The Search for Love in Jane Eyre
A constant theme throughout Jane Eyre is the search for love. Although this could be shown through many of the novel's key characters, it can most readily be shown in the experiences of Jane Eyre herself. The novel begins with her searching for love and it finally ends with her finding it, for good, in Mr. Rochester.
At the novel's opening, Jane is living with the cruel Mrs. Reed and her horrid three children, Eliza, Georgiana, and John. Mrs. Reed makes her distaste for Jane very evident in all of her actions. She forbids her to play with her (Mrs. Reed's) children (Jane's own cousins) and falsely accuses her of being a "liar" and of possessing a "mean spirit." Mrs. Reed's attitude is subsequently passed on to her children who, in turn, treat Jane as bad, if not worse, than their mother does. As an unjustified consequence of these attitudes, Jane is forced to grow up in a home where she finds no love, even when she tries to be perfect. The only times she comes close to finding the semblance of love is when Bessie (a servant) is kind to ...
The red hue is conjointly used in The Book of Revelations as the color of the seven headed dragon. “Then another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems” (Revelation 12:3). This dragon represents evil and esoteric darkness. The tenebrous serpent is Jane’s burden due to her extreme passions and unpleasant aunt. While crimson is not traditionally associated with light-dark imagery, the red room was selected to illustrate both Jane’s passion as a child and as the color of war and bloodshed. At this moment in the novel Jane is bleeding from the violent head wound she received from John Reed, this physical blow only begins to scratch the surface of the horrible war Jane has been fighting. The psychological and even sometimes physical war is fought for Jane’s equality and the right to love and be loved. Brontë progresses to illustrate the vile sanguine room. “Out of these deep surroundings shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned chair near the head of the bed, also white, and looking as I thought, like a pale throne” (Brontë 17). The white chair is symbolic of justice and the victory of incorruptibility. The allusion to the stark white demonstrates the innocence of Jane, against those charges vehemently thrust upon her by John Reed. This is further affirmed with the mention of the snowy throne. “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God...And the sea...
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.
Jane Erye Jane Eyre - Analysis of Nature Charlotte Bronte triumphs in many arenas with her masterpiece "Jane Eyre". She develops a beautiful setting and endearing characters, that sometimes overshadows some of the more subtle aspects of her novel. One very important element that is sometimes overlooked is the use of nature imagery and comments on the human relationship with the outdoors and human nature. The Oxford Reference Dictionary defines "nature" as "1. the phenomena of the physical world as a whole. .
In the beginning of Jane Eyre, Mrs. Reed tells the owner of Lowood Institution, Mr. Brocklehurst, that Jane has, "'a bad character, a deceitful disposition; and to let everybody at Lowood know what [she] is, and what [she] has done'" (34). Jane already despises Mrs. Reed for treating her so poorly, but now she is infuriated. If Mr. Brocklehurst describes Jane as Mrs. Reed instructs him to do, Jane will never make friends at Lowood because all of the children will fear her. Jane battles back by saying to her aunt, "'I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty'" (33). Jane...
The reader first learns of Jane when she is an inhabitant of Gateshead. At Gateshead, Jane was excluded from the rest of the family. She was merely an outsider looking in on a nuclear family, excluding the father, who had died. We know that Jane’s Uncle Reed, the father and dominant figure of Gateshead, when alive, was a kind man. He was the guardian for Jane and when dying made his wife promise to always care for Jane. After his death, his wife resented the little girl and did not want to care for her. Knowing what we know of family life in the nineteenth century, we know that Jane’s life would have been much different if her uncle Reed had not died. Being the master of the home one can assume that he would have made sure that everyone in the household would have treated Jane well and with love and respect. A father’s authority was unquestioned. Once Mr. Reed had died, the masculine dominance was somewhat given to his son who did not care for Jane and made her life miserable by all of his cruelty and abuse. Although he did not rule the home, due to his young age, his authority as seen by Jane was unquestioned.
The story begins with a young Jane Eyre who is essentially neither loved by anyone nor independent in nature. At this point in the story, the reader discovers that Jane is an orphan and is being supported by the Reed family. This discovery is made through the portrayal of John Reed when he is taunting Jane about her social status. John claims that since it is his family who supports Jane, it is their choice to dictate the circumstances under which she lives. In this case, Jane is not allowed to play with the younger Reed children or read a book that belongs to the Reeds. The fact that6 Jane is an orphan living under someone else's roof displays that she has not yet gained her independence.
The three events that mark Jane as an evolving dynamic character are when she is locked in the red room, self reflecting on her time at Gateshead, her friendship with Helen Burns at LoWood, her relationship with Mr. Rochester, and her last moments with a sick Mrs. Reed. Brought up as an orphan by her widowed aunt, Mrs. Reed, Jane is accustomed to her aunts vindictive comments and selfish tendencies. Left out of family gatherings, shoved and hit by her cousin, John Reed, and teased by her other cousins, Georgina and Eliza Reed, the reader almost cringes at the unfairness of it all. But even at the young age of ten, Jane knows the consequences of her actions if she were to speak out against any of them. At one point she wonders why she endures in silence for the pleasure of others. Why she is oppressed. "Always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned" (Bronte, 12). Jane’s life at Gateshead is not far from miserable. Not only is she bullied by her cousins and nagged by her aunt, but help from even Bessie, her nurse and sort of friend, seems out of her reach. In the red room scene Jane is drug by Ms. Ab...
