ABSTRACT
This chapter explores particular value of creativity in women’s individuation and focuses on the way in which an authentic demand for individuation can be met through creative process. It discusses two Jungian concepts of great value—the transcendent function, and enantiodromia. In her extended exploration of the character of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte’s development of a creative and psychologically transcendent solution to her heroine’s lack of self-worth is seen to emerge slowly, stage by stage. In the case of the image “Menace”, the chapter argues that Mary Kelly demonstrates the most important dramatic actions of Bronte’s novel—the enantiodromia of the hero. “Menace” serves as an iconic reminder of the female encounter with the archetypal “phallic” power, and the transcendence in an inversion which speaks as eloquently of the abjected feminine. In the alchemy of Bronte’s novel, Rochester underwent torment as to become flesh of her flesh, and Charlotte effected a transcendent function of descent, an inversion of the animus.
