Shameful Signification: Narrative and Feeling in Jane Eyre

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I want to explore the implications of this formative call “for shame” as it weaves into the presentation of Jane Eyre’s interiority and personal relations, and into the novel’s structure and narrative techniques, in a form not easily accounted for as either pronounced repression or covert Foucauldian discipline.(Bennett300)

 

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Yet what are we to make of that emotion which inspires　the first diegetic mention of Jane Eyre’s surname and punctuates her physical　imprisonment in the metaphorically rich red-room as a young girl—“For　shame! for shame! . . . What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre” (9)? This cry “for　shame” suggests that shame constitutes both an introduction of “Miss Eyre” to the　reader and an interpellation of Jane into the contours of gendered interiority and　social relations.

 

 

Bennett, Ashly. " Shameful Signification: Narrative and Feeling in Jane Eyre", The Ohio State University Press, 18:3 (Oct, 2010):300-323