With a
Thousand Faces
Written by Mae Liu
“Orphans are not only haunted by ghosts from turbulent childhoods, but go on to embody wandering “spirits” themselves—born without meaningful ties in society’s margins, and often forced to shed identities or morals for the sake of social mobility.”
“The orphan is a free-thinking revolutionary, a representation of deviance and social anomaly; the ambiguity of their social identity renders them an ideal literary device for analogising systemic upheaval and reform, constantly reinventing new identities in an odyssey for self-discovery.”
He looks like a Victorian orphan child, typed one user. I want to give him a bowl of soup filled with nutrients.
It’s this uncanny, offbeat charm that has millions of fans fawning after him, Finn Wolfhard, and the like— “If he’s not damaged,” my friends would joke, brandishing their roster of celebrity crushes, “I don’t want him.” It rings all the more true on paper—the best characters lining the hall of literary fame always seem to share some arduous interiority, some inherent, troubled nature that prompts us to root for their social ascension. From villain to anti-hero to orphan, these “underdog” archetypes’ allure arguably stems from their flaws—drawing us in by holding up a mirror to our own.
What, then, is the function of the orphan trope in the 19th-century English novel, and the driving force behind its lasting resonance today? If Jane Eyre is the boarding-school-orphan-girl prototype, countless incarnations of the trope have resurfaced since. From the days of Brontë and Dickens’ foundlings to the likes of Harry Potter, Hetty Feather, and Lemony Snicket’s Baudelaires, orphans dominate the bildungsroman sphere—redefining what it means not only to “come of age,” but to do so as a vagrant, excluded and cast from any social or familial hierarchy since birth. With Anne of Green Gables, too, or even Hamilton, these disenfranchised protagonists are allied in their stubborn ambitions and irrepressible, nonconforming spirits that inevitably clash against surrounding norms and structures. Jane’s curiosity and honesty are condemned as deceitful and overly passionate, Hetty Feather’s imaginative nature is punished by the Foundling Hospital’s domineering matrons, Harry’s innate magical powers are shunned and repressed by the tyrannical Dursleys, and so on.
With Jane, each stage of life—and potential to climb up the social ladder—is accompanied by some compromise of her selfhood. From the religious indoctrination at Lowood—courtesy of Brocklehurst and Scatcherd—and its incompatibility with her own sense of justice, to the looming prospect of marriage with Rochester, Jane swings between her desire for agency and her deep-seated need to belong. Reconciling her own yearning for independence with the desire for recognition and love frames the novel’s trajectory, and serves as a microcosm for a larger social dilemma: conformity for the sake of community, and the extent to which one can set aside beliefs and morals for social benefit.
Though Jane laments that “not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than [she is] loved,” she also realises this relationship’s unequal power dynamics—that “him who thus [loves her she] absolutely [worships]” and thus she “must renounce love and idol.” Hence, the pivotal moment where she chooses her own intuition over Rochester’s proposal is bursting with the recognition of her own autonomy: the uninterrupted monologue she employs signifies the culmination of her self-concept in a willful voice that dominates both scene and page. “‘Who in the world cares for you? Or who will be injured by what you do?’ still indomitable was the reply— ‘I care for myself.’”
Characterising her response to self-doubt as “indomitable” effectively underscores her conviction that her final judgments are not only steadfast, but made in her own best interest. “I still possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety,” she continues, the assertive word choice (possession of one’s soul, certainty, ultimate safety) continuing to cement a sense of security in herself. The compartmentalisation of her “body and soul” emphasises the fracturing of her identity as a result of clashing social and emotional forces, while their personifications (each “[rising] in mutiny against their rigour”) further exemplify this inner turmoil. Contradictions are rampant throughout the monologue: “The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself,” she declares, emphasising the theme of self-possession through the harnessing of disparate beliefs, and advocating for their coexistence.
Evidently, Jane is in constant dialogue with the ghosts of self-doubt lingering from her formative years—a mélange of religious guilt and dejection that materialise in Gothic elements like premonitory dreams (tearing of the veil) and supernatural undertones (the lightning-split tree). Orphans are not only haunted by ghosts from turbulent childhoods, but go on to embody wandering “spirits” themselves—born without meaningful ties in society’s margins, and often forced to shed identities or morals for the sake of social mobility. Jane Eyre in particular celebrates the resilience and application of one’s free will, rather than its suppression—Jane’s ascent occurs through her pursuit of true independence, rather than quiet conformity to the institutional structures she is subjected to (religious schooling, marriage, and wifehood). When Rochester implores her not to “struggle so, like a wild frantic bird,” Jane retorts that she is “no bird, and no net ensnares [her];” rather, she is “a free human being with an independent will,” which she “now [exerts]” to leave him. Later, she details her “veins running fire” and her “heart beating faster than [she] can count its throbs,” indicative of her inability to be contained—be it in the physical or emotional realm. Even her heartbeat refuses to be counted, forgoing reason (reduction to numbers) for unfettered self-expression.
It is precisely this theme of self-advocacy, inherently tied to the orphan trope, that helps these narratives of disenfranchisement stand the test of time. Forced to defend themselves against an austere world, children are pitted against institutions as a device for social criticism. Children are ideal symbols for rebellion, change, and the future: the juxtaposition of Helen Burns’ quiet piety with Brocklehurst’s hypocritical self-righteousness is a dynamic reincarnated in modern fiction—A Series of Unfortunate Events, for instance, is built upon the Baudelaire orphans’ inventive ingenuity, and the wilful ignorance of their incompetent caretakers. As the Baudelaires uncover the depths of their past, the adults’ antipathy and neglect are traced back to a larger network of ideological schisms and political collusion. The condition of orphanhood has, therefore, always been a vessel for cross-examination of institutions of authority and, by extension, government systems. No wonder this trope, where social deviance is met with disproportionate suppression, can also take on myriad colonial readings, amplifying its resonance on both personal and political levels.
Moreover, if the sociopolitical turmoil and industrial revolutions of the Victorian era rendered it an orphan to its own history, no doubt the orphan trope’s lasting legacy in modern literature points to a similar zeitgeist—with younger generations sifting through cesspools of moral and political chaos for some social form and sense of self. The orphan is a free-thinking revolutionary, a representation of deviance and social anomaly; the ambiguity of their social identity renders them an ideal literary device for analogising systemic upheaval and reform, constantly reinventing new identities in an odyssey for self-discovery.
Jane Eyre, too, may well have lived through its own “orphanhood” as an insurgent novel—rising from controversial origins to eventual canonisation as a Victorian classic. Yet beneath the veil of its resolution, with Jane’s rightful inheritance and recontextualised marriage with Rochester, still rear the turbulent questions of selfhood and spiritual freedom. Spurned for its then-radical depictions of religious education and the female experience, its “poor, obscure, plain and little” heroine managed to needle her way in regardless—and in turn, helped the archetypal orphan find its home in the social consciousness of Western literature.