A. N. Dedeaux - An English Education Read online

  AN

  ENGLISH

  EDUCATION

  P.N. DEDEAUX

  BLUE MOON BOOKS NEW YORK

  An English Education

  © 1996 by Blue Moon Books, Inc.

  Published by

  Blue Moon Books

  An Imprint of Avalon Publishing Group Incorporated

  161 William St., 16th Floor

  New York, NY 10038

  First Blue Moon Books edition 1996

  Reprinted Blue Moon Books edition 2003

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

  ISBN 1-56201-352-1

  987654321

  Printed in the United States of America Distributed by Publishers Group West

  "To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns"

  Currer Bell

  Preface

  Jane Eyre was sent to Messrs. Smith, Elder in London in August of 1847 and, printers being less busy than they are today, was published in October of that year. It appeared in three volumes, as "An Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell."

  The story is well known, and deservedly so. What has not always been seen, beneath the author's brave and prescient feminism, is the algolagnic or sadomasochistic element at large throughout the narrative. Jane Eyre is profoundly and healthily s-m. It is significant that in Jane's school, Lowood, Charlotte strongly exaggerated the discipline of her model, Cowan Bridge School (the Bronte Society having recently reprinted the 1830 Report of this establishment "for Clergymen's Daughters").

  The tale starts with the unpleasant bullying scene by John Reed, proceeds to the red room section (oddly anticipatory of La Chambre jaune of Jacques Desroix), and then takes Jane to Lowood where almost the first thing the heroine sees is Helen Burns birched. Prepared for such sights by the maid Bessie's animadversions about girls' school ("a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, wore backboards"), Jane later becomes a governess and marries Rochester, a classic dominant whose "sternness has a power beyond beauty."

  "Am I cruel in my love?" Rochester asks her at the churchdoor before their first, abortive attempt at marriage. At the start of the book, after Jane has turned on tormenting young John Reed, the lady's-maid, Abbot, holds her arms and reproves her for striking "your young master." Jane blurts back, "Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?" Yet later at Rochester's baronial Thornfield she muses, "It had a master: for my part, I liked it better." She peppers her dialog with this term thereafter, almost gloating to herself when she finally returns to the now blind and maimed Rochester, "I can single out my master's very window."

  The semantic of the whole book, however, is shot through with s-m, from the initial use of the British schoolboy term fagging (Jane's for John Reed) to the Gothic appellations of severe Lowood mistresses like Scatcherd and Harden ("a woman . . . made up of equal parts of whalebone and iron"). When she returns later in the book to Mrs. Reed's bedroom it is to a room "to which I had so often been summoned for chastisement ... I looked into a certain corner near, half-expecting to see the slim outline of a once-dreaded switch, which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck."

  In her poems Charlotte could go still further in this direction, and did; they are accordingly replete with wives or women dominated by semi-tyrannical

  men, one of whom (Gilbert) descends to his spouse "like a God." Similarly, in Rochester, whose rudeness Jane adores and who pinches her for caresses, the fictional heroine "could not ... see God for his creature." Her love for him is "an earnest, religious energy."

  We now know that both Bronte sisters played with algolagnic fantasies in their juvenilia. Charlotte's Angria imaginings are quite frankly sadomasochistic. The main hero, the Duke of Zamorna, is referred to by adoring females as His Sublimity. The acknowledged expert on these "legends," Fanny Elizabeth Ratchford, has shown us how, with the possible collaboration of her extraordinary brother Branwell, Charlotte fantasized a certain Lady Zenobia Ellrington who seems to storm straight out of the small ads in our underground press ("Dominant Female Seeks . . ."). The name Zenobia is acquired from a brave pagan queen taken chained to Rome by Aurelian; she appears in Sacher-Masoch's novel The Siren. Charlotte's young mind turned her into a farrago of passions, subject to "fits of rage in which she shrieks like a wild beast and falls upon her victim hand and foot," with the considerable advantage that she could box as well as any man. As Columbia University's learned Richard Chase was the first to observe, Zenobia was thus both mad Bertha Rochester and the little blue-stocking Jane Eyre rolled into one:

  May not Bertha, Jane seems to ask herself, be a living example of what happens to the woman who gives herself to the Romantic Hero, who in her insane suffragettism tries herself to play the Hero, to be the fleshly vessel of the élan?

  There is nothing contradictory about the fact that Jane Eyre is a brilliant feminist document, long before its day, and its heroine a willing sexual submissive. In this Jane merely doubles for literal political emancipators like Rose Luxemburg to come. Jane is fascinated by Rochester's physicality—his amatory adventures in other countries would today be recounted in undoubtedly repellent detail—and desires to submit to him, yet her rational side revolts. No one of Jane Eyre's intelligence could allow feminine subservience in the political sphere, and it is for this very reason that she so cherishes it in the sexual. "My bride is here," Rochester tells her in the proposal scene, "because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?" Later he remarks, "Jane, by-the-by, it was you who made me the offer." She readily admits as much—"Of course, I did."

