Charlotte Bronte includes this passage in order to draw parallels between Mr. Rochester and Jane. In the first passage, Jane thought Mr. Rochester didn’t want to marry her because of her social class and lack of wealth and beauty. In this passage, Mr. Rochester feels Jane likes St. John more than him because of his appearances. A common theme throughout the book as well as in this passage is jealousy drives passion. In the beginning of the book Mr. Rochester used Ms. Ingram in order to make Jane jealous. In this passage, Jane similarly makes Mr. Rochester jealous by explaining how St. John is handsome. Both, at the time, knowingly tempted the other by using someone else to spark jealousy and drive the other to deeper emotions. For example, Jane …show more content…
Rochester’s tone in the passage is distressed and disappointed, “Jealously had got hold of him: she stung him; but the sting was salutary: it gave him respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy”. The author again uses words such as “interlocutor”, “respite”, and “melancholy” to demonstrate to the reader the high education level of Jane’s character. The author also uses imagery and figurative language to draw comparisons between a handsome, Apollo like man as St. John and a less appealing Vulcan type man as Mr. Rochester. “Your words have delineated very prettily a graceful Apollo: he is present to your imagination – tall, fair, blue-eyed, and with a Grecian profile. Your eyes dwell on a Vulcan – a real blacksmith, brown, broad-shouldered; and blind and lame into the bargain”. By using strong imagery, the reader is clearly able to distinguish the differences between St. John and Mr. Rochester while also creating parallels to the first passage where the beautiful Ms. Ingram was used to tempt the less beautiful and simple, Jane Eyre. Bronte’s purpose for including this scene was to once again show the theme of how jealousy can drive passion, but also to use parallelism to make connections to other parts of the
To begin, when Mr. Rochester secretly returns to Thornfield as a gypsy he tells many fortunes but when the secret comes out there is nothing but distrust for him. For example, when Jane finds out that Mr. Rochester was the gypsy, and Mr. Rochester asks if she can forgive him for his trick, she says ¨[She] cannot tell till [she] [has] thought it all over. … [she] shall try to forgive [him]; but it was not right¨ (Bronte 213). This shows that Jane had lost some trust in her beloved Rochester by such a simple joke and it was that, the secret had been kept from her, that makes Jane really wonder if she could tru...
Eventually, she returns to her former employer, discovering Thornfield in ashes, Mrs. Rochester dead, and Mr. Rochester blind and free from wedlock. Flooded with motifs, Jane’s continual struggles between her passions and responsibility prevail as the main theme of Bronte’s entrancing narrative. From the introduction of Jane’s orphan life, she battles between her ire at cousin John’s antics and obedience to Aunt Reed’s reluctant guardianship.
According to Henri Bergson, “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” Life consists of a multitude of transitions and experiences, which help shape the creation of a person’s identity. This is evident in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, when Jane undergoes a striking moment of self-realization and moral development as she leaves her life at Moor House for Thornfield. This evolution occurs as she cultivates her own religious values, determines what love is, and becomes autonomous.
we cannot get a clear picture of Jane herself. Most of what we know is
Because Jane is the narrator, the reader is given a biased point of view that St. John’s character is unfavorable. Throughout Jane’s life she has had oppressive male figures dominate her life, such as John Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst; thus, Jane can conditioned herself to be apprehensive when confronting men. After gaining her physical and emotional strength back, Jane studies St. John’s character. Jane’s first impression of St. John is pessimistic, she states “Had he been a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier”(Bronte 329). By comparing St. John to a statue the reader is forced to see St. John as someone who is cold and rigid. Jane sets up the perception that St.John is disconnected from human feelings. Jane also presents a biased view of men when she first meets Rochester, who later becomes her husband. Furthermore, Jane’s first impressions of Rochester are also negative. Upon first being introduced to Rochester, after he asked to see her, Jane comments, “But it appeared he was not in the mood to notice us, for he never lifted his head as we approached. . . There was something in the forced stiffed bow, in the impatient yet formal tone, which he seemed to further expresses”(Bronte 111). Upon meeting Rochester for the fir...
Chapter 23 of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre Jane Eyre begins by telling us about Jane's strict and unhappy upbringing with her upper class Aunt, Mrs. Reed. She is then sent to Lowood School where her only friend Helen falls ill and dies. When Jane is older she becomes a Governess working for Mr. Rochester at Thornfield Hall. Jane and Rochester fall in love but neither of them express their feelings to each other.
In the novel Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Bronte, Jane is faced with a never before struggle of love. Her entire life she kept quiet on her inner feelings and very seldom did she express them fully. However, when Mr. Rochester is presented in her life, this newfound emotion comes into play. At first glance one might think that the chestnut tree has little significance in this passage, but in fact if one reads more closely, one finds that great insight is provided by potentially foreshadowing events within the novel through explicit details.
