Telepathy and ^adomasoehism in Jane (tyre by Anthony Michael D'Agostino In chapter XXI of Jane Eyre, Jane confides her belief in sympathies “between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives ... whose workings baffle mortal comprehension” (187). Later, after fleeing from Thomfield to Marsh End, she experiences such a sympathy with her estranged lover Edward Rochester in the form of feeling at a distance, or mind-to-mind contact, what most Bronte critics have referred to as telepathy.1 Jane hears Rochester’s “mysterious summons”—“Jane! Jane!”—from across the countryside; he later testifies that her reply, “I am coming: wait for me,” was heard, or felt, by him in return (381). This telepathic rapport evidences the mystical depth and spiritual legitimacy of their union, prompting Jane to return to Rochester and finally marry him.1 2 But Rochester’s “mysterious summons” is only the most famous of the novel’s many depictions of romantic affinity manifesting as telepathic connection. Earlier, for instance, while describing her increasingly intense feelings for her fiance, Jane writes: “my heart was with my eyes and both seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester’s frame ... I wanted to feel the thoughts he seemed breasting and resisting,” thus figuring her desire for Rochester as a craving for feeling at a distance that results in bodily (even ontological) fusion though telepathic contact (245). For many critics ofJane Eyre, the concept of telepathy allows readers to make some sense of Bronte’s difficult, mystical presentation of human interaction. Jane’s telepathic connection to Rochester, Ruth Bernard Yeazell argues, is an enhanced form of intimacy arising (counter-intuitively) from Jane’s increasing psychological and financial independence (129). Telepathy that arises from autonomy, Yeazell suggests, allows Jane to realize an intense desire for Rochester without falling into absolute, self-annihilating identification with him. Meanwhile, Angela Hague has more recently 1 See Gilbert and Gubar (367) and Farrell (1-9). 2 See Yeazell (127-43); Gilbert and Gubar (367); and Hennelly (712). Victorians Journal 157 argued that Jane’s telepathy is a refined form ofreceptive passivity that capitalizes on her spiritual similarity with Rochester, allowing for a psychical interpenetration between the two characters that troubles the distinction between self and other.3 For Yeazell, telepathic intimacy issues from consolidation of the self through the preservation of individual difference; for Hague, Jane’s telepathy is the surrendering of self to a shared sameness. Despite this difference, however, for both critics the telepathic rapport between Jane and Rochester is read as a restructuring ofthe relation between self and other, one that engages dynamics of identification and desire, and negotiates autonomy and dependence. According to these terms, Rochester and Jane’s marriage is an intersubjective marriage ofminds.4 But all is not mind and marriage in the novel’s critical history. Another line of inquiry, more alive to Jane’s boast that, “I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing ... [Rochester] ... by turns ... and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far” (134), characterizes their relations in terms of a churning sadomasochistic dialectic of dominance (“vex”) and submission (“soothe”). This dialectic produces a carefully honed state ofintensified feeling that interweaves the experiences ofpleasure and pain, representing a more general eroticization of power—whether social, financial, physical, or moral. The sadomasochistic content of Jane Eyre has been treated from a variety ofcritical perspectives.5 Perhaps most notable is John Kucich’s placing of dominance and submission at the core of Bronte’s deconstruction of subjectivity. Kucich argues that the novel’s “master I slave dynamic” constitutes a “cooperation between polarized extremes of power” that renders “the Brontean self’ in a constant state of flux.6 With the work of Kucich and others, sadomasochism has come to offer a lens through which to understand not only sexuality or desire in Jane Eyre, but subjectivity, discursivity, and affect as well.7 In this view, Jane and Rochester’s relationship is less an intersubjective marriage of minds than a clash of wills that prevents the cohesion ofsubjectivity altogether. 3 See Hague (584-601). 4 See Ablow. 5 On sado-masochism, see Hanly; for a Marxist reading, see Eagleton, Myths of Power; for feminist readings, see Gilbert and...
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Dec 26, 2023
Lindsey Beth Zelvin 
Open Access