  We may now go further into the tormented fantasy of this extraordinary family, with the discovery in a house not far from Haworth of the papers that follow. We have arranged them in two volumes: those dealing with what was called in the famous novel Lowood School forming the first, those depicting Jane's ultimate conquest of Rochester at Thornfield being relegated to the second.

  The authorship of these fragments remains, for the present, tormentingly vague. Were they what Mrs. Gaskell called "the truthful mirror" of Charlotte Bronte's thoughts? Were they, rather, the vile outpourings of her brother Branwell, drinking and doping himself to death beside her? Were they perhaps those of the strange consumptive sister Emily, who the villagers thought a boy and whose own fantasy world of Gondal was ruled by a dominatrix called

  Augusta, ruthlessly reducing husbands and lovers and male children to slaves before her. Or did they stream, infected, from the pen of that remarkable "poet," the girls' father, who liked to lecture his daughters on the sexual differences when he wasn't burning their favorite shoes or scribbling insanely upstairs?

  Time alone will tell. . . .

  Naked under the lights I was set in the triangle, my arms pulled strongly above me. Mr. Rochester stood a pace back and to my left, his sleeves rolled, holding his long ivory cane. I was to be whipped.

  It was not for the first time, but my well-fatted buttocks, drawn apart by the posture, quivered like a girls; these twin praepostors of my whole person knew what they were in for. I had admitted guilt, and was to get it.

  "Relax, Jane" he said gently.

  Then it came. There was that ritual whirring of air, like the ripping of stretched fabric, then the sense of his slow animal stride completed by a thick meaty rap as the whippy tip connected with my person. I gasped, quickly. Christ, how it hurt. Always worse than expected. I jerked, clenching my cheeks as the livid flame deepened in me. It was going to be
a bad one, very bad. The first sweeping stroke had been long and low, and was still chewing into me. One's flesh knew from the first cut what it was going to be like. My thighs quivered as he drew back.

  ONE!

  It had started.

  I shut my eyes and tried to recall it all. My childhood at Gateshead, after my parents had died, school at Lowood, then here ... with HIM!

  1

  There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. The cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so somber, and a rain so penetrating, that our usual afternoon exercise was out of the question.

  I was glad of it. I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart humbled to the region of my high patent leather boots by the comfortable chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and my skin already tingling to anticipation of attentions to my nether person on the part of Abbot, milady's maid, who seldom failed to find some excuse to induce what she called "a more sociable and childlike disposition" in me by application of the rod on return. She knew just how to inflict it most tellingly, too, not merely to make young flesh smart but also my mind conscious of my constant inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.

  The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered around the fireplace in the withdrawing room, roasting chestnuts. Mrs. Reed had relinquished her darlings to recline on her bed for a while. She usually arose, dark-eyed, around five. Me, she had dispensed from joining their group, saying she must really exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy children.

  A morning-room, little visited, lay at one end of the house and I slipped in there, to keep away from their tormentings. "Let's have some fun with Jane" was all too often their favorite game at such moments. The room contained a book-case. I soon possessed myself of a volume and mounted into a window-seat, drawing the red moreen curtain close, so that I was shrined in double retirement. So I remained with Bewick's History of British Birds, happy at least in my way, and fearing only interruption. It finally came. The door opened and I heard the poisonous whisper of John Reed.

  "Boh! Miss Mope!" He paused, finding the room evidently empty. "Where the dickens is she? Lizzy! Georgy! Jane is not here. Tell Mama she is run out into the rain—bad animal!"

  It was well I had drawn the curtain, I was thinking, fervently hoping that John Reed would not discover my hiding-place. Nor would he have himself, for he was not quick either of vision or conception, but Eliza's voice snapped sharply, "She's in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack."

  A fleshed feminine arm shot through, two plump fingers clipped an ear-lobe, and I was sent spinning into the room by Eliza, the eldest, my book flying.

  "Please," I cried at once. "Leave me alone."

  "Leave me alone . . . what?" came the boy's answer.

  "Say Master Reed."

  "Master Reed," I repeated, nursing an injured ear.

  "Come here," he said and, seating himself in an armchair, he intimated by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him. His sisters stood to either side of me. Georgiana was grinning, but Eliza's face was baleful. I trembled already.

  "Thrash her, Jack!"

