Making Meaning of Prophetic Dreaming
Jane clearly does show power over her dreams through the latter portion of the novel, as Rochester hears her and refers to Bertha’s visage as “a creature of an over stimulated brain,” which proves that other characters are aware of her impressive imagination (Bronte 242).
One of Jane Eyre’s most significant dream sequences revolves around a young child. In the beginning of the novel, a young Jane overhears dreams of children are a “sure sign of trouble,” and as an adult has seven nights of recurring infant dreams (Bronte 187). Jane’s dreams gives her physical contact with the baby, the child having been “hushed on [her] arms, […] dandled on [her] knee,” as well as laughing and crying at various moments (Bronte 188). My theory is the orphan child in her dream goes back to hearing a servant sing at Gateshead Hall, confirmed by professors Gilbert and Gubar, showing Eyre’s incapability of detaching from adolescence (358).
Eyre’s dream adds to Jung's theory that to understand dreams, one must “turn to the past and reconstruct former experiences,” which would be compensatory dreams (70). Jane Eyre again dreams of this “very small creature, too young and too feeble to walk” that shivered and wailed in her hands, but this dream is possibly prospective as well, since it predicts a ruined Thornfield (Bronte 240). Jane has this dream, and before she can confide in Mr. Rochester she tells him that she wishes time to cease, because she fears the future (Bronte 238). She continues to tell him about her dream of “Thornfield [as a] dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owl” (Bronte 241). She dreamt of the house as fragile and “shell-like,” and all around her lay fragments.” Ultimately, this prospective dream is prophetic because it becomes a reality.
Possible Interpretations:
Although the child could be representative of her youthful self, the connection between her childhood and Thornfield expose that it may be more complex than that alone. Writer of The "Image of the Child and the Plot of Jane Eyre," William Siebenschuh, has noted that child figures could represent fear of her responsibilities to Adele, or her feelings of “new” love for Rochester, the authoritarian of adult Eyre. Siebenschuh’s article additionally explores the child as a sign of “subliminal knowledge of the existence of the mad woman in the attic,” Jane’s shadow (307). Calvin Hall and Vernon Nordby, writiers of A Primer of Jungian Psychology, consider the shadow as a conformity archetype, encompassing society’s rules, and conflicts of conformity from “man’s basic animal nature” (48).
In Knapp’s Exile and the Writer, the description of a house for “Edo and Enam” can also be applied to the function is serves in Jane Eyre. The house is said to function as a “centering device” and the “locus within which the events are dramatized” (114-115). The house is a place of imprisonment and containment in this particular description, but the description alone is enough to understand the symbolism of this action (Knapp, Exile, 115). Jane, who refers to the life that lay ahead after her marriage as Rochester’s life, is feeling extremely repressed moments before her bridal day (239). It can be hypothesized, then, that the vision of a shattered Thornfield Hall may the intentional workings of a woman looking to break free from the containment of marriage. Yet, again, it comes to the reader’s attention that a proper woman like Jane can only envision such horror, and never act it out as Bertha has the means to. Indeed, Jane Eyre’s prophetic dream of Thornfield Hall becomes a reality through the hands of her dark shadow, Bertha Mason.
Collage of photos collaborated from the BBC.COM photo gallery
Read more:
Introduction to the Dreams of Jane Eyre
Jung's Principles
Mirrors on the Wall: Early Imaginative Unconscious
Awakening the Imagination
Making Meaning of Prophetic Dreaming
Shadows: Reflections of the Self
Afterthoughts
Critics
Further Reading
About the Author