Unuttered: Withheld speech and female authorship in Jane Eyre and Villette

"Did I read my letter there and then?" (299) Lucy asks rhetorically. No:

I stole from the room, I procured the key of the great dormitory which was kept locked by day. I went to my bureau; with a sort of haste and trembling lest Madame should creep up-stairs and spy me, I opened a drawer, unlocked a box, and took out a case, and-having feasted my eyes with one more look, and approached the seal, with a mixture of awe and shame and delight, to my lips-I folded the untasted treasure, yet all fair and inviolate, in silver paper, committed it to the case, shut up box and drawer, reclosed, relocked the dormitory, and returned to class, feeling as if fairy tales were true and fairy gifts no dream. (300)

The intense attention Lucy pays to the materiality of the letter, its handwriting, the impress of the initials, might allow for interpreting Lucy as fetishizing the written signs inscribed by Dr. John Bretton as a substitute for his absent person and voice. But such an interpretation becomes untenable once Lucy misplaces the letter and its author, Dr. John, himself appears:

"Oh! they have taken my letter!" cried the groveling, groping, monomaniac. "What letter, Lucy? My dear girl, what letter?" asked a known voice in my ear.

Could I believe that ear? No: and I looked up. Could I trust my eyes? Had I recognized the tone? Did I now look on the face of the writer of that very letter? Was this gentleman near me in this dim garret, John Graham-Dr. Bretton himself? (308)

A traditional definition of writing as a secondary substitution for speech would require that in the presence of the letter's writer, Lucy would no longer miss the letter. But this is not what happens. Instead, Lucy's longing for the letter itself is absolutely undiminished in the presence of "the face of the writer of that very letter," as she explains to Dr. John: "'I had saved it all day-never opened it till this evening: it was scarcely glanced over: I cannot bear to lose it. Oh, my letter!"' (308) So we must conclude that Lucy wants not Dr. John but his writing; and wants not simply his writing, but his writing concealed, locked up in a series of enclosures, contained and withheld-"committed ... to the case, shut up box and drawer, reclosed, relocked" (300). Lucy suggests that language accrues significance by remaining undivulged. The process of locking up, encasing, should be understood, however, not as a construction of privacy but instead of that interiority that retreats and withdraws in order to attain the value of writing circulated through a national print sphere. Lucy's letter, I am suggesting, becomes a figure for just that kind of value in writing. We should remember that Bronte dedicated Jane Eyre to Thackeray yet did not seem to enjoy his company, much as Lucy seems not to want Dr. John himself in person, but rather in writing.