Themes in Jane Eyre 2.

Jane Eyre traces the competing and possibly irreconcilable needs for perpetual love and perpetual autonomy. - Maurianne Adams, Jane Eyre: Woman's Estate 'But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who will look after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind lamenter like me?' 'I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own mistress.' 'And you will stay with me?' 'Certainlyunless you object. I will be your neighbor, your nurse, your housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your companionto read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you. Cease to look to melancholy, my dear master; you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live' (406). 3. The individual worhty of consideration would mature under adversity... misfortune was a test of his worth. Thus, Jane Eyre does not buckle under ill treatment, but instead grows in stature as she defied persecution. - Frederick Karl, A Reader's Guide to the Nineteenth Century British Novel There I was, then, mounted aloft; I, who had said I could not bear the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room, was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my sensations were, no language can describe; but just as they all rose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me: in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was a s if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit. I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and took a firm stand on the stool (63). Still indomitable was the reply'I car about for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not madas I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worthso I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I an insanequite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot' (296). 5. The danger of the unreality of vision that man suffers when he gives himself over to unrestrained passion is one of the themes of the book. - Robert Bernard Martin, The Accents of Persuation: Charlotte Bronte's Novel 'You shall be Mrs. Rochesterboth virtually and nominally. I shall keep only to you so long as you and I live. You shall go to a place I have in the south of Franc: a white-washed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and nmost innocent life' (285). I wiped my tears and hushed by sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle itI endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair

from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dork room; at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern, carried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift-darting bean was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rustling of wings; somethings seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke downI uttered a wild, involuntary cryI rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort (16).