Jane Eyre was published on 16 October 1847 under the pen name “Currer Bell”. The character Jane Eyre is portrays in nineteenth- century setting where she graduate from an orphanage and got a job as a governess. She ends up falling in love with her master and ready to get married. But the highlighted figure for the post colonialism is Bertha, who is the master’s wife.
Story of Bertha
Bertha is Rochester’s secret wife, locked in secret by his husband at all time. It is said that Bertha is given “voice” to tell story through her perspective in the novel “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys. The binary opposition based on race is portrays in the novel where the author give different view about the character Jane Eyre as a virtuous white western European woman while Bertha as crazy and monstrous “other”. Bertha served to define the colonized women in Jamaica. It is where the Western think that the West is always superior that the East when Charlotte apply the binary opposition to characterize these two characters. It show that people other than the Western are weak.
Rochester that is getting to get married with Jane Eyre face the embarrassment when Bertha’s brother told the guests that he already married. In the novel, Rochester is portray as the colonizer that colonized his wife both in financial and psychological. His wife was exploited tragically and as the result, she became mad. Rochester that we can see as the colonizer think that Bertha are not civilized by acting crazy when she started to burn the house where they’re staying. It shows the representation of the colonized in real life when they are being dehumanized by their own fellow human beings.
"'In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face."'
The description of Bertha in this novel shows how the Western use the “otherness” to portrays things which they think do not belong to them. All the negative traits are thrown to the colonized and automatically the positive traits belongs to the Western.
References
Moosmosis. (2018, April 01). Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte- Literary Analysis. Retrieved from https://moosmosis.org/2016/12/14/jane-eyre-by-charlotte-bronte-literary-analysis/
Shmoop Editorial Team. (2008, November 11). Postcolonial Theory Analysis - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Retrieved from https://www.shmoop.com/postcolonial-theory/jane-eyre-analysis.html
The figure of Bertha Mason. (2014, February 13). Retrieved from https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-figure-of-bertha-mason