Critical Article

Issue III | Contents | Articles

Rosalind Branagan

University of Bristol

England

     In The Waterfall, Margaret Drabble’s appropriation and reworking of elements from Charlotte Brontλ’s Jane Eyre suggests both an indebtedness to, and an attempt to break away from, the pervasive influence of Brontλ’s novel. To figure the intertextual connection that exists between the two novels as a “relationship” is a particularly pertinent description of their association: the term “relationship” implies a bond between the texts that is almost familial. The attempted ‘escape’ from the “predecessor text”, coupled with the ‘familial’ bond between the novels, suggests a variation on Harold Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence (Berg 131). Bloom theorizes that “strong poets . . . clear imaginative space for themselves” by “misreading” one another’s work (5). This theory can be realigned to apply to The Waterfall and Jane Eyre: Drabble might be seen to be “clear[ing] imaginative space” for herself by incorporating a creative “misreading” of Jane Eyre into her own work. This modification of Bloom’s theory, however, only partly encapsulates Drabble’s apparent attitude to Jane Eyre: there also seems to be an acknowledgement of indebtedness to Brontλ’s novel, thus the relationship between The Waterfall and Jane Eyre is clearly a dual or divided one.

     The idea of division can be applied to the texts themselves in the context of a postmodern notion of the divided self. A female multiplicity of identity is, according to Elaine Showalter, manifested in Jane Eyre by three separate figures that represent different facets of Jane’s personality: Jane (central consciousness), Bertha Mason ( wild demon) and Helen Burns ( self-denying angel) (114). This multiplicity is apparently discarded when Brontλ “destroy[s] the two polar personalities to make way for . . . the central consciousness” (114). In The Waterfall, however, this fragmentation of the self, and an implicit acceptance thereof, is continually acknowledged, not only in the text, but in the novel’s very structure. Jane Gray refers to herself as “less split than divided”: a “split” evokes a violent rending, where a division perhaps implies the possibility of co-existence (Drabble 104). Furthermore, even when the narrator goes on to refute this claim, saying she can “no longer support the division," the structure of the novel undermines Jane’s assertion that she is “coming together”: the oscillation between first and third person narration seems to reify the implication that Jane’s identity is constructed as a divided one (104). As Ellen Cronan Rose affirms, “if being female means feeling divided,” it seems “appropriate, if not necessary, to depict this division formally” (88). While Brontλ apparently hints at and then rejects the idea of a fragmentary female identity, Drabble seems to seize upon the concept by both explicitly referring to it in the text, and using it as a central structural conceit: “what can I make that will admit me and encompass me? . . . a broken and fragmented piece” (46). This idea, as manifested in The Waterfall, seems to embody a liberating, or at least exploratory, force: one that is precluded by literary conventions in Jane Eyre.

     In addition to expanding upon Brontλ’s oblique suggestions of a female multiplicity of identity, Drabble also utilizes and inverts much of Jane Eyre’s imagery, perhaps the most significant example being Drabble’s reconfiguration of the red-room. Barbara A. Nelson observes that Drabble transforms Brontλ’s “patriarchal death chamber into a matriarchal birthing room”: in order to achieve this, Drabble inverts or subverts Brontλ’s imagery in several ways (103). First, Brontλ’s constraining patriarchal red-room, which Jane Eyre believes may be haunted by her dead uncle, becomes, in Drabble’s hands, a matriarchal space of “deliverance”: Jane Gray experiences “salvation” rather than fear (10). Second, the “chill”, “deep red” room in Jane Eyre  becomes “warm” and “dark blue” in The Waterfall: a complete inversion that further establishes Drabble’s representation of “female inner space” as oppositional to Brontλ’s  (Showalter 114). Third, the associations of the color red with blood, which render the red-room like a “death chamber” (emphasized when Jane has a vision of “a terrible red glare, crossed with thick black bars”) are subverted by Drabble’s association of the actual blood in Jane Gray’s room with female creativity–a creativity that is both biological and artistic (Showalter 306). These two forms of creation seem to be intrinsically linked in The Waterfall: shortly after giving birth, Jane “could feel the blood flowing from her into the white moist sheets”; later the image is echoed when Jane writes poetry, “the ink [pouring] onto the sheets like blood” (110).

