"The gallery of memory": The pictoral in Jane Eyre

6McLaughlin argues that the three portfolio paintings attest to the loss and abandonment of significant figures-most notably Helen Burns and Mrs. Reed-from Jane's past (22-24) . Linder similarly contends that the changes in Jane's personality must be regarded as the "logical development" of her past (34).

7Jane's analysis of the redroom scene becomes paradigmatic of this significant bifurcation. In the "visionary hollow" of the bedroom mirror, she sees "a strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom" (12). Rather than an example of Jane's total self-involvement from which, according to Blom, she regards others as "adjuncts or impediments to her own fulfillment" (104), such moments in which the divided self manifests itself must be viewed as indicative of the process of development Jane engages in. The self must encounter its self as "other" first before recognizing the essential companionableness of that "strange figure."

8This kinship Jane repeatedly experiences in the presence of Rochester supports Rich's contention thatJane's marriage to Rochester is a "continuation of this woman's creation of herself" (106).

9Meditating on Rochester's deception, Jane describes herself as "self-abandoned.... I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come" (374).

'oAll of the critical assessments of Jane's portfolio paintings referenced above (Gates, Langford, McLaughlin) argue temporal discriminations in quintessential elements where no distinctions exist.

"For a detailed discussion of the significance of the Evening Star and moon for Jane, see Heilman.

'2Tromley insightfully remarks that "So often do scenes echo paintings that we begin to suspect we are dealing with canvas rather than the printed page" (47). 13 For a comparative discussion of Charlotte and Emily's ways of dealing with middlegrounds in relation to foregrounds and backgrounds, see Alexander, "The Art of Charlotte Bronte," 119-20.

14 For a brief history of the paragonal nature of the relationship between word and image and the tendency in Western thought, generally, to privilege the word over image in this contest, see Krieger chapter 1.

15 For a discussion of the significance of shifts in tense, see Shannon.

16. For a discussion of the novel's dialectical resolution of Jane's crisis, see Williams 4850 and Tyler 177-80.

Works Cited

Alexander, Christine. "Charlotte Bronte: The Earnest Amateur." The Art of the Brontes. Ed. Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 36-64.

. "The Art of Charlotte Bronte." The Art of the Brontes. Ed. Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. 118135.

Allen, Walter. The English Novel: A Short Critical History. London: Dutton, 1955.

Blom, Margaret Howard. Charlotte Bronte. Boston: Twayne, 1977. Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Ian and Jane Jack. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969.

Gates, Barbara. "`Visionary Woe' and Its Remains: Another Look at Jane Eyre's Paintings." Ariel 7 (1976): 36-49.