Thornfield Hall
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"In The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard speaks of “the rationality of the roof” as opposed to “the irrationality of the cellar.” In the attic, he notes, “the day’s experiences can always efface the fears of the night,” while the cellar “becomes buried madness, walled-in tragedy” (pp. 18-20). Thornfield’s attic is, however, in his sense both cellar and attic, the imprisoning lumber-room of the past and the watch-tower from which new prospects are sighted, just as in Jane’s mind mad “restlessness” coexists with “harmonious” reason."--The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar |
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Thornfield Hall is a fictional location in the 1847 novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. It is the home of the male romantic lead, Edward Fairfax Rochester, where much of the action takes place.
Brontë uses the depiction of Thornfield in a manner consistent with the gothic tone of the novel as a whole. An isolated mansion of unspecified size, the house has a number of apparently unused rooms that become important to the narrative during the Bertha Mason passages. The Hall's gloomy character also expresses and amplifies the sense of Mr. Rochester's depression and malaise before he falls in love with Jane.
In contrast, the grounds surrounding Thornfield are sublime and healthful to the novel's many troubled characters and serve as a backdrop to many happier scenes.