     Drabble’s critique of Jane Eyre and other nineteenth century realist fiction, such as George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, which lends The Waterfall certain features of its plot and its ubiquitous water imagery, is not, however, merely confined to an appropriation of theme and metaphor: Drabble makes Jane Gray directly criticise the conventions of realism in her narrative. Jane’s apparently deliberate misquotation of the opening line of Jane Eyre’s concluding chapter appears, at first glance, to be a straightforward condemnation of Brontλ and Jane Eyre: “Reader, I loved him: as Charlotte Brontλ said. Which was Charlotte Brontλ’s man, the one she created and wept for . . . , or the poor curate that had her and killed her . . . ?” (84). Jane Gray, and perhaps Drabble, seems to be pointing out Brontλ’s, and possibly other nineteenth century female writers such as Eliot’s, hypocrisy in not emulating the central tenets of their fiction; Jane Eyre is, after all, subtitled “An Autobiography”. This superficially simplistic correlation between author and novel has been criticised for positioning Jane Gray in relation to a “stereotypical composite” of Brontλ and Jane Eyre (Fuoroli 117). Yet such an elision might be interpreted as another manifestation of Drabble’s apparent desire to escape the influence of the predecessor text. Patsy Stoneman contends that “from this distance in time . . . ‘Charlotte Brontλ’ is just as much a textual construct as ‘Jane Eyre,’” implying that it is not only the fiction by these authors that Drabble is attempting to break free from, but also the ‘fictions’ of the authors: the enduring mythologies that surround them (154).

     Despite the desire to escape the influence of Jane Eyre and other texts, there is, yet again, a simultaneous recognition in The Waterfall of their importance, and the author’s and narrator’s inability to elude them entirely. For example, immediately after Jane Gray’s misquotation of Brontλ, she figures herself in terms intimately related to the composite figure of Brontλ/Jane Eyre: “the world that I lived in with him . . . was . . . some Brussels of the mind, where I trembled and sighed for my desires” (84). Indeed, Jane Gray constantly views herself in relation to literary paradigms, at one point stating that she believed “all the romantic accoutrements” such as “up-rooted trees . . . would follow a consuming passion”: this is an image that is highly reminiscent of the horse-chestnut tree symbolically cleft in two in Jane Eyre (228). In addition, when Jane Gray muses: “I suppose people have loved other people before. It can’t be new, can it?”, there is the suggestion of a wry comment from Drabble on both the narrator’s and the author’s incapability of avoiding self-definition through literary constructions (44).

     The tension between the desire to escape literary archetypes and the deference to their prevailing power is appositely demonstrated in Drabble’s depiction of James as both heroic lover and anti-hero; and in Jane Gray’s recognition that she cannot help but see her lover in terms of literary conventions. An attempt to defy such conventions is manifested in Drabble’s presentation of James as a kind of amalgamation of Rochester and St. John Rivers. Like St. John, James is blond and handsome; however, when Jane expects his touch to be a corresponding “icy chill,” she is surprised that “his skin burn[s]”: he is not “ice” like St. John, but “fire” like Rochester (199, 395). Moreover, as Nelson observes, James’s reckless driving is “a twentieth century version of Rochester’s mad gallops across landscapes” (Nelson 103). This parodic modification of Rochester’s typically ‘masculine’ proclivities undermines the literary conventions of the heroic lover: both Jane and Lucy find James’s car-racing “bor[ing],” rather than sexually exciting (82).

     There is, however, a concurrent acceptance of an inability to avoid the conventions that surround the figure of the hero, which is demonstrated by Jane Gray’s identification of James with Rochester. Both characters possess a vital force: Jane Gray believes that “if [James] were to rise violently to his feet the whole room would collapse” (61) , which echoes Jane Eyre’s comparison of Rochester’s “presence in a room” to “the brightest fire” (Maynard 112). Drabble also appears to use Jane’s narrative to admit the difficulty of avoiding figuring the heroic lover-character in relation to such paradigms: “she wondered whether it was . . . stories reaching her feebly through a thousand alterations, or whether it was the man himself that so affected her” (28). When Jane realizes she “had magnified [James’s] trivial cares into Herculean labors for her” (205), this not only echoes Brontλ’s frequent identification of Rochester with mythical men of superhuman strength, such as Hercules and Samson, but also recognizes both the inadequacy, and the inescapability, of such literary constructions of idealized masculinity.

