in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Villette

An exploration into the complex underpinnings of an evolving mind, Jane Eyre is both a literal and metacognitive inquiry into the implications of imagination. Principally dealing with the title character's stepwise assumption of identity, from a reticent orphan to a self-assured and socially empowered woman, Jane's is first and foremost a quest for love and community. However, underlying her linear search for the elusive domestic cornerstones of "family" and "home" is a relentless struggle between reality and imagination. Characterized by two consecutive arcs of imaginative maturation, Jane is presented first as an innocent, reveling immoderately in the novelty of uncharted conceptual possibility, then socialized into a form of self-imposed repression, and finally reintroduced into a subdued, cultivated imaginative landscape. Ultimately, although other Victorian intellects considered love to be the civilizing aspect unifying "intelligence and instinct," Jane Eyre asserts that imagination is yet another definitive inner governor that, able to traverse both extremes, must be similarly reconciled. As such, Jane's recursive travails through the spectrum of imaginative frenzy and suppression are transformed by her romantic indulgence. When requited, Jane and Mr. Rochester's love for one another combines the wish-fulfillment of romantic desires with the realism of a practicable union, thereby effectively distilling imagination into its more productive, governable, and expansive components. On the other hand, Lucy Snowe is a protagonist haunted by the incongruities between imagination and reason. Predisposed to thrive in a realm in which she is both arbitress and editor of these two, inherently contradictory, spheres, she chooses to craft a narrative in which she preferentially favors the real over the ideal, and excises any information that compromises her emotional anonymity, or her self-image as a fully prudent, circumspect, and proper Protestant lady. The account that results is likewise characterized, particularly in its beginnings, by a frustratingly scarce and occasionally incomplete tale that relies heavily upon accounts of the dramas of other characters rather than Lucy's own perspectives. As such, Lucy willfully manufactures the initial narrative so that she is a centrifugal player, interacting crucially with each supporting character, and utilizing the trajectories of their more central stories to reflectively reveal aspects of her own personality. As the story progresses, however, Lucy's imagination begins to increasingly collide with her carefully constructed reality. Her maturation during the course of the book is characterized by three distinct imaginative arcs. Each of these sequences is catalyzed by the intrusion of a particular emotional excess, the surfeit of which causes her to, however briefly, immoderately succumb to the lure of intemperate imagination. In an attempt to compensate, she subsequently reconstructs her psychological boundaries, undergoing a period of self-imposed normativity in which she either symbolically suppresses her desires, or replaces them with domestic pursuits. However, as the sources of her distress begin to increasingly reflect on the incongruities between her expanding desires and the limited social, romantic, and emotional requirements of her gender, she is forced to use the mitigating platform of the arts to safely explore alternatives to conventional womanhood. Ultimately, Lucy uses the guise of performativity to safely fuse the realms of realism and imagination, and manufacture a liminal space in which she can safely reconcile social stricture, independent ambition, and romantic fulfillment.No embargoAcademic Major: Englis