Symbolism In Jane Eyre

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Recommended: Jane eyre's view of love

Amanda Mueller Mueller 1
ENG 202
Professor Wrasman
8, March 2014
Passion and Desolation
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte gives great evidence to show Jane's journey through her own thoughts and madness in her relationship with Rochester. At 18, Jane accepted a teaching position at Thornfield Hall, where she fell in love with an upper class man, Mr. Rochester. Rochester meets Jane and quickly falls in love with her. Jane feels the same for Mr. Rochester from the beginning, but is hesitant and dissolute when situations arise. Charlotte Bronte uses wonderful imagery and specific symbols to unify and differentiate between the desolation and passion of Rochester and Jane's temperamental relationship, making these lovers so complex.
A specific symbol used is fire and ice. Fire is presented as a symbol for positivity, love, creativity, and warmth, while ice is used to symbolize hate, destruction, and negativity, which all leads to desolation. Fire can serve as good and have a positive outcome even when it seems to be destructive. An example of this would be when Bertha sets fire to Mr. Rochester’s bed curtains. This is a negative situation, but takes a positive turn in the story when Jane saves Rochester, thus adding to the beginning of a new love. Bertha’s fire, one of two, brings Jane and Mr. Rochester closer into an intimate relationship. The second fire is destructive and Thornfield leads to Bertha’s death. This lets Rochester rid of his past, but leaves him without a hand and blind. This incident helps Jane see that he is now dependent
Mueller 2 on her. It helps her to see that there is no such thing as inequality between them. After Rochester has been blinded, his face is compared to that of “a la...

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...and the act of flirting was important to their unique relationship saying, "I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in." (pg.187).
"I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at

Mueller 5 me" (Chapter 17). Jane had tried to talk herself out of her emotions of loving him, but that was impossible.
“I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine.” This final passage of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre ends the tension between passion and desolation. What once terrified her was now the one thing she found comfort in. She and Rochester have become “...bone, and flesh of his flesh,” and share one heart.

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