     Perhaps the most decisive subversion of nineteenth century realist convention to be found in The Waterfall is Drabble’s refusal of a traditional ending. Lilian R. Furst notes that in nineteenth century realist fiction “the options for the female protagonists are reduced to either marriage or death” (20). Drabble ironically points towards the latter conclusion with moments of apparent foreshadowing: Jane wonders “Perhaps I’ll go mad with guilt like Sue Bridehead, or drown myself . . . like Maggie Tulliver,” and later discusses “using [her] corpse . . . to recreate the crash that [she] died in” (145). Yet Drabble abandons the “sad inheritance” of a conventional moralistic ending, leaving both Jane and James alive and apparently unpunished for their adultery (154). Drabble also makes specific references to the denouement of Jane Eyre, making Jane Gray toy with the idea of using it: “he would live . . . like Rochester, to drag blindly on, perhaps” (189). Eventually, however, despite declaring, “I could have maimed James so badly, in this narrative, that I would have been allowed to have him, as Jane Eyre had her blinded Rochester,” Jane allows James to recover: both author and narrator reject Brontλ’s ending (231).

     Indeed, this conclusion could be viewed as a distinctively ‘feminine ending,’ not only in its rejection of the moralistic, patriarchally-influenced denouements of Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss and other similar works, but also in its rejection of the very notion of ‘ending’ (231). Hιlθne Cixous claims that “A feminine textual body” is “without ending”: this seems to be reflected in The Waterfall in a number of ways  (Eagleton 324). Firstly, Jane Gray states that there is “no ending” to her narrative, which “otherwise was so heavily orchestrated”: a rebellion against the ‘orchestration’ of conventional realist endings (232). Secondly, when the narrative appears to have terminated, Jane embarks upon “a postscript,” which Rose calls “a triumph of feminine form,” and which resists the notion of a definitive moment of closure (96). Thirdly, Jane’s “‘masculine’” final statement, “I prefer to suffer,” is followed by the equivocal, “feminine” ending, “I think” (96).

     The creation of this “feminine ending” also reflects Jane Gray’s power as a female artist: a power that is elucidated by Drabble’s comparison of Jane’s creativity to the concept of providence–a concept that is prevalent in Jane Eyre. It is possible to read “providence” as a symbol of patriarchal constraint: Jane Eyre submits herself to providence, just as Jane Eyre submits itself to the patriarchal conventions of realism. Jane Gray, however, while acknowledging a belief in providence as a “fated pattern,” does not conform to patriarchally-influenced literary conventions, because it is she, not “providence,” who controls her fate: she “made that loneliness” (49-161). Perhaps most tellingly, the accident “give[s] shape to [her] guilt”: Jane, presented as an artist, ‘moulds’ her guilt into this form (195). The accident is Jane’s own stylistic conceit, her transgression does not automatically lead to a providentially-ordained punishment, as realist conventions would demand.

     The Waterfall, then, embodies both an indebtedness to, and an effort to escape from, the omnipresent influence of Jane Eyre and other predecessor texts. To return to a modified version of Bloom’s “anxiety of influence,” the “escape” might be seen to partly correspond with what Bloom calls “clinamen,” whereby “A poet swerves away from his precursor” (14). The indebtedness to “precursor” female authors, however, might be figured as an adaptation of Betsy Erkkila’s theory of a “sense of kinship” between female writers (544). Indeed, an incorporation of adapted versions of Bloom’s male-centred model and Erkkila’s female-centred theory is fitting in relation to The Waterfall. Bloom’s theory focuses on a masculine, Oedipal struggle; Jane Gray identifies herself with Oedipus, saying “In seeking to avoid my fate, like Oedipus, I had embraced it” (227). Erkkila’s theory suggests the myth of Demeter and Persephone as a model for female authorial relationships, symbolizing the movement of “separation from” to “reunion with . . . matrilineal sources”; Jane also figures herself, albeit coincidentally, in Persephone-like terms, saying “I split myself, I went underground” (544). This demonstrates the dual, or even paradoxical, nature of The Waterfall’s relationship with Jane Eyre: Drabble’s novel both acknowledges the importance and influence of Brontλ’s work, and displays a desire to break away from such influence. The description of Jane Gray’s poems aptly summarizes this: just as the poems are “at once a defiance and a distant grateful bow to providence,” so The Waterfall is both a “defiance” of, and a “grateful bow” to, Jane Eyre (233).

Works Cited

Stoneman, Patsy. Brontλ Transformations: The Cultural Dissemination of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. London: Prentice, 1996.