클라인적 관점에서 읽은 『제인 에어』

Abstract

This paper explores how the protagonist, Jane Eyre, forms her identity through maternal connections with other characters within the novel. Jane’s maternal experience can be analysed through Melanie Klein’s theory of maternity. Klein argues that an infant in the “paranoid-schizoid position”(during the first three months of life) splits its mother into both a good mother and a bad mother. When the infant deems the mother to be a persecutor, then it tries to control or harm the mother by projecting its own negative feelings towards her. Klein defines this process as “projective identification.” Jane’s hatred and aggression towards her bad mother, Mrs Reed, resembles Klein’s “projective identification.” According to Klein, the infant in the “depressive position”(after the paranoid-schizoid position) feels guilt and anxiety for the damage inflicted on its mother in the previous position, The infant goes through a mourning process for the loss of its positive object, and restores its mother as “a good and complete object.” At this moment of restoration, the infant successfully overcomes its own depressive position. In this novel, Jane experiences feelings of guilt for doing harm to her bad mother figure, and the normal mourning process then helps her to successfully overcome her depressive position. After restoring Rochester as an object of love and gratitude, Jane comes back to him, whom she sees as a prototype of her own lost mother.