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Pointed Lace

A blog dedicated to the discussion of Women in Literature

Different portrayals of Love in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

Thursday, September 14, 2006

In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte has endeavoured to portray love in different forms, in an attempt to find her own definition for love.

From Rochester's perspective, dependence and control is love. From his entrapment of Bertha and subsequent treatment of her, to his wishing to possess Jane despite the latter's oppositions, and his legal (marriage) concerns, his form of showing love (before Bertha's "burning down the house") involves control and force.

However, after Jane's departure from Thornfied, and Bertha's death, he is increasingly despondent and becomes more humble while realiizing his mistakes. His becoming handicapped in the end adds to the fact that he is physically as well as emotionally dependent on Jane. Hence, in this case, his love is one of dependence.

From Jane perspective, her love is based on dependence, pity, dominance, and most impotantly, action. When she first meets Rochester in Thornfied and falls in love with him, she becomes emotionally involved with him. She needs Rochester, and so was dependent on him, for her emotional balance. She was lonely and isolated in Thornfield and she wanted to interact with an expanded mind and an intelligent person who also balanced her emotional needs and thus Rochester complements her.
When Rochester becomes handicapped and Thornfield burns down, Jane returns to him, but her love for him now could be interpreted as having arisen out of pity for his situation, and a desire to exert her dominance, specially now that she was indeed an independent heiress.

A novel definition for love is "love as action". This definition emphasises love as something active, NOT passive. Jane's quote in Chapter 12 "who blames me? Many no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restless was in my nature; it agiatated me to pain sometimes. ...." reiterates how she yearned for excitement and action in her life. This need was fulfilled by Rochester. He represents the "action" she seeks, because after meeting him, her mind was engaged and occupied and her thirst for action does not resume until afte her life settles into a routine while she teaches in the school patronized by Rosamond.

St John also fulfills the notion of "love as action" except that his kind of "action" is differnet from that of Jane and Rochester's. St John seeks to physically do "work" as a missionary in India, and he wants Jane to complement him in his mission, that is, work like him. His love for Jane is based on how much she is useful in his quest and fulfilling his mission. However, that kind of love or "action" does not suit Jane because it does not mesh with her emotional, intellectual, and physical needs.

Arising from the "love as action", which introduces the "religion as action" concept presumed by St John, it serves as a necessary logical transition to compare and contrast with the the "love as religion" theme in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. However, In the interest of time (and energy), I intend to strive to make this other interesting discourse the subject of a future essay.

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