Audre Lorde’s analysis in “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action*,” clearly explains Jane’s tendency to oppress and resist.

The scene from Jane Eyre that explicitly expresses Lorde’s feelings and ideas is when Mr. Brocklehurst stood Jane on a stool, and called her a “liar.”

Jane, being called a liar in front of a big audience, and especially, in front of Miss Temple who Jane looked up to, felt utterly humiliated. At that moment, even though Jane was a resistant child, all she could do was stay silent due to her fear of being judged by others. Lorde’s analysis explicitly expressed this fear as: “In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear – fear of contempt, of censure or some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation,” (42).

Although Jane did not directly oppressed Mr. Brocklehurst’s false exclamation about Jane’s dishonest characteristics, she did, however, oppressed his claims indirectly. She was able to oppress the defamation through Ms. Temple as Jane clearly explained how and why she was labeled as a “liar.” In the novel, even though Ms. Temple was the one who approached Jane that gave Jane the opportunity to oppress, I believe that Jane would have oppressed some other way even if Ms. Temple did not approach her. In Lorde’s analysis, Lorde said that, “you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside,” (42). Using this analysis, I can imagine Jane taking her own measures by publicly speaking out, later in her future, about her true nature and the falsehood of Mr. Brocklehurst’s exclamation as she would have had enough of being silent and not being able to defend herself.

I believe and Lorde’s analysis supports that Jane’s oppression and resistance in this scene is to show that Jane is not who she is by definition of someone who has authority; instead, Jane is who she is because of the way she is and only Jane, herself, has the authority to truly define who she is: “Kujichagulia – self determination – the decision to define ourselves, name ourselves, and speak for ourselves, instead of being defined and spoken for by others,” (43).