Wednesday
So Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats have finally decided to stand up to the bully in the White House. Think of her as Jane Eyre.
[Note: British readers should feel free to regard Britain’s Supreme Court in the same light as it overruled Boris Johnson 11-0 in his thuggish attempt to suspend Parliament.]
For months many have been calling for the Democrats to take a stand against our lawless president. Pelosi has been resisting, apparently because enough of her caucus feared that impeachment hearings would backfire politically. It may be that Democrat timidity has encouraged the president to act with impunity.
His threat to withhold Congressionally-approved Ukrainian funds unless Ukraine investigated the Biden family, however, has proved to be a bridge too far. Yesterday, as announced in The Washington Post, Pelosi
took the extraordinary step…of initiating impeachment proceedings against President Trump, accusing him of violating the Constitution in seeking help from a foreign leader to damage a political opponent….
“The actions of the Trump presidency have revealed the dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” Pelosi said in a brief statement before a backdrop of American flags, repeatedly invoking the nation’s founders. “Therefore, today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.”
For the early years of her orphaned childhood, Jane Eyre must tolerate the bullying meted out to her by her cousin John Reid, a privileged and pampered rich boy who is
a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks.
Sounds like a certain president.
Unfortunately, as a dependent Jane has no standing to fight back. Reid takes full advantage of her vulnerability:
He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject: she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very presence, more frequently, however, behind her back.
The breaking point occurs when Reid flings a book at Jane so that she cuts her head on a door:
“Wicked and cruel boy!” I said. “You are like a murderer—you are like a slave-driver—you are like the Roman emperors!”
I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, etc. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to have declared aloud.
“What! what!” he cried. “Did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won’t I tell mama? but first—”
He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing. I really saw in him a tyrant, a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic sort. I don’t very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me “Rat! Rat!” and bellowed out aloud.
Although Jane is punished for her resistance, she has made her point. When her cousin tests her resolve one more time, she lets him know she hasn’t softened:
John thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he saw me, and once attempted chastisement; but as I instantly turned against him, roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt which had stirred my corruption before, he thought it better to desist, and ran from me tittering execrations, and vowing I had burst his nose. I had indeed levelled at that prominent feature as hard a blow as my knuckles could inflict; and when I saw that either that or my look daunted him, I had the greatest inclination to follow up my advantage to purpose; but he was already with his mama.
Bronte provides us an alternative response in Helen Burns, Jane’s angelic classmate at Lowood. With her eyes on heaven, Helen accepts as her due the abuse meted out to her by her teachers. When they go low, she goes high.
This is not Jane’s philosophy however, which is why she has inspired activists for decades, from unionizing governesses to suffragettes to 1970s feminists. Arguing with Helen about how to respond to oppressors, she declares,
If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.
Pelosi may have set such a motion in process today. We’ll soon see whether her blow ensures that wicked people don’t have it all their own way.