writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

they help effect restoration to her psyche. For this I turn to Hartman’s work on memory and
landscape as articulated in his many works on Wordsworth, in particular, The Unremarkable
Wordsworth. 6 When studying the poems of Wordsworth, Hartman says that location plays an
important role in both the original event of the poet’s visit to a place that is recorded often as a loss
and in the healing, which is achieved in the memory‐recall, thus inalterably linking memory and
place. In a trauma text, performance of the narration relies on the willing participation of the reader,
and here, Shoshana Felman’s work is vital for my analysis. Felman, writing with Dori Laub, has
transformed trauma studies in her insistence of testimony and transference as curative devices that
shift the burden from narrator/victim to the reader/listener. 7 In my reading, Jane, the traumatized
narrator, is attempting a self‐construct through her revisiting of the trauma sites and through the
writing of the narrative, both of which work as the return of the repressed.
Sites of violence and the creation of the self
If trauma is a wound more to the mind and not so much to the body as Caruth insists in
Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, Theory, Jane’s walk down memory lane is fraught with the
possibility of a double wounding. In the act of narration, which is a kind of recapturing of time and
space, Jane recalls her encounters with numerous instances of violence to her psyche—and one of
those encounters is with the idea of physical perfection, as upheld by society. For, Beauty, in all its
real and metaphorical implication as a kind of violence to the self, is very strongly reiterated all
through her narrative. From the earliest childhood memories of her miserable existence as the
impecunious, unattractive child in the Reed home, Beauty is a serious threat to Jane. The lookingglass
and the gaze collude in effecting a trauma on the plain child Jane, whom even the servants treat
in a cavalier fashion. In the famous scene in the Red room, the child Jane ponders on her existence:
“Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned?” (Brontë,
2006:18). This revolt in the young Jane’s heart, narrated by the adult Jane, carries an emotional
intensity that is difficult to ignore as the ravings of a punished child. The young Jane is confronted
with a world where notions of fair play and justice seem perversely twisted by a capricious
Providence intent on destroying her sense of the self. This is a punctual blow, as described by Freud
and Caruth, to the psyche, not as one‐time accident, but as an ongoing event, for, the adult Jane
experiences this wounding by negation, again and again.
There are many scenes in the novel where the subject Jane comes into contact with people who
are beautiful and powerful, like her cousin Georgiana, Blanche Ingram, and St. John Rivers where the
narrator Jane describes vividly the contrast between the plain protagonist and the others far more
conventionally pleasing. The impression left is of sadomasochism, for, the narrator Jane is bent on
transferring the trauma caused in the subject Jane onto the reader. Additionally, this is a triumphant
narrator who likes to underscore her victory over richer, more beautiful and powerful subjects, often
placing the reader in an ethical quandary. Should the reader align her emotions with the narrator
even when she is not charitable and likeable?
Later in the novel, in a scene of self‐flagellation, Jane, after hearing about the visit of the
unsurpassable Blanche Ingram to Thornhill, addresses herself sternly for having foolishly indulged in
a self‐induced reverie about Mr. Rochester:
Listen then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: tomorrow, place the glass before you, And
draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully, without softening one defect; omit no harsh
lines, smooth away no displeasing irregularity; write under it, “Portrait of a Governess,
disconnected, poor, and plain”. (Brontë, 2006:187).
This pitiless self‐criticism in drawing attention to a lack of beauty and desirability in Jane, the
subject, by Jane, the narrator, has the curious effect of self‐doubling, or separation from self, for she
is distancing from herself as she stares into the imaginary mirror that reflects back her plainness. The
alternation between revolt against perceived injustice, and a punishing self‐judgment, which is the
split inside Jane, creates repeated wounds on an already traumatized mind. 8 In Jane’s world, this
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