Fire and Ice are the central motifs in Jane Eyre, which Bronte introduces to us to for the first time in this passage. Bronte expresses fire as an emblem of Jane's passion which is "alive, glancing, (and) devouring". Ice stiffens and restricts those it affects and throughout the novel is used in an effort to control this fire, and in this extract symbolises Mrs. Reed as she responds to Jane with coldness in an effort to control her. The result of these two opposites is an explosion of feelings, passion and power which allows the reader to see deeper into the character of Jane Eyre.
The red room is the place that ignites Jane's passion. The red room is one of the novels great paradoxes as it parallels with ice in that it restricts Jane's freedom and imprisons her; yet the experience gives her the courage to stand up to her aunt. The fire that the red room ignites in Jane allows her to jump the 'containment lines'; to break the bonds of her Aunt that are restricting her, and achieve freedom. The red room becomes very symbolic of Jane's fight for freedom. Whenever she suffers from there on, Jane emotionally comes back to the red room, and adds new fuel to the fire, as she reminds herself why she wants to break free of oppression.
This passage displays how Mrs. Reed loses her control of Jane. The passion born inside Jane by her experience in the red room allows her to burn through Mrs. Reed's coldness and imposed restrictions. Mrs. Reed still views Jane through an "eye of ice" when this passage begins, and seeks to hamper her by using a "tone in which a person might address an opponent of adult age (rather) than such is ordinarily used to a child". This is an attempt to remind Jane which one of them is the adult, and therefore in ...
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... destroys Thornfield. While Jane lives at Thornfield the place is consistent with a "ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing and devouring" as her passion for love and kindness is fulfilled by Mr. Rochester. The place then dies when she leaves, and is still "the same ridge, (just) black and blasted after the flames are dead" when Bertha burns it down.
In conclusion, the central motifs of fire and ice that shape the story, are introduced to the reader early in the play, through this passage. This gives real insight into the character of Jane Eyre and her passionate nature, which is one of her natural strengths. This passion shapes many of her actions throughout the novel. The other characters who seek to dominate Jane respond to this by efforts to control her with their emotional coldness. Jane will not be controlled by anything that would seek to suppress her fire.
The word ‘fear’ is recurring throughout the narrative as it imparts Jane’s endeavors to transcending the terrors of her life, preponderantly events from her childhood. As Mrs. Reed declares to ‘take her away to the red-room’, the passage unveils a traumatic encounter of Jane’s childhood. The scarlet hue in the Red Room exemplifies diverse meanings such as ‘fear’, ‘passion’, death, etc; symbolizing an emotional penitentiary for Jane as it coerces her to face that she is ostracized by the people around her. Accordingly, the scene’s importance enacts throughout the novel as the reader perceives Jane being haunted by the memory whenever her independence or self worth is in jeopardy. Furthermore, the author has the capability to provide a glimpse of the Victorian era as Jane compares herself to a ‘rebel slave’; Bronte, living in a time where women were oppressed in a social system dominated by men, exhibits her perception of the status of women – as equal to slaves imprisoned by circumstances beyond their control. This is reflected in the passage as Jane was chosen to be punished, despite John Reed’s
In the novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte uses Jane Eyre as her base to find out how a character confronts the demands of a private passion that conflicts with her responsibilities. . Mistreated abused and deprived of a normal childhood, Jane Eyre creates an enemy early in her childhood with her Aunt Mrs. Reed. Just as Mrs. Reeds life is coming to an end, she writes to Jane asking her for forgiveness, and one last visit from her.
Reed had received a letter from a John Eyre of Madeira; saying that he wanted to meet Jane and wanted to adopt her because he didn't have any family himself, he was not married and had no children. As the merciless person she was, she did not want Jane to experience the feeling of hope or contentment. The author's use of Jane being locked in the red room, as a symbol of hell. Jane is being punished for her sins and her boorishness; meanwhile, in the room, Jane becomes hysterical when she thinks she sees her dead uncles ghost, which becomes a traumatic experience for her that leads to her being unconsciousness. The red room symbolizes the death of Mr.Reed and the promise Mrs. Reed vowed to keep to take care of Jane and that she be treated and
Analyse the methods Charlotte Brontë uses to make the reader empathise with Jane Eyre in the opening chapters. Reflect on how the novel portrays Victorian ideology and relate your analysis to the novel’s literary content.
...there. Jane doesn’t like the red-room and when she gets into trouble on day Mrs. Reed says,” Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there.”(6) Her aunts’ was supposed to take care of her and not treat her badly. Another disappointment for Jane was supposed to marry Mr. Rochester but he is married so that was not able to happen.
