Summary of Clarke's "Bronte's Jane Eyre and the Grimms' Cinderella

Throughout Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the symbols of fire and water shape the novel and support the novel’s main theme. Jane Eyre continually struggles to find a middle ground between ‘fire’ and ‘water,’ as she is both aggressive and submissive. In Eric Solomon’s critical analysis, “The Symbolism of Fire and Water in Jane Eyre” Solomon accurately describes this struggle. It is important to note that Jane conflicts with authority, defeats the struggle by her inner confidence, and progresses into separation. Although Solomon clearly describes Jane’s struggles in her journey to find an equal balance between ‘fire’ and ‘water,’ other examples highlight crucial moments in the novel, by adding symbolism that enhances the struggles that Jane faces.

Readers learn that the symbolism of fire and water contributes to the novel by supporting the main theme. While reading the novel one may easily be confused by Brontë’s intricate story, but with the help of Solomon, it is easier to gain a better understanding of this story’s main theme. He explains that Jane is a median between the extremes of fire and water. For example, Jane has to choose between the two marriage proposals of Edward Rochester, who represents the fire, and St. John Rivers, representing the water. The two men are, as Solomon explains, written to be complete opposites that both contain icy or fiery qualities that lure Jane’s love. However, Jane can also be accurately described as one of the causes of the presence of fiery and icy emotions in her life due to her inability to know the feeling of love. “…She has the fire of bodily love…but also the cool control of the soul” (Solomon, 40). Solomon describes these virtues as what Rochester sees as “Jane’s

Jane Eyre’s life was full of oppression, neglect and sorrow. The novel was formed around a few main ideas. One of those would be the search of love and acceptance. Jane wanted to find a family so desperately and she wanted to belong to people. More than this though, Jane wanted to be treated equally. She was denied equality because of her social status, her income,her lack of “beauty” and most of all because of her gender. The book Jane Eyre shows the struggle that women face while attempting to overcome oppression and inequality in the Victorian era.

At first glance Jane Eyre may seem to be a young woman with semi-bad taste in men, but she is actually much more complex a character than that. Jane is driven by her craving for freedom, her desire to be useful, and her yearning to fit in somewhere. She is rich in character with a stubborn, strong willed, and passionate personality. She is not afraid to stand up for what she believes in, whether it is a family she wants to have, or a marriage that is unfair and without balance. As an adult, Jane is a level headed young woman, but as a child she let her passions get the best of her. She tones down this passion quite a bit as she grows older and gains more experience, and channels it into other areas of her life.

Cinderella is a classic fairytale almost every person knows. Such recognition was earned through time and it’s originality. Yet from this well-known tale, many stories have stemmed into their own interesting aspects of virtually the same plot with similar characters. One of the related stories is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Brontë uses the main character Jane as Cinderella who finds her prince charming. Even though Jane Eyre contains more about human nature and less of magic, it still resembles the Cinderella archetype through Jane’s early life and her relationship with Rochester. This does not, however, help Jane Eyre, but makes it cliché.

The essence of any true magnificent piece of literature is not what one can see in words. It is what one can see behind the words. It is through the symbolism and imagery found in works of literature that a reader can truly connect with the writer. Charlotte Bronte epitomizes the spirit of the "unread but understood" in her Victorian work Jane Eyre. There have been numerous essays and theories presented examining the complex symbolism and imagery used by Bronte in Jane Eyre. Much of the imagery she uses concentrates on passion, fantasy, and the supernatural. In this essay I will examine Bronte’s use of fire and heat imagery pertaining to Mr. Rochester and Jane’s love relationship.

In Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre, Brontë depicts the life of a young Jane, who meets a number of influential people, essential to her development into a civilized governess. Along her journey she struggles to conceal her emotion and passion for life, as it is improper for 19th century Victorian women. Louis James effectively analyzes the moral and religious hearth of the Victorian era through the socio-historic lens, which allows him to anatomize the content of Brontë’s novel and correlate it with history of this era. However, in his Victorian Novel, James fails to acknowledge the emotional significance that the colorful and religious hearth of the 19th century had on Jane Eyre. It is important to look at how the novel would have developed

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has been a widely discussed and analyzed work of Victorian literature since its publication in 1847. High school students to highly-educated scholars have read and interpreted the immeasurable breadth of this novel’s effect on society. This bildungsroman work has been analyzed through a multitude of literary lenses, each lens giving readers a different view on the plot, as well as Brontë’s motivations behind her writing. One such lens is the Socio-Historic Critical Lens, which indicates that if one is to understand a text, they must first understand the society in which it was written.

