The Red Room Analysis

These lines exchanged by Jane Eyre and Mr. St John perfectly exhibit the differences in their personalities. Jane Eyre is a passionate, emotional person, while Mr. St John comes off as "cold" and un-feeling. These contrasting temperaments make for an intriguing scene when Mr. St John asks for Jane to marry and move to India with him as a missionary's wife. Jane had a strong emotional reaction to Mr. St John's proposal and St John was taken aback when she rejected him, but he did not have a particularly passionate reaction. In the days and weeks to follow, St. John was by no means friendly or warm with Jane, but he was also not outwardly rude to her. All and all, Mr. St John's disposition can be described as "cold," and Jane's emotions, that had a fire-like intensity, led her to reject to St. Johns final proposal.

As her childhood years are nearing the end, Jane Eyre was hired to become the tutor of Thornfield. She became the school teacher of the little girl named Adele. Thornfield was a place of passion. Her passion begins to emerge, and once it starts to leak out, there is no turning back. One of the ways we can see that Thornfield is a place of passion is through the color red, and it’s usage is decorations. When Jane arrives to Thornfield, the maid Mrs. Fairfax, takes Jane on a tour of the house. Jane sees red used in the decorations and furniture in Thornfield. “Yet it was nearly a very pretty drawing-room, and within it a boudoir, both spread with white carpets, on which seemed laid brilliant garlands of flowers; both veiled with snowy moldings of white grapes and vine-leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast crimson couches and ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were sparkling Bohemian glass, ruby red; and between the windows large mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and fire.” Since red is a symbol of passion, Charlotte Bronte is trying to show how Thornfield is filled with passion by using red even in the decorations. While staying at Thornfield, Jane experiences a fire that begins to consume Mr. Rochesters room. Jane is awakened in the middle of the night and smells smoke. She goes into Mr. Rochester’s room to find the bed engulfed in flames. She is able to use the water basin and put the fire out saving Mr. Rochester. Jane thinks Grace Poole a servant who is mentally unstable set the bed on fire, but the reader later finds out it was a woman by the name of Bertha. “I was within the chamber. Tongues of flame darted round the bed: the curtains were on fire. In the midst of blaze and vapor, Mr. Rochester lay stretched motionless, in deep sleep.” This is Jane’s first instance with passion in

Bronte further develops the idea that their connection transcends the ordinary by having Jane not only hear his voice, but his pain as well: (445). This notion is stressed when she calls out to him. (445) she says. “(445). It’s natural to presume that her own voice is echoed here. However, Bronte is so specific with language that perhaps we should look closer. She calls out in the form of a question and receives the answer as an exclamation. There is a supernatural dimension to this communication and this idea is revisited when Jane, after seeing the burned out remains of Thornfield Hall, asks an innkeeper about Rochester. In describing Rochester after Jane’s departure, the innkeeper refers to him as, (452). He describes a man who is heartbroken and, without realizing who Jane is, describes the former lovers, (452).

It instead shows Jane’s inner struggle to do what is “right” versus what she desires. The separation between the voice of herself and her thoughts exhibits her helplessness to change her path from what her mind has already decided. This displays the heavy influence society has on Jane, which is further proven by the personification of Jane’s two strongest rivaling emotions. The heavy influence of a patriarchal dominated society is evident in her “Conscience” being a strong male figure, whereas her “Passion” is a weaker, feminine figure. Similarly, the strongest reasoning for Jane to leave Thornfield is driven by the patriarchal demand for a female to remain “pure” until holy marriage, rather than Jane’s own desire to leave, further solidifying the idea that the voice given to her mind is not just her own internal thoughts, but also the demands and expectations of

Though Jane is well educated and possesses the etiquette and training of a person in upper class society, social prejudices limit her because she is simply a paid servant, in their eyes. While at Thornfield, Jane falls desperately in love with the owner of Thornfield Hall, Mr. Rochester. Jane is Mr. Rochester’s intellectual contemporary, but her social status prevents her from being his true equal. In the novel, Jane proclaims, “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart!” (Bronte 637). After Mr. Rochester finally proposes, Jane is hesitant to marry him because she feels as if he would be lowering himself to marry her. This feeling greatly increases after Jane discovers he is married to Bertha Mason, and that he keeps her locked away in Thornfield’s attic due to her insanity. Mr. Rochester proposes that Jane becomes his mistress, which, according to Victorian society, would be more fitting since Jane is a plain governess. Jane realizes that she can never compromise her morals that way and leaves Thornfield. While on her own, Jane still strives to gain independence, discovers new kin, and learns she has a wealthy uncle who has left her a large inheritance. After her loneliness and longing for Mr. Rochester becomes too great, she returns to Thornfield. Jane is