The situation when Jane in locked in the Red Room occurs because she has retaliated against John Reed hitting her and the fact that she is being punished for doing so. The mere fact that she is being locked in the Red Room can already accumulate sympathy within the reader because she is seemingly being very unfairly punished whereas her cousin John has attacked her already and managed to escape any punishment whatsoever. However in the events leading up to being locked in the room, the reader could not feel sympathy for Jane Eyre as she did in a way bring the punishment upon herself for attacking Mr. Reed in the first place. If she has not retaliated she would have not been locked in the room. Most readers however probably do feel sympathy for her as she was acting more in self-defence. She was also unfairly spoken too as they were dragging her to the room itself as they say things like she's like a mad cat' and do not seem to be letting her give an explanation at all for her actions, and only listening to what John had too say. They make sure that she knows her place by telling her that You are under obligation to Mrs. Reed' and that she is less than a servant'. These are not kind words and the reader will probably feel sympathetic as she is being treated as a worthless object. The room that she is sent too is a dark and unpleasant place with memories of the dead Mr. Reed. For a child of Jane's young age it would seemingly be very distressing for her, and with the added experience of her seemingly seeing a ghost' of some kind, it would be a terrible experience. Even if the reader has not felt sympathy for Jane before this incident they would surely feel so now, as she is in a distressing situation alone. When Jane first screams out for help from someone it does seem as though people are coming too help her as Bessie and Abbot come to open the door and ask her what is wrong and what has made her cry for help.
Jane started out with no family, causing her to yearn for someone to accept her as their family, treating her with love and respect. At a young age, Jane lost her parents, leaving her with her aunt and cousins. They treated her poorly, acting as if she was incompetent and considering her more of a servant than a family member. Then, they sent her off to school, forgetting about her entirely. Eventually, Jane acquired the family she had always dreamt of. She never felt quite right with other people accepting her, that is, until Mr. Rochester came into her life. She did not feel as though she had found her true family until she had met him. "All these relics gave...Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine to memory.” (92). When they get married, her dreams are achieved, as she finally got the family she had always wanted.
In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the eventual goal of Jane Eyre’s journeys and struggles as a character is for Jane to be strong enough within herself to stand on her own. It is not until she finds this internal strength that she can live as a content individual and weather the distracting demands put on her by the external forces that surround her. Throughout most of the novel, Jane makes the mistake of looking for this internal peace through external forces like Mrs. Reed, Mr. Rochester and St. John. To convey this tendency, Charlotte Brontë constructs her narrative so that, rather than looking within herself to find internal solace, Jane turns away from cold, alien internal imagery, and looks instead to fickle external imagery that is at times a friend, and at times a foe. The internal imagery is reflective of Jane’s own internal state, and the external imagery is reflective of the state of the external forces that surround her; until Jane realizes that she cannot find solace in the ever-changing external forces around her, and must instead look inside herself for this solace, the internal imagery must remain cold and alien, and the external imagery must remain unpredictable in its ability to comfort.
In the beginning of Jane Eyre, Jane struggles against Bessie, the nurse at Gateshead Hall, and says, I resisted all the way: a new thing for me…"(Chapter 2). This sentence foreshadows what will be an important theme of the rest of the book, that of female independence or rebelliousness. Jane is here resisting her unfair punishment, but throughout the novel she expresses her opinions on the state of women. Tied to this theme is another of class and the resistance of the terms of one's class. Spiritual and supernatural themes can also be traced throughout the novel.
This is unlike her, as before when out of rage she called John Reed a “Wicked and cruel boy!(Bronte 5)” and comparing his attitude one of a “...Roman emperor” which had led her to become trapped in the Red room. Additionally, when Miss Reed claims that she has a ”tendency to deceit.”(30) to Mr Brocklehurst, and to others in the household, it taints her image. Even when Jane begs forgiveness she is still seen as a
... the anger that she had expressed as a young girl, due to the fact that her society does not accept it. This anger that she once held inside is prevelant in Bertha's act. It is in the Red Room that Jane "became increasingly alive with bristling energy, feelings, and sensations, and with all sorts of terrifying amorphous matter and invisible phantoms" (Knapp 146). This igniting energy and flow of feelings, are very similar to those that Bertha realises at Thornfield.
In Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, fire appears both as a figurative and a very real, physical entity that wreaks havoc upon Jane Eyre’s consciousness and physical being. The depictions of fire found in Jane Eyre demand attention and exact a powerful and inescapable control over those they affect. Fire appears in a multiplicity of manifestations--as a small kindle that warms a cold room, as a candle, which illuminates the darkness, a blaze that burns, or as a consuming entity that exists in Jane's inner self. Both the alluring and destructive forces of fire likewise make it an overwhelming entity that can give life but also destroy. In Jane Eyre fire both entices, and challenges Jane, as she wrestles not only with external fires that might seek to destroy her, but also as she wrangles with those metaphorical fires that rage within her which too seek to harm her. Fire in Charlotte Brontë's novel is a complex signifier underscoring external forces and internal forces such as desire, fury, greed, sin and passion. But just fire comes to symbolize these concepts so too does it give insight into Jane’s burning inner nature which oscillates, just as her name might serve to indicate, between practicality, and airiness, lightness and dark, ice and fire—she can be both reserved and tempestuous, timid and bold, much like the nature of fire. Moreover, it is through the destructive and powerful conceit of fire that Jane’s character becomes strengthened and in struggling through fire she reveals pieces of her own wants and desires which might have henceforth remained hidden. In effect, Jane not only battles through the fire but is herself a force that burns and rages from within which she must wrangle with throughout the novel. Thus, through fire...
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...
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