At the start of the captivating novel titled, “Jane Eyre”, our main character Jane defies many of the stereotypes of Victorian women in the time. Charlotte Bronte, the author, sends a strong message of the types of behavior that isn’t very common for women to show. Throughout the exhilarating book, the readers travel through the life of a young orphan who blossomed into a strong woman.     During the Victorian period, women weren’t seen as much excepted the person who takes care of the home and children. Gregg Newby states ,in an article called “Expectations of Women in Victorian Society”, “In the eyes of society, women were ill-equipped to meet the demands of the outside world.

Having established some of the natural themes in Jane Eyre, we can now look at the natural cornerstone

In some cases, it is a symbol used in some cases for rebirth or new life. Jane is often compared to fire while Antoinette is intrigued by fire. Jane is referred to as “a ridge of lighted health, alive, glancing, devouring” (Wide Sargasso Sea, Chapter 4). Also, in Wide Sargasso Sea, Rochester loves the immense fireflies as he also loves the candles that Antoinette repeatedly puts out around the house. This theme of fire is obvious in two particular cases. One of these cases is when Coulibri is burned and Anette falls into insanity, and the other being when Bertha burns Thornfield down, ultimately killing herself and seriously injuring Rochester (Symbolism in Wide Sargasso Sea). In addition, Rochester, in Wide Sargasso Sea, describes the West Indies as “fiery”. This shows his dislike of the land he is not familiar with until it increases and reaches the point when he decides to shoot himself. This scene relates to the scene in Jane Eyre when Jane hears Rochester’s voice as she walks through the woods. Fire relates Jane and Antoinette in different ways. Fire additionally describes Jane’s love for Rochester, while on the other hand; it describes Antoinette’s pain and fear, whereas it also links Jane and Bertha. The fire that Jane possesses is her love for Rochester as she describes it as “fiery iron grasped my vitals,” and Bertha’s literal setting of the fire that kills her. This is symbolic of the new

    Charlotte Bronte wrote the novel Jane Eyre in the mid-eighteen hundreds. In her novel she expresses her views on many important factors present during this time including social problems such as race, class, gender, and the role of religion. Each of these factors affects the way that the protagonist, Jane Eyre, grows as a person. Throughout the novel Charlotte Bronte uses images and symbols that either influence or represent Jane's growth. Bronte uses a common imagery throughout the novel reflecting images of "fire and ice." She also uses symbols in Jane's life such as the red-room, from her childhood, and the character Bertha Mason Rochester, during her time at Thornfield. Other characters who

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is presented in the Victorian Period of England. It is a novel which tells the story of a child's maturation into adulthood. Jane's developing personality has been shaped by her rough childhood. She has been influenced by many people and experiences. As a woman of her time, Jane has had to deal with the strain of physical appearance. This has a great effect on her mental thinking and decision making. Jane Eyre's cognitive and physical attributes have been affected by her environment throughout her life.

Bronte takes the fire and transforms it to illustrate the image of sexuality and passion. By doing this, she also proposes the way in which internalized feelings of opposing ideas give into self-depleting energy through the loss of self-control. Here, Jane has the fear of becoming like Mrs. Reed. She comes to the realization that if this is not what she wants to be like, then she must keep her passions under control. Otherwise, she could become "black and blasted after the flames have died." This is presented to embody what Victorian society believed to be true and is a fine example of everything that it despises, which is namely the expression of passion. The fulfillment of self becomes the foundation of society's views, on which the fears of women and their passionate behaviors are laid.

Jane Eyre is a story of a quest to be loved. Jane searches, not just for romantic love, but also for a sense of being valued and belonging. However, this search is constantly hindered by her need for independence. She starts of as an unloved orphan who is desperate to find love and a purpose. For example, Jane says to Helen, “to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest”. However, over the course of the novel, Jane learns to gain love without harming herself in the process. Although she is despised by her aunt, Mrs. Reed, she finds parental figures throughout the book. Miss Temple and Bessie care for Jane and give her love and guidance. However, Jane does not feel as though she has found