Monday, October 22, 2012

“Marriage in Jane Eyre: From Contract to Conversation” by James Phillips


· Phillips asserts that Jane Eyre “can be read as a treatise on marriage” (209) and he proves this by discussing the marriage plot of the novel.

· Phillips discusses the two possibilities of marriage for Jane.

· She can either marry Rochester, which would be a conversation of equals, or she can marry St. John Rivers under contract and help him to perform the Christian duty of missionary work in India.

· Interestingly, Phillips mentions that "it was not until 1937 that English law recognized insanity as ground for divorce" (204).

oAs well, if Rochester wanted to divorce Bertha, then he would have had to be "blameless" (204), and he would have had to prove that she had lovers in the Caribbean, which would have been hard.

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