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The Continuum Of Blindness In Jane Eyre, By Charlotte Bronte

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There is an ableist assumption that wisdom and knowledge stems from one’s ability to perceive with their eyes. Being blind can be defined as deprived of sight due to injury, disease, or a congenital condition. On the other hand, blindness is synonymous with lacking perception or being ignorant of reality. In the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, she explores the continuum of seeing and not seeing and applies this archetype to characters such as Jane Eyre, Edward Rochester, and St. John to affirm that depending on where they fall on in that sequence, it can ultimately determine one’s fate.
Bronte utilizes blindness for the character of Eyre in the way that she has to overcome her naivete in order to move forward with her and Rochester’s relationship. She lacks a deeper level of sight to see that her love with Rochester would be hard to stray from. In the beginning of the novel, it can be assumed that Eyre fell for Rochester due to a lust effect. She lacked experience with romantic relationships, thus the moment there was chemistry, it felt foreign to her and she did not know how to react. As the story progresses, Eyre tries to suppress those romantic feelings by trying to convince herself that she was not good enough for him. She would glance at Ingram Blanche, and try to persuade herself that she was not socially and physically right for Rochester and that Blanche was the obvious choice for him, “most gentlemen would admire her I thought; and that he did admire her, I

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