Near the novel’s conclusion, St. John attempts to persuade Jane to join his mission to India, but she responds, “If I go to St. John, I abandon half myself: if I go to India, I go to premature death.” The repetition used in this line conveys how, if Jane accepted St. John’s plea to travel to India, she would suffer becoming socially isolated from Rochester. This resolves her conviction to decline St. John and return to marry Rochester within the finale. Chris Bossche comments on Jane’s feeling of exclusion, stating, “[Jane Eyre]’s heroine rebels against social exclusion yet ultimately does not seek to overturn the existing social order.” This interpretation of Jane’s motivations aligns with my own personal understanding of the character who, while not wishing herself to be excluded from Rochester, accepts Bertha’s isolation in the attic of Thornfield. This is demonstrated when Jane describes Bertha through the hyperbole, “I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me.” This exaggeration of Bertha details how Jane believes that she possesses an eccentric and dangerous nature, providing reason for why Jane does not protest her imprisonment. Yet, since Bertha remains estranged from society, she ultimately burns down Thornfield at the end of the novel. As a result of their perpetual fear of exclusion and social isolation, the actions of characters within the novel are dictated, transpiring in the text’s

Despite John Reed’s cruel, brutish behaviour towards Jane; ‘you are a dependant… you ought to beg’, Jane’s innately fierce nature is not crushed, it merely lies in wait, cloaked by her ‘habitual obedience’, until it is gradually revealed as she fights back against Mrs Reed’s tyranny. When being forced into the Red Room, as punishment for a crime she did not commit, Jane tells the reader that ‘I resisted all the way: a new thing for me’, it is arguably the first break in the traditional mould for a female heroine, as he does not, and increasingly will not, fit the female roles conventionally assigned to a woman in her position in society. When Mrs Reed cruelly asserts to John Reed that Jane is “not worthy of notice… neither you or your sister should associate with her”, Jane’s reaction is not orthodoxly submissive, but instinctively and immediately reactive. To defend herself she vehemently states “I cried out suddenly and without at all deliberating on my words ‘they are not fit to associate with me!’”. Jane’s confidence and quick wit, moves her further away from conventionality and submission, and fuels her independent, morally virtuous personality. Later, when Mrs Reed denounces Jane’s character to her future headmaster ‘the cold marble pillar’, Mr Brocklehurst, Jane again, passionately discards the expectations placed upon her, and informs the reader, “speak I must: I had been

Faith and religion rests in the core of Jane’s character and actions, but also causes tension with her independence. At Lowood, she struggles to reconcile her desire to rebel against oppression and injustice with the words of Helen saying to submit like Christ. She chooses to submit, experiencing an “extraordinary sensation”, feeling “as if she was a martyr” (67). Through her submissions, she learns to be virtuous. This virtue is challenged when she must choose either to be Rochester’s mistress, or to forsake the man she loves, jeopardizing her happiness. Abiding by God’s law, she leaves, believing that “God directed [her] to a correct choice” (366). Jane faces her fiercest tension when she faces St. John’s proposal to marry him and become a missionary’s wife. She desires to continue in God’s will, telling St. John that “I will give my heart to God”, but knows that marrying him goes against her every desire. She wishes to be free from St. John; she desires her independence. She nearly submits, were she “but convinced that it is God’s will” that she marry St. John (426). She prays for Heaven to “show [her] the path” (426). Jane truly seeks God’s will, and in return, “seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit” (427). Her devotion to God is rewarded as she prays in her “different way to St. John’s” (427). God releases Jane from a life married to St. John and allows her to return to Rochester and become his wife. Jane’s faith in God allows her to make virtuous

Brontë shapes her female character in such a way that she deals with her “hunger, rebellion and anger” (Gilbert and Guber, 1979: 360), without entering into a visible conflict with society. Thus, Jane does not openly challenge the Victorian patriarchal system, because she knows how to encompass the imposed standards without letting them run her

