This is a ways off the beaten path, but are Rochester and Jane in a dominance/submission type relationship?
I know Jane would never have turned into a typical bride to be, but I didn’t think she would go that far to keep from turning into Rochester’s rags-to-riches project. Let’s back up a little. Soon after the night Rochester proposes (one of my favorite sections of the book), he goes into deliriously happy mode. He promises to buy her jewels, dress her in the finest fabrics, &c., &c. Jane protests that he’s trying to change her so much that she wouldn’t be the Jane he fell in love with. And this makes a lot of sense to me, but what Jane does next really surprises me.
Jane starts to needle Rochester to the point that:
when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as “love” and “darling” on his lips: the best words at my service where “provoking puppet,” “malicious elf”…For caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. (260)
And what does Jane think of her plan now? She says:
It was all right; at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender. (260)
I am really starting to be reminded of Secretary.
Jane and Rochester had kind of been playing this game for most of the book. And it’s not a traditional d/s relationship (if there is such a thing). But when Rochester calls Jane in the first night after they meet, she needles him. As they fall in love with each other, Rochester purposely hurts her by making her think he’s going to marry Blanche Ingram. About the time of their engagement, Jane and Rochester get into an interesting power struggle, where one tries to get in a position of power over the other and vice versus. They negotiate their relationship.
Jane clearly does not want a traditional kind of love. All through their engagement, she struggles to keep things the same as they were before the engagement. She refuses to give up her governess position and even refuses to eat dinner with him. The reason she give Rochester for this is:
For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now–a very little while; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious; and then you will be stern…I suppose your love will effervesce in six months or less. (247)
She’s probably right. It’s like they need some uncertainty, some illicitness to keep the spark burning. But I wonder that she has to go to such lengths to keep the status quo–which is probably the best thing to keep the relationship going. Jane picks on Rochester more than she used to. One might think that she’s pushing him too far, and that he’ll think that maybe she isn’t the right one for him. But when Jane asks, “Do you, sir, feel calm and happy?” he replies, “Calm?–no: but happy–to the heart’s core” (266).
I wonder what the hell Charlotte Bronte was thinking when she wrote this unorthodox courtship. It might be interesting to pursue this topic further–the s/d dynamics in Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester’s relationship. If only they had taught this book when I was in school.