Swan Maidens and Spirits: The Archetype of the Fairy in Jane Eyre

Abstract

18 Victorians Journal Swan Maidens and Spirits: The Archetype of the Fairy in Jane Eyre by Reuben Sass Jane Eyre is a book replete with allusions to such fairy tales as Cinderella, Bluebeard, and Beauty and the Beast, as well as to fairies themselves. The indirect and highly symbolic forms in which the spiritual and the supernatural appear do not at all detract from the importance of these elements in the text; rather, the archetypal richness ofthe story enhances and maintains the relevance ofthe fairy tale in an early nineteenth-century setting. Linking Jane to the fairy archetype and its ancient associations with British folklore synthesizes the character with her relationship to Rochester, together offering a broad-based and consistent contextualization of her spirituality. Thus a new critical perspective can emerge from pointing out the motifs and conceptual associations (e.g. between spirits and the dead) that Jane Eyre shares with traditional British folk narratives. Jane’s fascination with fairy tales, her intensely self-defined spirituality, and her improbable, ultimately redemptive life story offer fertile textual grounds, both implicit and explicit, for interpretations incorporating fairy tale references. In addition to Jane Eyre’s resemblance to great literary fairy tales, the prevalence of allusions to creatures from Britain’s occult history—as either nouns or adjectives, “fairies” and “elves” appear nineteen and eleven times, respectively—has attracted some critical notice. Given the salience of folklore elements in her novels, Bronte was likely familiar with British folk narratives, especially in light of her adulation for and allusions to Walter Scott, one of the era’s most significant compilers of folklore.1 Jane Eyre stands chronologically at the cusp of a revival of interest in fairies and creatures from traditional folklore. Permeating much of Victorian culture and later overlapping with Victorian medievalism, this revival entailed a wide-ranging re-examination of fairies from literary, anthropological, artistic and religious perspectives (Edminster 22). Prior to the Romantics, many post-1688 British writers limited their incorporation oforal folklore; fearing to undermine the Church ofEngland’s more Puritanical teachings, they hesitated to challenge those currents ofEnlightenment rationalism which were to develop into utilitarianism (Zipes xiv). Against both these worldviews, Romantic-era authors such as Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Thelwall found in fairies and elves a powerful means for reasserting the value ofNature, imagination, and visionary thought. 1 “For fiction, read Walter Scott and only him—all novels after his are without value” (Gaskell 99); in Jane Eyre, “the bright pages of Marmion" are considered representative of “the golden age of modem literature.” Jane Eyre also alludes to Scott’s The Lay ofthe Last Minstrel (1805). Bronte’s heroine in Shirley has the surname Keeldar, likelytaken from “The Count ofKeeldar,” a ballad contained in Scott’s major folklore collection, The Minstrelsy ofthe Scottish Border (Bronte Society 16). Victorians Journal 19 Victorian women writers like Bronte, however, would have been more cautious than male contemporaries about unequivocally adopting fairy tale elements, given the additional pressure women faced to demonstrate serious literary realism. A direct acknowledgement of fairy tale influence would leave female authors’ work especially vulnerable to being stereotyped as fanciful and inane—good perhaps for entertainment but not for valuable or original commentary on society, religion, and human relationships (Auerbach and Knoepflmacher 12). Thus, Jane Eyre adopts “strategies of indirection and disguise” in describing spirits and the supernatural, while the character Jane makes denigrating references to fairy tale creatures as “childish ‘rubbish’.”2 3 Such indirection and ambiguity are also evocative of the waning influence of the supernatural in Victorian Britain. A definitional analysis of the fairy archetype, as it relates to Jane’s personality, the plot arc, and her relationship with Rochester, helps unify some of the disparate arguments made by critics who have examined fairy tale elements in Jane Eyre? Moreover, through references to themes, concepts, and motifs from popular folk narratives—ones which the inhabitants of the British Isles had been telling each other for centuries before Bronte’s time—the character Jane Eyre comes to resemble the spiritually, intellectually, and sexually liberated folklore figure, the Swan Maiden (see Silver). Such allusions to creatures from British folklore, highlighting at once the protagonist’s preoccupation with...