Jane Eyre focuses mostly on the relationship of Jane and Rochester, but it’s also a story about Jane growing up. She is seen to be a very non-feeling person with those around her, and she shares many traits with people with autism. Before autism was diagnosed, she was likened to a changeling because that is what children with autism used to be called with all of their incomprehensible dispositions. After autism came to be, she was seen to share most of the defining characteristics of autism. Art was another way Bronte showed that Jane would have autistic characteristics like hyper-focusing on specific interests.
In Irish folklore, a changeling was a deformed offspring of fairies, which were put into the beds of the human infants that they would kidnap. They were often said to exhibit weird behaviors or have traits that were not normally found in humans. This was often where the idea of neurodivergent people being changelings came from. This is the basis of the idea that Jane could be seen as a changeling because of “the connections between the changeling lore and autistic traits as a means of coping for parents with neurodivergent or disabled children. (Patrick-West)” One scene of Jane being described as other than that of a human child was when she went to visit her aunt. Her aunt described her as having an “incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of one’s movement. (Bronte 300)” Changelings has traits that are said to be not like those seen in human children like speaking in other languages, which Jane’s aunt said Jane also did, “I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a fiend– no child ever spoke or looked as she did. (300)” The way that Jane’s aunt would describe Jane as a little kid is very much how one would have described a child who was said to be a changeling. Her aunt is one of the biggest factors in the claim that she is a changeling is true, as the abuse she suffered from her aunt would be backed by saying that “changeling children are often scapegoated and abused. (Patrick-West)” Bronte didn’t live in a time of autism, but she definitely grew up hearing stories about a changeling, and this was probably a reason she wrote Jane the way she did. She grew up in an Irish household, even though her father tried to shield his family from the Irish name they were born with because it impeded the family’s pursuit of status. (Patrick-West)” Bronte grew up with the idea that her Irish heritage was seen as a bad thing, so she took an evil folktale and made it into her main character.
In Grace Patrick-West’s essay, “The Realm of Faeries: Queerness and Neurodivergence in Jane Eyre,” she looks at Julia Miele Rodas’s essay, “On the Spectrum”: Rereading Contact and Affect in Jane Eyre, where Rodas talks about her lack of emoting her feelings. Jane has a problem of talking about her feelings with Rochester, so he ends up seeing her as unfeeling. “On the most basic level, autism relates to difficulties in social, emotional, and communication skills. Jane appears to display difficulties in all of the aforementioned fields, (Patrick-West) which is shown when she cannot relay her feelings to Rochester or when she has troubles even noticing his love for her. Her emotional ineptitude is shown to her by Rochester when he says “You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love, (Bronte 181-182)” this is during when Rochester is telling Jane about Adele’s mother, but he doesn’t stop to see if Jane will answer. He just assumes that she is as unfeeling as always. This shows that her emotional ineptitude is something that she shows on a regular occurrence. Jane was always seen by people as someone who has never had feelings, so why should she see love? Early on though, Bronte told her audience that Jane does have feelings, even if it is through Jane herself, “You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. (41)” Another time that Bronte has Jane tell people that she is not unfeeling is right before Rochester proposes to Jane, and she tells him, “Do you think that I am an automaton?– a machine without feelings? (17)” She says this in the context that she thinks Rochester is telling her to leave, but he isn’t, he wants her to stop being the governess so that she would marry him. This entire situation would be very confusing for any person, but for Jane especially, she doesn’t know how to read others’ feelings and social cues very well because of her neurodivergent brain and upbringing. People with autism are often seen as unfeeling like Jane is, but they do have feelings, they just have a harder time showing them to people. Neurodivergent people are viewed to be unfeeling unless they are talking about one of their interests, which could be a lot of things, but in Jane Eyre, Jane loves art.
Based on her blunt nature and struggle to connect with people, as well as her pursuit in special interests like art and reading (especially when considering her fascination with images), one can view her character as autistically coded. Art and images are important to Jane in terms of her understanding of the world, which Bronte shows from the very beginning when Jane is reading a book about the history of British birds. She isn’t able to get out and explore the real world at all, so she takes every chance of learning she can get, even if it means that she might be punished by her cousins and aunt. Jane struggles to connect with people, including Rochester, and she hides behind her art to express her own feelings about him and the rest of the world. She describes to her readers the art that she is showing to Rochester in one scene, she seems to never be satisfied by her own work, “they were striking, but my hand would not second my fancy, and in each case, it had wrought out a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived. ( Bronte 159)” Rochester then asked her if she was happy when she was working on her paintings, and she replied “‘I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in short, was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known, (160)” which really brings to light the feelings that people with autism really have when they truly love something. Another interesting thing that Bronte did with Jane’s art was make the landscapes to point out the fact that Jane is longing for the real world. Rodas explains why it is not hard to see Jane as on the spectrum because of her “visual orientation and artistic skill. (Rodas 67)” She also brings back the attention to the beginning when Jane said that she cared “little” for the words on the page, but she loved the pictures, which helps to confront the readers “with the narrator’s devotion to the visual and her ability to concentrate entirely, to enter into an almost altered state when visually occupied. (Rodas 67)” Bronte has made art one of the key ways that the readers are able to relate to Jane, and it gives neurodivergent people a person in classic literature to relate to. If neurodivergent people have people, like Jane or if another example is needed from classic literature Mr. Dracy, they will see that people like them have always been around.
Jane Eyre isn’t a book that could be looked at as a neurodivergent book at first glance, but underneath the coming-of-age and romance themes, the autism-coded Jane could help neurodivergent people relate to the world. Bronte showed her readers the truth of the matter, even if it could be seen as fantasy at the time. Calling children “changelings” has disappeared nowadays, but in Bronte’s time, it was still used. Patrick-West showed her readers how to view Jane as autistic, even if it is by calling her a changeling. Rodas as brought great points to the table to show that Jane was autistic with her art and bluntness.
Work Cited:
Bolt, David, et al. The Madwoman and the Blindman, The Ohio State University Press, 2013, pp. 1–10.
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Vintage Classics, 2009.
Patrick-West, Grace. “The Realm of Faeries: Queerness and Neurodivergence in Jane Eyre: Synaptic.” Central College, central.edu/writing-anthology/2021/04/13/the-realm-of-faeries-queerness-and-neurodivergence-in-jane-eyre/. Accessed 26 Apr. 2024. Rodas, Julia Miele. “‘On the Spectrum’: Rereading Contact and Affect in Jane Eyre.” The Madwoman and the Blindman, The Ohio State University Press, 2013, pp. 51–70.
