Faith In Jane Eyre

The Individuality of Faith in Jane Eyre Throughout the novel Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre struggles to find the ideal balance between spiritual obligation to her faith and human desires. During her life she encounters three religious figures that aide in the shaping of Jane’s religion: Mr. Brocklehurst, Helen Burns, and St. John Rivers. Each person signifies a standpoint on religion that Jane rejects as she establishes her perceptions about principle and faith as well as their potential consequences. Therefore, the Christian faith is something that every individual must develop for himself by witnessing the religious faiths of others and then must establish his faith based on the morals and ethics the individual personally believes. Jane

John Rivers impact Jane’s spiritual development. At the early age of ten years old, Jane Eyre made her first friend, Helen Burns. Helen is a few years older than Jane when they meet and has a much more matured faith. Helen has a meek and forbearing conviction in her faith. In attempts to comfort Jane’s irrational fears and emotions, Helen patiently comforts Jane by telling her, “If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.” (65). Although ultimately Jane finds Helen’s faith too docile for her own adoption, Jane reveres, respects, and loves Helen because of it’s passiveness. After her escape from Thornfield Hall, Jane finds herself with St. John Rivers and his sisters where she encounters her third key figure in the development of her faith. St. John Rivers is a man of ambition, glory, and extreme self-importance. He proposes to Jane asking her to sacrifice her emotional deeds for the fulfillment of her Christian duty. Along with his proposal, he asks Jane to accompany him to missionary work in India which was a life that would require Jane to be disloyal to the person Jane knows herself to be. St. John River’s faith is too pessimistic and demanding for the person and life Jane aspires for herself; therefore, Jane rejects his viewpoint on faith while developing her

When her wedding is interrupted, she prays to God for solace, “Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help” (274). As she wanders the heath, destitute and hungry, she places her survival in the hands of God, “I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish nor one of the souls it treasured” (301). Jane vigorously objects to Rochester’s lustful immorality, and she refuses considering living with him while the official church and state continually deem him married to another. Even so, Jane barely brings herself to leave the only love in way she has ever known. She credits God with helping her to escape and not fall to the desires of the flesh and return to what she knows would have been an immoral life, “Still I could not turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on.”