Jane is taught at a young age to look down on people not of her caste, and to oppress them the same way that she herself is oppressed as a female orphan. Though Jane is not influenced directly by social status at all times, it is still a constant factor which Brontë makes evident. In Victorian England, a female must either be born or married into her social class, and this is what defines her. The character of Jane served to undercut the popular female stereotypes of fiction: the angel of the house, the invalid, or the whore (Brackett, 2000). Brontë creates Jane as her own force, in which she is neither the angel, invalid or whore, but a young lady who is intelligent and has pride and dignity. In this Victorian society, her unsubmissiveness and independence is her social fault, which Brontë pokes fun at (Brackett, 2000). Male Victorian writers cast women during this time as social, finagling creatures whose goals are to obtain as many friends as possible and throw the most elaborate parties. Brontë opposes this by creating Jane as an opposite of these “defining” characteristics, by making Jane a female who could are less about how many people adore her, a female who would actually enjoy a life with few companions. As mentioned before, Jane’s sense of dignity is evident. As Jane became Rochester’s governess, she is faced with the

Jane endured a harsh life in the home of her guardian, her cruel aunt Mrs. Reed. One of the punishments that Jane remembers immensely is her internment in the isolated and abandoned red-room, formerly belonging to Jane’s deceased uncle. Jane is forced to inhabit the chamber on her own while she is in a state of pain and fury. As the night begins to fall, the red-room begins to have an effect on Jane as the lonesome aspect of the room and its supernatural qualities begin to take their toll on Jane’s imagination. Jane begin to recall on the red-room, “I had heard what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr.

St. John, Jane’s other suitor in the novel represents a different kind of religious man than Mr. Brocklehurst but his actions in the text are still patriarchal in nature. St. John is genuine in his belief systems and truly wants to make a difference and save the world, a stark contrast to the misguided hypocrisy that Brocklehurst carries out in the name of religion. St. John wants Jane to accompany him on his mission trip as his wife. When Jane objects telling him “you have hitherto been my adopted brother: I, your adopted sister; let us continue as such: you and I had better not marry” (924) he tells her that “adopted fraternity will not do in this case. If you were my real sister it would be different” (924).

Women were described as “in all ways subordinate to male authority” (Marsh). This patriarchal thinking is shown in the novel when a maid comments, “What a shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentlemen, your benefactress’s son!” (Bronte 15). Though Jane was punished for her actions, it ends up being in her favor as she collapses from hysteria after being thrown in the red-room, where her uncle died, and a doctor tells the family to send her off to school, where her quality of life is improved as she makes friends and is encouraged to become a governess. Bronte is proving that rebellion is rewarding as Jane was freed from the Reeds.

Although Bertha’s seclusion is a result of her insanity and unacceptable behaviour, Jane’s isolation seems to be the cause of some mental illness, throwing her into a panic attack in the red room where she believes her Uncle Reed’s ghost dwells. It must be noted, though, that Jane is a child at this point in the novel, with an active imagination. Bronte may be making a point then, that children should not be shunned for their inventiveness and imagination, as was so common in her day. However, there is a fine line, and socially acceptable age, that separates a healthy imagination from madness. There is a clear lack of this knowledge in Bertha, whom does not appear to have a firm grip on reality. Madness, however, does not merely deal with concepts of reality in “Jane Eyre.” Jane has bouts of uncontrollable speech, in which she must say what comes to her mind. Jane first loses control of her tongue in chapter IV, in which she accuses Mrs. Reed of wishing her dead, and later exclaims “I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare, I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed,” and goes on to evaluate the terrible treatment Mrs. Reed has given her, and the lack of love and compassion she has been shown while at Gateshead. In this instance, madness works in Jane’s favour. This temporary bout of mania allows Jane to finally express the

Jane is filled with passion, however, and her willful disobedience is often her attempt to explain her feelings.  We see her passion find its fulfillment and understanding in Rochester.  When they meet, we see Jane's all-consuming passion and not much less of a fire in Rochester, "'I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not (again he stopped) did not (he proceeded hastily) strike delight to my very inmost heart for nothing...My cherished preserver, good night'.  Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look" (Bronte 133).