Christianity and the State of Slavery

Abstract

Postcolonial readings of Jane Eyre have often highlighted the historical occlusion of West Indian slavery in the novel. Plasa, for instance, argues that

despite the pivotal and determinant role of the West Indies in Jane Eyre in terms of the narrative and economic fortunes of its major characters, Brontë’s text nowhere explicitly refers to the institution of British slavery or the colonial project with which, for the early Victorian reader, the West Indies would still, in 1847, be strongly associated and against whose distant horizon Jane conducts her metro-politan life.

(Textual Politics 62–3)

Penny Boumelha points out that by her reckoning there are ‘ten explicit references to slavery in Jane Eyre. They allude to slavery in Ancient Rome and in the seraglio, to the slaveries of paid work as a governess and of dependence as a mistress. None of them refers to the slave trade upon which the fortunes of all in the novel are based’ (62).