The story begins as Jane lives with the Reed family in their home at Gateshead Hall. Here, the theme of education vs. containment develops immediately, as Jane is kept confined indoors on a cold winter day. The other children (Eliza, John, and Giorgiana) are "clustered round their mamma in the drawing-room" (Bronte: 39) being educated, as Jane had been excluded from the group. Jane tries to educate herself by reading from Berwick's History of British Birds, but once again, she is held back from her attempt at enlightenment by the abuse of John Reed, who castigates her and throws the heavy book at her. In anger, Jane cries out, "You are like a murderer - you are like a slave-driver - you are like the Roman emperors" (Bronte: 43). In this passage, Jane compares John Reed to a slave-driver because, like a slave-driver, he deprives Jane of her attempt at education and keeps her suppressed. Afterwards, Jane is blamed for the entire incident and...
When reading Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, I find myself cheering for Rochester. After finishing the book, I ask myself why Jane chooses Rochester over St. John. After all, Rochester has a "mad" wife, Bertha Mason, locked in the attic of Thornfield Hall at the same time that he is proposing marriage to Jane. He has a ward living with him, possibly the offspring of an illicit affair with a French dancer. He is arrogant, pushy, and basically ill-tempered. St. John, on the other hand, is well mannered, respected, and has a promising future. To answer my own question, then, it is essential to look at how each man fits the idea of masculinity in Victorian society, at how each man relates to Jane, and at why Bronte creates her two leading men to be such extreme opposites.
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte uses various characters to represent aspects of reason and passion, thereby establishing a tension between the two. In fact, it could be argued that these various characters are really aspects of her central character, Jane. From this it could be argued that the tension between these two aspects really takes place only within her mind. Bronte is able to enact this tension through her characters and thus show dramatically the journey of a woman striving for balance within her character. As a prerequisite for marriage, Jane uses this determination in her relationships with Mr. Rochester and St. John.
At the start of Jane Eyre, Jane is living with her widowed aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her family after being orphaned. Jane is bitterly unhappy there because she is constantly tormented by her cousins, John, Eliza, and Georgiana. After reading the entire book you realize that Jane was perfectly capable of dealing with that issue on her own, but what made it unbearable was that Mrs. Reed always sided with her children, and never admitted to herself that her offspring could ever do such things as they did to Jane. Therefore, Jane was always punished for what the other three children did, and was branded a liar by Mrs. Reed. This point in the book marks the beginning of Jane's primary conflict in the novel. She feels unloved and unaccepted by the world, as her own family betrays her.
In his essay “Jane Eyre: The Quest for Optimism,” Frederick L. Ashe writes, “It is hard to imagine anyone learned enough to read Jane Eyre who would consider her first ten years emotionally healthful ones” (Ashe). Ashe, whose criticism appeared in Novels for Students, Volume 4, is correct in his opinion. Jane’s abuse first begins in her own home. Her life until age ten is filled with abuse from her cousin John Reed, the mockery of the household servants, and the physical and mental abuse of her Aunt Reed. John’s first abuse of Jane comes when he throws a heavy book at her head. Bronte writes in Jane’s voice, “I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp” (Bronte 13). John’s physical abuse of Jane is not the only abuse she receives, though. After Jane recovers from the abuse bestowed upon her by John, Miss Abbot, a servant, says of Jane, “If she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that” (Bronte 28). Although this abuse pains Jane, it is the abuse of her Aunt Reed that hurts Jane the most. Aunt Reed’s first maltreatment of Jane is on the first page of the novel. Aunt Reed gathers her children around her for a happy family moment. Jane, however, is left alone. Jane says, “[Aunt Reed] regretted to be
Starting off with Mrs. Reed, she was the wife of John Eyre who was asked to take care of Jane but of course Mrs. Reed secretly envied Jane and had treated her the complete opposite. The reeds had made Jane feel like and outcast to where it had lead to isolation and loneliness. In the beginning of the book the Reeds were introduced as being the family to verbally, physically and mentally abuse Jane. As Jane was left merely to herself, she was left to imagine ,visualize and wonder what it was like on the outside. This leads off to the introduction of the educational school that she will be attending called the Lowood school.
Moseley goes on to say, “Liberty and love are in some way at war in the lives of all of us.” It is not until Jane reaches personal liberation, that she is capable of loving someone else to a full extent. Throughout Jane Eyre Jane must learn how to gain love without sacrificing herself in the process. Orphaned at an early age, Jane becomes used to a lackluster lifestyle without any true value. It is not until she finds love and comfort in her friends at Lowood that her life begins to turn around. Upon meeting Rochester, Jane’s life was only as plain as she made it. She untwines in a world wind romance, ultimately finding the love she craved without losing her self-value.
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.