Being Jane
His hand is sweating. It means he’s nervous. True, it’s the middle of the summer and probably 90 degrees outside, but I know him. I know that this sweat is the nervous kind. But somehow, his hand cradling my own hand creates a kind of solace that exists despite the sweat, despite the fact that my mind is producing thoughts that multiply at a speed unbeknownst to man, despite the reality that when I leave this ceremony today, I won't be who I was when I entered it. I’ll be Mrs. Andrew Scott. No longer a girlfriend, no longer a fiancé, no longer a bride even, but a wife.
I look down at the crisp, magnolia white, lace material that hugs my body like a long lost friend. I hold on to my dress for dear life, as images of my future flash in my mind: 5-year anniversaries, family dinners, and dirty laundry. I whisper softly under my breath, “we’re going to make it.” He doesn’t hear me.
Our past is a rocky one, filled with family histories, ex-relationships, and random simple arguments that managed to blow up to the size of my hair… But through it all, I wouldn’t give him up. At the risk of sounding cliché, I don’t want to imagine my life without him. Yet, somehow on this day I have to imagine it. This day, when my identity becomes fused with another, I force myself to stand as an individual for one fleeting second. In this second, I am my own woman ready to pledge my dedication, my honor, and my love to this man.
He squeezes my hand, and the sweat bubbles that formed between our palms burst with wild energy. I feel his eyes gazing at me, and I turn to meet them.
“Are you ready?” Andrew asks, his mouth curved into a small smile.
I simply nod and press my forehead to his, never letting go of his hand. Hoping that after today, I can learn to be a wife to my husband while never letting go of being Jane.
Man and Wife as a Semiotic Relationship
When women think of marriage, do they only see the beautiful white dress, the flowers, and the ring? When the word wife is thrown around on the unwedded woman’s lips, does she mistake the concept of wife for that of a bride? Let us not mistake the signifier and the signified in this relationship between the woman and her title as a wife. When considering the semiotics according to Ferdinand de Saussure in his work, "Course on General Linguistics," one can come to understand the titles that women in relationships acquire as well as the feelings that Jane acquires in the above short story, “Being Jane.”
On her wedding day, we see that Jane feels that she is part of a whole with her fiancé Andrew, however is worried about their dynamic changing once she becomes “Mrs. Andrew Scott.” This is where identifying that the signifier being the sight of the bride should produce a signified mental image of the white dress and the ring, while if the signifier is wife then the signified should become something more familial for example, the life after the wedding. This concept of the signified is what Jane worries about.
If all values are composed of “a dissimilar thing that can be exchanged for the thing of which the value is to be determined; and of similar things that can be compared with the thing of which the value is to be determined,” (858) then it only makes sense that Jane would come to the understanding that being a fiancé, being a bride, and being a wife create the sum of her existence as Andrews counterpart. She must understand herself through her relation to her lover. Through semiotics, it is evident that “both factors are necessary for the existence of a value” (858).
Just as in semiotics, “language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others,” (858) in Jane’s relationship with Andrew they must adapt to the new system of interdependent terms that result from the existence of the other: marriage. In the photograph, this relationship based on the presence of both members is evident; they're holding hands, one in black pants one in a white dress, both looking down. They are opposites, yet they remain a united entity.
Ultimately, Jane, standing side by side with her fiancé, her future husband, she realizes something that Saussure points out, “whatever distinguishes one from the other constitutes it” (863). She must learn to be both Jane and wife simultaneously. She can be herself in the midst of being an essential part of the binary between man and wife; which ultimately adds more to her character. In the end of the narrative, both reader and Jane emerge with a new hope.
Works Cited
Saussure, Ferdinand. "Course in General Linguistics" Ed. Vincent Leitch. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Second Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2010. Print.
http://www.thebridescafe.com/index.cfm?catID=2&StartRow=17
