Jacqueline Banerjee in “Frail Treasures: Child Death and the Victorian Novel” (2007) describes the Victorian novelists’ obsession with death as a means of resolve. Victorian writers would situate an innocent child who slowly accrues self-awareness after a death. This sacrificial death would then create an impetus for character development. Banerjee describes this as a meeting between the Romantic ideal of the innocent child and the Evangelical ‘saved’ [dead] child who then serves as a spiritual guide, as an angel. While the process of the death and dying is a quite chaotic, there are subtle transformations that the innocent child goes through that indicates that they, too, are near the liminal space between life and death in ways that disorient the character, causing confusion and identity crises.

            We see this working with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (2016), where at first when she is separated from her best friend Helen Burns she, metaphorically, without “sight” while the powers that be removed her ability to “speak” (75). We can see this as a way to not only illustrate that impending deaths invoke an almost statelessness to those who are also effected by death in its periphery, but it suggest that, for Victorians and their literature, that in order shed a child of innocence one must be, as Caroline Sharman states in “Views of Blindness and Deafness and Jane Eyre” (1996) reduced to an animalistic state where “the dignity of man” is removed, which then initiates a deliberation of capitulation and then, finally, “Resurgam,” or to rise again (77)—which then throws Jane Eyre into a new chapter of her life. Helen is then thrown into a spiritual, ghostly position as someone who Jane Eyre, in the “Autobiography of Jane Eyre: Webseries” describes Helen, in Episode 20: “Confession,” became the person that changed who she was, Helen “shared all of her books [with Jane]…Reading people’s stories helped [her] understand them.” This adaption of Jane Eyre’s character takes a turn towards the bible, where Jane leans heavier into religion. Helen becomes, in this instance, as Jane’s angel.

 Citations:

Banerjee, Jacqueline. “Frail Treasures: Child Death and the Victorian Novel,” The Victorian Web. 15 July 2007. URL: http://www.victorianweb.org/genre/childlit/banerjee1.html. Accessed:

10 Nov. 2019.

 Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Deborah Lutz, W.W. Norton & Company (2016), London. pp. 75-77. Print.

 Hall, Alysson. “Confession – Ep: 20.” Youtube. Exec Producer: Erika Babins, Stage Manager: Sinead Hughes, Writer: Alysson Hall, Director: Nessa Aref, Editor: Charlotte Zwimpher. The Autobiography of Jane Eyre: a web series. 11 Sept. 2013. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_j7cVXSM_A&list=PLI1RWwMQaux8teZ7W3an4cQCdpB4ljCiu&index=28.

Sharman, Caroline. “Views of Blindness and Deafness and Jane Eyre,” The Victorian Web. 1993. URL: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/cbronte/sharman10.html. Accessed: 10 Nov. 2019.