What is it to hold to things you cannot see, touch, taste or feel?  To be governed by principles no legislation can decree but the whisperings of your own heart, your instincts, your faith — ineffable as it is? 

One cannot say anything truly new about Jane Eyre.  The dissertations, the scholarly journals, the prefaces and epilogues have said all, have dissected it through the lenses of gender, society, identity and craft.  Yet it is the nature of analysis to say more about the lens than its subject, so perhaps I can say something new yet, or say it in a new way — this being my design: to discover the nature of analog values by applying them.  I can examine Jane Eyre through this novel lens as a way to glimpse the lens itself, for how else can one study context?

Let us start with this: Jane Eyre as a repudiation of appearances in favor of substance, of material reality in favor of spiritual (or ontological) essence, and of gratification in favor of principle. 

In Jane’s parting from her Rochester, the love of her life, now discovered as a would-be bigamist —  these three repudiations are one.  This is her moment of self-definition, and yet she finds herself defined not by “self,” but by the giving over of self:

Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation:  they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be.  If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?  They have a worth–so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane–quite insane:  with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by:  there I plant my foot.

Here is Jane’s articulation of integrity.  If principles are not universally true, independent of circumstance, they are not principles but rather characteristics.  Their nature is corrupted; they descend from a greater sphere to a lesser one.  And yet, what are these principles upon which Jane’s essential nature depends?  Where are they to be found?  Conscience cannot uphold them, nor morality, for it could be said that Rochester’s love for Jane is of purer origin than the precepts of a society that binds him to a false marriage. 

Integrity, Jane finds, rests not on what is right, or even true, but is comprised of nothing more substantial than a word, immutable once uttered. 

In the context of her world, it is God’s word, but we can see in its contours a truth beyond the interpretations ascribed to it by the ethos of her age.  The material world must come and go, must change ceaselessly and thereby remain essentially changeless.  This is the mundane nature of material reality — it cannot transcend its nature by resort to its own mechanisms.  Having discovered Rochester’s bigamist designs, what is Jane to do?  Were she to rest her actions upon reason, upon desire, upon whim or avarice, the result would be the same: the transgression would remain.  In claiming her heart’s desire, her love for Rochester, she would destroy it.  But why?  What would she have transgressed?  If neither reason, nor justice, nor morality support the decree, upon what does it rest? 

“Preconceived opinions, forgone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”

It is not that Jane’s God has said what must be, it is that Jane has pledged her own word, prior to temptation, and it is here she plants her foot.  Her principles’ power derives not from rectitude, from adherence to some underlying truth, but from commitment itself.  One’s word, as it turns out, has power precisely because it not supported by anything at all — by reason, justice or desire.  It is an act, not an object, and it must rest on nothing, for to justify it by any other exigency is to see it devolve into the world of circumstance, the mundane, ever-changing, changeless sphere which Jane and Rochester’s love promised to transcend.  And so, the only way to remain true to that transcendent connection is to turn from its material manifestations. 

Jane must leave. 

What does this say about the nature of analog values?  Herein lies a paradox.  Webster tells me this:

Analog: of, relating to, or being a mechanism or device in which information is represented by continuously variable physical quantities .

This sounds like material reality, and it is this physical, continuous reality that analog is generally associated with.  The digital world is the sphere of O’s and 1’s, of events that are discrete from one another and therefore represent the possibility of transformation.  Yet, once again, it turns out to be the dichotomy itself between analog and digital that assumes transformational power.  For which sphere is truly immutable?  The material world, which remains changeless in being ever-defined by an illusory past and future?  Or the world of principle that rests upon declaration, which in turn rests upon nothing?  Is immutability to be equated with continuity, an analog trait, or discreteness, which adheres only to itself? 

Heck, I don’t know.  If the purpose of analysis is to illuminate the lens, perhaps we can at least conclude this: that the dichotomy of “digital versus analog” probes the interplay between form and formlessness.  It teaches us something about our nature not by ascribing attributes, but by posing contradictions — paradoxical because the nature of reality is paradoxical.  And therein lies its value as a lens. 

What use is all this for one’s everyday life?  I would propose this:  Jane’s quandary reminds us of pursuits more enduring than the gratification of short term, material desires, easily satiated, but not sustaining.  Without integrity, we risk dissipation, yet to honor one’s word, one must first give it.  This inclination, at least, seems analog in nature — to turn from the transitory toward the enduring, and it is there one inevitably confronts paradox. 

This poem from the Tao Te Ching says it well:

The Formless Way

We look at it, and do not see it; it is invisible.
We listen to it, and do not hear it; it is inaudible.
We touch it, and do not feel it; it is intangible.
These three elude our inquiries, and hence merge into one.

Not by its rising, is it bright,
nor by its sinking, is it dark.
Infinite and eternal, it cannot be defined.
It returns to nothingness.
This is the form of the formless, being in non-being.
It is nebulous and elusive.

Meet it, and you do not see its beginning.
Follow it, and you do not see its end.
Stay with the ancient Way
in order to master what is present.
Knowing the primeval beginning is the essence of the Way.”
― Tao Te Ching – Translated by S. Beck

Image: Charlotte Bronte, sketch from Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous Women, PD – old artwork, via Project Gutenberg.