Perpetual Want to Escape

 The most striking thing to me thus far has been Jane’s innate want to escape her situation.  While Jane’s want to flee does not fluctuate, rather her various forms of escape change with each new setting.  I cannot help but recall back to the philosophy of Jacques Lacan when thinking of the vicious cycle Jane creates for herself over and over again.              

 Lacan, as a psychoanalyst, basically attempted to understand why humans fail.  While this is an incredibly simplified explanation of his vast, and complex reasoning, an answer that can be gleaned from his works allows us to understand that we fail because we desire.  In other words, our true desire in this world is to desire something.  This something he calls the objet a. 

In linking this back to Jane Eyre, we begin to see escape as her objet a, and the various forms this escape takes on.  In Jane’s first setting at Gateshead we almost immediately see her interacting with a book about birds, Bewick’s History of British Birds.  Not only does the obvious connection between birds and escape stand out, but also the image of the book.  Both the bird and the book symbolize escape here, if only for a moment Jane gains the ability to escape though interacting with this book, and by reading about a creature with the ability to fly.  Jane proves this escape from her usually dreary life at Gateshead when she states, “With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way.  I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon” (Bronte 65).  However, due to this interruption, among many, Jane was kept far away from her objet a of becoming a bird and flying away from the only home she knew.  This changed when she was presented with the opportunity to go off to school, but with this opportunity came a major problem.  Immediately, Jane’s objet a was tangible. 

            Delving further into Lacan’s theories, when we satisfy our desires we must come up with another one soon, or else we become anxious, as it is our innate want to desire something.  Lacan calls this process of continually finding new objet as to obsess over drive.  Slavoj Zizek articulates this concept beautifully in his book Looking Awry when he states, “The goal is the final destination, while the aim is what we intend to do…Lacan’s point is that the real purpose of the drive is not its goal (full satisfaction) but its aim; the drive’s ultimate aim is simply to reproduce itself as a drive, to return to its circular path, to continue its path to and from the goal” (Zizek 5).   This is essentially what Jane falls victim to when she enters Lowood. 

            At Lowood, what should be Jane’s attainment of her paradise, or objet a, quickly becomes realized as something else to escape.  While Jane’s ultimate objet a remains escape, it is now escape from Lowood, which is different than escape from Gateshead, and should be remedied as such.  Rather than returning to books of birds to attain escape, this time Jane turns to her imagination.  This is seen when she states, “…trying to forget the cold which nipped me without, and the unsatisfied hunger which gnawed me within, [I] delivered myself up to the employment of watching and thinking” (Bronte 109).  She instead turns to her own thoughts for escape, rather than those of others.  It is also seen later on when Jane is at Thornfield Hall and articulates how painting took up so much of her days, as there was nothing else to do.  We can see how her imagination allowed her to escape through those paintings at Lowood.  However, Jane’s imagination was not enough of an escape as she craved, so she once again began the vicious cycle of drive when she advertized herself and landed in Thornfield Hall.

            At this point, the cyclic nature of Jane’s constant dissatisfaction with her present situation is becoming redundant.  It is clearly seen how dissatisfied Jane is with Thornfield Hall, seeming to call all the residents mediocre in some way or another.  I was getting quite frustrated with her lack of variety in her objet as, as they always returned to being escape of somewhere.  However, this all changed when Mr. Rochester was introduced.  This introduction presents a major break in Bronte’s novel, and I understand it completely due to Lacan’s theories.  Now, rather than perpetuating Jane’s drive into another hunt for escape, Bronte presents us with a whole new drive for Jane to get into.  Mr. Rochester will become Jane’s objet a, a mysterious thing to figure out, something she cannot quite attain.  It is this break in Jane’s cycle of drive and desire that will push the novel forward, and it is through Lacan I can see this happening.