  John Reed was a schoolboy of seventeen, three years older than I. For, though well filled-out in bosom and bottom, I had but lately turned fourteen. Large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin, thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities, the lad gorged himself at table and had little love for his younger sister, Georgiana, sixteen, but a perversely precocious adoration for his elder by a year, Eliza.

  Me he bullied and punished continually. Every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh I had on my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants disliked me and would never want to offend their young master by taking my part, while Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject. She never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though he did both in her presence—more frequently, however, as now, behind her back.

  Habitually obedient to John in order to scape off— for bitter experience had told me he only struck harder resisted—I came up to his chair as he beckoned. To my right stood—towered—Eliza, who at only eighteen was already tall and massive, sensual of face which was usually scowling when directed to me. A dark beauty, she wore her dresses, as now her royal blue wool, close, with little beneath, so that the material moved visibly over her roundnesses when she walked; at times she seemed to rustle as she stood. By contrast, Georgiana was a very sweet sixteen, cheerful and smiling; her tip-tilted face seemed not to know a care. Her body was all lissom and liquid; under the dove-grey silk she had on now her breasts bulged broadly outwards. I should mention that to remind me continually of my "place" (or lack of it) in this household I alone had to wear short skirts. The plain grey I had on stopped above my knees, where it flared, swirling to my tremblings— "the easier to lift up," as they liked to remind me.

  "What were you doing behind the curtain?" asked my male inquisitor.

  "Reading."

  "Show me the book."

  As I went to recover it, Eliza ticked. "Give her a sound swishing, Jack. Tis all the little puppy understands."

  "She deserves it just for the look in those lovely green eyes, doesn't she just," agreed Georgiana with a chuckle; and while Bewick was being inspected, she chucked me under the chin, saying, "Come, Janey, don't look so cheerful about it. A good hiding won't kill you. It'll only make you want to jump out of your skin a bit. Anyhow, you're getting so fat behind you won't feel a thing." At which her hand roved under my skirt and cupped a knickered chubbie. "Lord, Jack, this b.t.m. is fairly begging for it. What a juicy bum. Do give her a really tight one this time, like you do your fags at school."

  "She deserves a sixer for her sneaking way of getting behind curtains," added Eliza swiftly. "Cut her to ribbons, Jack, and make her cry."

  "Please," I said unsteadily, crimsoning at Georgiana's feeling fingers.

  The boy frowned in his inspection. "You have no business to take our books, you are a dependent; Mama says so; you have no money and no parents; your father left you nothing; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentleman's children like us, and eat the same meals as we do, and wear clothes at our Mama's expense. Now I'm going to teach you to rummage my book-shelves; for they are mine, all the house belongs to me, or will so in a few years. Replace this book"—he tossed it to me—"and then stand out there with your back to us, and lift up your skirt."

  While I went to do his bidding, the usual homiletic exchange continued:

  "How many are you going to give her, Jackie?"

  "Let me position her. She hates it so, bending over."

  "She hates it anyhow. But draw it out, Jack. Last time you were far too swift."

  "Yes, make her feel it absolutely. Right behind the eyes."

  "By George! I feel like Nero. Stiff as a ramrod already."

  "Will you stick me after, Jack?" This in Eliza's hiss.

  "No! I declare. You're always rogering Lizzy first."

  By now I stood facing away from them, and glad to be so, fingers on my hems.

  "Get it up," said John Reed.

  I hesitated, half-turning. "Please. You don't have to. . . ."

  The air sang. Eliza struck strongly. My head flashed. I tottered and on regaining equilibrium shook it like a dog. Then she left-and-righted me with great welting slaps that bounced my head between her hands like a ball. I gripped my skirt and lifted it high, mewing with pain, half-dazed.

  "That's better."

  I was at that age. Always inclined to be a rumpy specimen I was conscious of my buttocks from the first. Clad in skintight white batiste knickers, reaching halfway down my thighs, and beribboned there, they were firm and springy without being hard, with a jaunty jut that held them off my back on closely braced
white thighs—I was not permitted stockings by Mrs. Reed, a waste of expense. I heard hisses of admiration behind me.

  "A ripe pair. Made for whipping, Jack. Drum taut and in prime condition."

  "And nicely cleft, with plenty of overhang."

  "What a bum! This is better than swishing some cringing fag, ain't it!"

  "Pull her knickers tighter, Georgy, do."

  Georgy did—so hard that it hurt me in the crotch.

  "Yes, I think I can make you feel sorry for yourself, Jane Eyre," said the boy. He stood up. "Now bend down and touch your toes and spread 'em well, and let's take a good look at what we have to deal with here."

  I did as bid, striving to keep my thighs together so that the plum of my person would not pouch through and all too aware that indeed it did so, the plump oval at the top of my legs clearly outlined under the thin, almost transparent stuff. I heard Eliza's voice.