Examples Of Allusions In Jane Eyre

In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte uses allusions to fairy tales as a way to further describe certain aspects of the novel. One example of this comes when Jane refuses to continue with her story, stating that “to leave [her] tale half-told, will, you know, be a sort of security that [she] shall appear at [his] breakfast-table to finish it” (Bronte 505). This illusion to Arabian Nights relays Jane’s recognition of the changing power dynamic between herself and Mr. Rochester. Arabian Nights is framed as a series of stories told by a young woman named Scheherazade, who refuses to complete her stores in order to put off her execution by another day for a thousand and one nights, until the king gives up on his plan to “marry and kill a new wife each

Jane describes Bertha as reminding her “of the foul German spectre—the vampire,” and Bertha’s brother, Mr. Mason, states that “she sucked the blood: [and] she said she’d drain [his] heart” (327, 246). By the time Jane meets Bertha, she is criminally insane. However, people often refer to her as cunning, which is a sign that she has not totally lost her mind. From the way Mr. Rochester describes her, it is unclear that Bertha actually was insane before he brought her to Thornfield. He states that “her nature [was] wholly alien to [his], her tastes obnoxious to [him], her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger” (353). It may be that Bertha was odd, or had a mild mental illness, but being locked in the attic at Thornfield drove her mad and made her attempt escape by whatever means necessary. By equating mental illness with a demonic, evil creature from folk lore, the characters of Jane Eyre and Bronte herself voice the Victorian era’s negative view of mental illness. The descriptions of Bertha as a vampire or as a demon are unfair since “she cannot help being mad,” as Jane notes (347). Bertha’s portrayal as a vampire because of her mental illness reflects both her nature as an antagonist and the Victorian view of mental