Inner Beauty In Jane Eyre Analysis

Inner Profundity or External Splendor

Beauty plays a major role in the novel Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë. Throughout the novel, Charlotte Brontë skillfully contrasts the idea of inner beauty and the idea of outer beauty. She draws a parallel between outer plainness and inner complexity, and extraordinary looks and shallow personalities. For instance, although women like Blanche Ingram appear beautiful, they turn out to be shallow, and money-driven. Blanche Ingram is perceived as showing spiteful vengeance and full of callous feelings. In contrast, women like Jane Eyre, although perceived to be more pedestrian, are actually extremely cogitative and express indefinite emotions; Jane Eyre shows affection to those she loves in an honest, intelligent manner. Additionally, these characters who are plain looking but express deep emotions are often forced to struggle with the subjugation and inequity society imposes. Indeed, Brontë often shows how the women that are the wealthiest and prettiest tend to be the most ignorant and insignificant. In other words, Brontë draws a contrast between the snotty yet beautiful characters and the plain yet deepest characters. To further emphasis, it becomes apparent as the novel progresses, that Brontë continuously makes the distinction between two very different types of people in this novel, one that has inner beauty and one that has outer beauty.

Throughout the novel, it is apparent that there are many characters that appear to be exceptionally beautiful but actually have an internal ugliness. Firstly there is Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester's first wife. Mr. Rochester describes Bertha Mason as excessively beautiful and able to both dance and sing. However, the beauty Bertha has ...

... middle of paper ...

...led her to her death. In comparison, Jane is described to be plain with a big heart, and it is just this compassion and kindness that won Mr. Rochester’s true love. Brontë is able to look past what is on the outside and recognize the beauty that is within a person.

Finally, Brontë develops two types of characters that persist throughout the novel. Firstly, there is the type that has exceptional beauty but lack the internal beauty. For example, Bertha Mason and Blanche Ingram both are exceptionally beautiful but lack the internal beauty. On the other hand, there are also characters that are more pedestrian looking but have a stronger internal character, such as Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester, and Miss Temple. While both types of people have their way of expressing beauty, the characters with internal beauty tend to end up in a better position towards the end of the novel.