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Chapter Five Myth Becomes Metaphor in Realistic Fiction The fictional works discussed in this chapter-Jane Eyre, Bleak House, and Middlemarch-use the vampire in more obviously metaphoric ways than the works discussed in the previous two chapters; and the difference is revealed most clearly by the fact that a character or characters uses the term "vampire" as a significant metaphor for destructive human behavior and shows, therefore, that he or she is aware of the literary tradition and of the social or historical resonance of the vampire motif.! In addition, because these three novels are also more or less within the realistic tradition of English fiction, Jane Eyre, Bleak House, and Middlemarch feature ordinary human beings who behave in psychologically plausible ways instead of having implausible plots and supernatural characters; and the authors' use of the vampire motif serves primarily to emphasize the horror that is sometimes part of ordinary human life. However, despite the obvious difference in approach and the greater subtlety, the difference is not immediately apparent, especially in the early sections of Jane Eyre, where Bronte consciously manipulates the tradition handed down to her by her Gothic predecessors.2 The first specific reference to the vampire, which seems to be solidly within the Gothic tradition, focuses on the mystery and terror that are characteristic of the Gothic. The day before Jane is to marry Rochester, she tells him that she had been awakened the night before by a strange woman who entered her room, tore her bridal veil, and trampled the pieces beneath her feet. Afterwards, she moved to the bed where Jane lay and stared intently into her face. Jane admits that she fainted; but before losing consciousness, she looked closely at the woman's face, which she describes to Rochester in frightening detail: savage, with rolling red eyes, a face which reminded her "of the foul German spectre-the Vampyre" (Ch. XXV). Aware of the eerie laughter that frequently issues from the third floor, the nocturnal attacks on Rochester and Mason, and the presence of the mysterious Grace Poole, the reader is prepared for this disclosure.! However, Bronte drops the Gothic connection when she reveals that Thornfield's secret is not a supernatural evil but something much more horrifying. The strange and violent woman whom Jane first sees in the mirror and then face to face is neither the mysterious Mrs. 94 Myth Becomes Metaphor in Realistic Fiction 95 Poole nor an inhabitant of the grave, but a living woman, Rochester's mad wife. Given Jane's superstitious nature and what she had already seen of Bertha's violence, her initial conclusion is understandable. Like the vampire in folklore and in earlier literary accounts, Bertha had appeared only at night, once to set fire to Rochester's bed, once to attack her brother and suck his blood. Called to the third floor to nurse Mason after this attack, Jane is frankly perplexed by his semi-delirious references to Bertha: "She bit me.... She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from her. ... She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart" (Ch. XX). Jane cannot understand such inhuman violence; and when she finally sees Bertha herself, she ignores the fact that Bertha is a woman too and distances herself even further from the mad woman by attributing her behavior to a supernatural cause. That Jane's supernatural solution is negated and replaced by a natural one suggests that Bronte is deliberately manipulating the conventions of the Gothic novel, conventions that had enabled writers like Walpole, Lewis, anq Radcliffe to liberate extra-rational qualities, expose hidden motives, and explore the more perverse elements of human behavior; and choosing the vampire to illustrate Bertha's incomprehensible behavior is clearly within the Gothic tradition. What distinguishes Bronte from the Gothic novelists, however, is her emphasis on the psychological and social elements of Bertha's past rather than on the fantastic and lurid aspects of her present existence. This re-emphasis moves Bronte beyond most of the Gothic novelists in that it brings to the foreground elements that were usually only suggested in Gothic novels. In fact, Bronte reveals that characteristics such as violence, irrational behavior, and aggressive sexuality should not be displaced to remote and mysterious regions or buried in the exotic past. These qualities are part of human life even though human beings may try to evade and repress them. In fact, Edith Birkhead observed over half a century ago that...

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