“What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value-to press my lips to what I love-to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice”(About.com Classic Literature). Jane has lived a hard life and because of that she just wants to be independent and respected. But to have those things she has to sacrifice her happiness and the chance of not being with the man she loves. She wants to be happy and to have the feeling of being loved, but she knows that she would not be able to be happy if she does not respect herself. And if she was with Mr. Rochester, the man she loves, then she would lose her self respect because Mr. Rochester is still married, so she would not be his wife she will just be the other women.
... all the heavy, dark, imagery is used to conjure up a sweltering passion between Jane and Mr. Rochester who later becomes her love and at the end of the novel, her husband. In reverse, the eyes of St. John are described as “large and blue” (Brontë 345), foiling Mr. Rochester. Later on in the novel, St. John’s demeanor is described as “cold”, several times, indicating the lack of passion that exists between him and Jane.
Following the Moral Compass in Jane Eyre Jane Eyre is the perfect novel about maturing: a child who is treated cruelly, holds herself together and learns to steer her life forward with a driving conscience that keeps her life within personally felt moral bounds. I found Jane as a child to be quite adult-like: she battles it out conversationally with Mrs. Reed on an adult level right from the beginning of the book. The hardships of her childhood made her extreme need for moral correctness believable. For instance, knowing her righteous stubbornness as a child, we can believe that she would later leave Rochester altogether rather than living a life of love and luxury simply by overlooking a legal technicality concerning her previous marriage to a mad woman. Her childhood and her adult life are harmonious, which gives the reader the sense of a complete and believable character. Actually, well into this book I  I was reminded of a friend's comment a few years back to "avoid the Brontes like the plague.
Many people believe that eating disorders are a product of the twentieth century, brought on by teenage girls aspiring to be supermodels like Cindy Crawford. Although such pressures are precipitating factors to many eating disorders, doctors diagnosed patients with anorexia as early as 1689 (Spignesi 7). One early example of anorexia is present in the novel Jane Eyre. Written in the mid-nineteenth century by Charlotte Brontë, this book describes a young girl whose personality bears striking similarities with that of a diagnosed anorexic. The life of the main character, Jane, has also been shown to share innumerable similarities with Brontë's own life. Biographical information from researchers and autobiographical information from Jane Eyre (whether intentional or not) verify that Brontë had an eating disorder.
Charlotte Bronte utilizes the character of Bertha Rochester to interrupt Jane’s potential happy ending with Mr. Edward Rochester. Bertha is announced by Mr. Briggs as a way to stop the wedding and it also shows how hopeless Jane’s situation is. “That is my wife “said he. ‘Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know—such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours! And this is what I wished to have,’” (312) and “’I wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout,’” (312) are quotes that express Mr. Rochester’s reasons for trying to remarry while he already has a wife, meanwhile showing his disposition towards said wife. Had Mr. Briggs and Mr. Mason not been present for the ceremony, Jane may have lived happily in ignorance. Due to Bertha’s involvement however, Jane could never truly call herself Mr. Rochester’s wife. She says, “’Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire—I should then be your mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical—is false.’” (323) This quote shows that as a result of Bertha’s exposure, Jane refuses to marry Mr. Rochester. The influence that Bertha’s brief debut had on Jane’s life was significant enough to hinder the growth of her relationship with Mr. Rochester.
In case the reader failed to recognize the opportunity the Rochester marriage gives her to see Bronte's views, she puts in the book the could-be St. John marriage. St. John decides not to marry Rosamund Oliver based on his passion for her. He completely shuns his passion, the opposite extreme of Rochester. In doing this and basing his marriage decision on his duty to God, he looses a genuine chance to gain true happiness. Through this example in Jane Eyre, Bronte is trying to show the reader that the opposite end of the spectrum is also wrong in making a marriage decision.
Women, in all classes, were still living in a world which was misogynistic and male-dominated. Their purpose in life was to produce male heirs and maintain the home by hiring and overseeing servants. It was also taboo for one to marry significantly below one’s social class. This is one reason that Jane is not a conventional heroine for the society of her time. Although, as a governess, she is not considered to be as low as a housemaid, she is still part of the hired help in the house. This is why it is unconventional for her and Mr Rochester to be in a relationship. Yet this is not as peculiar as how Jane Eyre ends their relationship due to her sense of betrayal. It would have been considered extremely foolish for a working-woman’s sense of betrayal to end and turn down a man of great wealth.
Love is an important theme in the famous novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Jane's love for Rochester is clearly noticible throughout the novel. But Jane's true love for Rochster becomes appearent in only a few of her actions and emotions. Although it may seem Rochester manipulated her heart's desire, this can be disproven in her actions towards him. Jane followed her heart in the end, by returning to Rochester.