Unit 1 – Explorations in Poetry & Prose
“The main interest is the male characters.”
Both Jane Eyre and The Magic Toyshop present the reader with a rogues gallery of men who exhibit the worst, and occasionally the best, traits of their gender. To a modern feminist, the suggestion that both Jane and Melanie are defined by their experiences with these male characters would be a heresy, but there is little doubt that the males’ primary function is to provide the challenges that shape the emergent womanhood of the female protagonists. They are interesting because they are grotesque.
Jane’s early experiences with men are physically and verbally abusive, highlighting Jane’s vulnerability as both orphan and young girl in a patriarchal society: ”Wicked and cruel boy --- You are like the Roman emperors! “ This comparison may seem exaggerated, even comical, were it not to show how John’s reign of terror impacts on a young child whose only frame of reference lies in the books she reads so avidly. These early experiences also reflect the connivance of women in men’s abusive behaviour towards other women, whether through defect of character or social conditioning. “John no-one thwarted, much less punished…” John’s mother indulges her wayward son just as she preconditions Mr Brocklehurst in his treatment of Jane by calling her a liar. Melanie too is quickly exposed to the brutishness of a dominant male, the extreme effects manifest in the symbolic and actual silencing of her aunt, who wears a symbolic and actual collar around her neck, as if she were the dog in the painting. She, too, connives to protect the bully, scribbling “his bark is worse than his bite” (an ironic choice of saying) on her slate, as if to exonerate Uncle Phillip’s behaviour.
Mr Brocklehurst is a caricature of a religious hypocrite, no doubt familiar to Bronte from amongst her father’s