B Brro on nttëë’’ss M Miirrtth hlleessss LLaau uggh htteerr :: C Co om meed dyy iin n JJaan nee EEyyrree 1/ Litté

Source: Charlotte Brontë’s Mirthless Laughter: Comedy in Jane Eyre, Laure Blanchemain, Ellipses. - Comedy is present, even though the critic only concedes the psce of unearned irony and unwillingly comic exaggeration. - Robin Jones proved that the purpose of the novel is to show how women (and Jane) are taught not to laugh except in appropriate circumstances. - Heilman defined the New Gothic in JE as the presence of the Gothic undermined by comic elements: incongruous psce of comedy in sad or frightening moments. - Mirthless quality of Brontë’s humor? Which cannot but evoke Bertha’s mirthless laughter. - Comedy in JE is always ambiguous because while it elicits (suscite) smiles in the reader, it also reveals hidden links, opening up the reader to other, subterraneous (cachés) meanings and patterns. The reader is then left to wonder, as Mrs. Fairfax says about R, “whether [the narrator] is in jest on earnest.”

! Childish perceptions and hidden patterns: - The language of children pervades the whole text. - The children propensity (propension) to exaggeration also arises in the inability to make the difference btw fiction & reality. This attitude paves the way for the fairy tale mode adopted by J & R, which echoes the narrator’s much discussed allusions to fairytales like Bluebeard, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Ugly Duckling or Scheherazade’s Arabian Tales. - The 2 characters see each other as marvelous figures: their first encounter is later turned by R into a fairytale. The character’s playful seriousness in dealing with the marvelous strongly evokes the children’s view. - Recurrent play on the literal meaning of expressions: R presents his future marriage to J as a fairytale, literally taking her to the moon and gathering honey for her. The child’s inability to understand the figurative level is used as a comic ploy (stratagème) by the narrator.

- “I must keep in good health and not die”. The wholly unexpected reply is particularly savory because of the childlike pragmatism it betrays. - Literal approach of the narrator: the characters act out certain images: o Jane cools R’s burning desire when she “deluges” his burning bed. - Childlike perceptions and attitudes frame the narrator’s style and the author’s choices. - The author resorts to the traditional use of naivety as a tool in satire: ex: Reed as a benefactress, if so a benefactress is a disagreeable thing.

! Brontë’s “dry jokes”: - The presence of comedy in the description of hardships is unexpected. o “My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age either”: a pun, which seems bright at first sight, is rather grim. - Both characters and narrator are prone to such humorous or ironical remarks at frightening or melancholy moments. o R’s comic allusions: “that night you half drowned me.” - Aim of the humor: create some complicity with the reader, to strengthen the feeling of linking for the heroine which is so impt an element in the reader’s whole response to the novel. - Brontë’s comic devices do not provoke roars of laughter because they only veil a strong satire.

! Comic relief and hidden satire: - Entertaining the reader, burlesque vein at work through inappropriate use of an elevated scientific voc to refer to trivial activities and situations. o Ex: Adèle and her boîte, “disembowelling” it, “operation etc. o Ex: presenting cooking and cleaning and tidying up as activities demanding scientific and mathematic precision. - The misapplied voc (as regards Adèle and her wish to join the Ingram party: “as grave as any judge”) satirizes, on a first level, the imptce women lend to trivial activities. - At Lowood, episode of the girls falling asleep during the Sunday sermon: the condition of women and the image imposed on them are what is really at stake in this amusing episode. The spectators become

themselves a show, they are said to be performing a play. The scene is even close to slapstick comedy when they are thrust and propped up again and again. - This amusing interlude in the middle of the description of the girls’ hardships seems to offer some unexpected comic relief. - The scene vividly summons (mobilise, évoque) the image of girls and women as puppets, lifeless things propped up by the rules imposed on them. A strong satirical vein with the symbolical representation of what education can do to women.

! Debunking male authority: - 1st masculine butt of B’s comic satire is John Reed. Although there is no laughter at Gateshead, we see the potential in Jane for a capacity for humor. o Ex: jane muses on John’s ugliness when he is going to hit her: incongruous appearance of this thought. - The portrait of John turns him into ridicule with the humorous accumulation of flaws. The touches of humor thus debunk the relative authority of John as J’s superior. - This process of contrastive juxtaposition is even more successfully used to gibe (railler) at Brocklehurst: “black pillar” --> phallic column, a symbolical rpstion of male power. - His lectures sound ludicrous also because of their exaggerated emphasis: allusions to the extent of J’s perversity, then the disclosure that she is a liar. Raising the spectator’s expectations, increasing suspense, the cc log the tirade is not up to the mark. - Brontë does not spare the other male protagonists: - Rochester: their first encounter as a parody of romance: he falls on the ice, and exclaims “What the deuce is to do now?” + his lack of manners is funny because unexpected in a gentleman. - St John: she makes fun of his kisses, calling them “experiment kisses”. His kisses rpst his power over J, so in fact J’s humor comes as a defensive reflex. - Like Brocklehurst, St J is delineated as a pillar, a column. --> debunking their phallic strength. - JE is not bereft of amusing puns, though most often at the expense of men. Cd explain why men do not find her comedy really amusing.