Monday, March 06, 2006

I came across this post and wondered about how it relates to Jane Eyre and her dreams about a wailing child just before her weddding to Rochester.



Baby
To see a baby in your dream, signifies innocence, warmth and new beginnings. Babies may symbolize something in your own inner nature which is pure, vulnerable, and/or uncorrupted. Babies may represent an aspect of yourself that is vulnerable and helpless. If you dream that you forgot you had a baby, then it suggests that you are trying hide your own vulnerabilities; You do not want to let others know of your weaknesses.
If you dream that you are on your way to the hospital to have a baby, then it signifies your issues of dependency and your desire to be completely care for. Perhaps you are trying to get out of some responsibility. If you are pregnant, then a more direct interpretation may simply mean that you are experiencing some anxieties of making it to the hospital when the time comes.
To dream of a crying baby, is indicative of a part of yourself that is deprived of attention and needs some nurturing. Alternatively, it represents your unfulfilled goals and a sense of lacking in your life.
To dream about a starving baby, represents your dependence on others. You are experiencing some deficiency in your life that needs immediate attention and gratification.
To dream of an extremely small baby, symbolizes your helplessness and your fears of letting others become aware of your vulnerabilities and incompetence. You may be afraid to ask for help and as a result tend to take matters into your own hands.
To see a dead baby in your dream, symbolizes the ending of something that is part of you.
To dream that you are dipping a baby in and out of water, signifies regression. You are regressing to a time where you had no worries and responsibilities. Alternatively, it is reminisce of when the baby is in the fetus and in its comfort zone. In fact, some expectant mothers even give birth in a pool, because the environment in the water mimics the environment in the uterus. It is less traumatic for the baby as it emerges into the world. So perhaps, the dream your search for your own comfort zone.
---from www.dreammoods.com

2 comments:

mysticgypsy said...

Jane dreams of a baby twice when Rochester is away from Thornfield just before the wedding.

The first is as follows (both are found in Volume II, Chapter 10):

"...During all my first sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road; total obscurity environed me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the charge of a little child: a very small creature, too young and feeble to walk, and which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear.......I thought, sir, that you were on the road a long way before me; and I strained every nerve to overtake you, and made effort on effort to utter your name and entreat you to stop —­ but my movements were fettered, and my voice still died away inarticulate; while you, I felt, withdrew farther and farther every moment."

I think, according to the dream interpretation, that this foretells her "unfulfilled goals" (of uniting with Rochester during the wedding) and "sense of lacking" (of love until the very end).

Jane has another dream the same night, also involving a child, which is as follows:
"I wandered, on a moonlight night, through the grass-grown enclosure within: here I stumbled over a marble hearth, and there over a fallen fragment of cornice. Wrapped up in a shawl, I still carried the unknown little child: I might not lay it down anywhere, however tired were my arms —­ however much its weight impeded my progress, I must retain it. I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years and for a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, the child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me; at last I gained the summit. I saw you like a speck on a white track, lessening every moment. The blast blew so strong I could not stand. I sat down on the narrow ledge; I hushed the scared infant in my lap: you turned an angle of the road: I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell, and woke.”

Since the child has the potential to die in this dream, this could mean, according to the dream interpretation, that "To see a dead baby in your dream, symbolizes the ending of something that is part of you." What ends is of course Jane's wish to marry Rochester at this point.

If Bertha is a representation of Jane, then yes, the same would apply to her as well.
I think that, since the Brontes' works are heavily infused with superstition and the gothic, to the Brontes(if not the society in general), dream interpretation would have played a large role. In Jane Eyre, the Gypsy acts as a fortune-teller that even the gentry is tempted to consult.
Dreams have the fascination of magic and mystery, two elements that mean a lot to CB :)

simmi said...

Howzit
came across your participation in frankengirls blog.
Found your responses interresting and decided to pay u a visit.

It is a paradox that human beings are born so pathetically exposed to the 'forces ' of nature...even an insect is borne with its skeleton on the outside of its flesh, and does not need nurturing/mothering in the same way that a human baby does.

Therefore it is quite ironic that we have survived and overcome so much in regards to 'jungle law', and 'survival of the fittest'...in that light I believe that one has to realize and give credit to the 'will' to live, and understand that we are programmed to react to the 'innocence', 'vulnarbility' and 'cuteness' of our 'off-spring' which equals to mechanisms of a baby's suvival instinct, and our need for procreation.

I have never witnessed anything more profound and beautifull than a babies abillity to make you love, nuture, and protect, with out uttering a single word. It is the ultimate seduction...making us believe that 'their' will is 'ours', with no other manipulation than flashing a teethless smile , disarming all of our defences.

There are no negotiations, no treaty to be signed, but to wave the white flag and give in to love; life

how can that equal; loss, deprivation, powerlessness, etc?
unless one chooses to percieve it through a 'male gaze', which intentionally undermines anything feminine; creation, nurturing, intuition, as triviale and too banale to be significant...it is strange how contemporary socitey celebrates and venerates the senseless violence of destruction, war and currency perpetrated by brutal machismo, observing their scars sacrementally...while women are deemed 'damaged goods' if their flesh is imprinted by scarifications of time and the will to suvive; history, love and future...(i question) what weakness can there be in that. Babies symbolicly tend to represent passiveness, purety, dependance etc...but in reality they are hardcore facist's with amazing diplomatic skills.