‘How well you read me, you witch!’: semantic drift of ‘witch’ and the choice of Jane Eyre

Abstract

One signifier whose meaning has drifted since Jane Eyre’s time is ‘witch’, a word Rochester applies to Jane during his courtship. Witch was once a label of considerable darkness, casting shadows of terror over the original audience of Jane Eyre, whereas for modern readers it is less threatening. Through a feminist and new historicist lens, ‘witch’ deconstructs to reveal vital aspects about the relationship between Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester, and provides clues to her eventual choice of Rochester over St John. Charlotte Brontë’s juvenilia (specifically ‘The Fairy Gift’), Sir Walter Scott’s novels and his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, and the witch-hunters’ manual, Malleus Maleficarum, are all mined for clues to discern a meaning lost to modern readers by the evolution of English and the march of time.