Faith And Religion In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

“I sincerely, deeply, fervently long to do what is right; and only that” (426). Throughout Jane Eyre, the characters struggle to live out and develop their faiths, according both to God’s will and their own. In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, faith and religion are displayed in different forms through the characters of Helen Burns, St. John, and Jane Eyre.

“. . .if others don’t love me, I would rather die than live -- I cannot bare to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from. . .whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken. . .’” (Brontë 82). Explanation: Jane Eyre, for all of her life prior to Lowood Academy, was disliked by her superiors and hated by those who should be considered her comrades. Finding comfort and love in Helen Burns, her first childhood friend, she confides her youthful desire to be loved. At such a young age, Jane desired even the most dilute of love, no matter the cost. Her immaturity hinders her happiness, causing her to feel as if she has been severely deprived of such fondness. Her tantrum not only leaves her friend stunned, but she learns a most valuable lesson in faith and doing what is most right with God that lasts with her throughout her journeys of woe and worry along Mr. Rochester’s side.

Throughout Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre is afflicted with the feud between her moral values, and the way society perceives these notions. Jane ultimately obtains her happy ending, and Brontë’s shrewd denouement of St. John’s fate juxtaposes Jane’s blissful future with St. John’s tragic course of action. When Jane ends up at the Moor House, she is able to discover a nexus of love and family, and by doing so, she no longer feels fettered to Rochester. Moreover, Rochester is no longer Jane’s only form of psychological escape, and thus Jane is in a position to return to him without an aura of discontent. At the end of the novel, Jane is finally able to be irrevocably “blest beyond what language can express” (Brontë 459) because she is “absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh” (459).

Brocklehurst, Helen Burns, and St. John Rivers, and Edward Rochester, who try to coax her into each of their respective religious entities. Although Jane does not fully accept any of the religions of her suitors, she does acknowledge Christianity and credit a god for her existence. The first character Jane meets out of these Mr. Brocklehurst. This takes place during her final days in Gateshead Hall. Jane first describes Brocklehurst as a “black pillar” because of his grim appearance and personality. His interactions with Jane could almost be described as standoffish. Mr. Brocklehurst stands on one side with his firm and unbending religious opinions and Jane stands on the other with an almost polar opposite of emotion and energy. The next character from those listed above is Helen Burns. Helen is introduced at the Lowood Institute and offers Jane her devoutly religious views, which she of course does not accept. Jane does, however, befriend Helen, who preaches to “bless them that curse you” and she lives by this saying. The fact that she never takes offense to anything people say to her further proves this

Furthermore, Jane says “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself” (Chapter 27, Bronte.) This statement greatly represents the growth that Jane has undergone. She no longer dreads the solitude that once haunted her because she respects herself enough to realize that she did not deserve to experience such great dismay. Through independence and self-recognition, Jane has discovered the importance of loving oneself. Without the reliance on the thoughts of others, the once extremely troubled girl found bliss through a lack of outside control. In regards to her relationship with Mr. Rochester, Jane understands that she must leave him behind to maintain her own well-being. She does not allow the wealth or proclaimed love from Rochester to skew her decisions and she does not linger to dominate the life of her lover. Instead, she moves forward to continue her endless pursuit of happiness and independence.

Chapter seven sees Jane slightly more experienced to the ways of Lowood School. She has come to accept the poor conditions laid down by Mr. Brocklehurst, however has not yet learnt to ignore them and Bronte describes Jane suffering a lot in this chapter. This lack of food and appalling living conditions are down to the head of the school, Mr. Brocklehurst. This man uses his apparent strong beliefs in Christianity as an excuse to provide the children of Lowood with the absolute bare minimum. Brocklehurst claims his “mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh”, presenting the idea that perhaps Brocklehurst is simply a man that has a immensely firm grasp of his

In Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte intertwines various religious ideas in her mid-nineteenth century English setting. Throughout the novel, Jane Eyre blends various religious insights which she has learned from different sources. While Jane was young, she had only a Biblical textbook outlook on life combined with the miserable emotional conditions of her surroundings. This in turn led to Jane being quite mean with Mrs. Reed. When Jane eventually goes off to Lowood and meets Helen Burns, she learns of her religious philosophy far more than the words would mean. Over the course of many years Jane then applies the basis of Helen's religious philosophy and adjusts it for herself in relation to the

Throughout the novel, Charlotte Bronte introduces characters that challenge Jane’s spirituality and impress their religious beliefs on her. However, these characters, whom of which are Mr. Brocklehurst and St. John, all live in such a way that contradicts what they claim to believe. Therefore, Jane rejects the religion presented to her and attempts to become her own savior.

During the Victorian Era of the 1840s to 1900s, Victorian Protestants did not view idolatry simply as the sin of worshiping a graven image, but as a serious crime in which one revered a person, thing, or idea to the level at which such devotion hindered the relationship with God. Such ideology influenced the authors of the era heavily to ultimately result its presence in many marriage-plot novels produced during the era, including Jane Eyre. Living within this Victorian Protestant community, Charlotte Bronte incorporated the struggle to be set free from self-definition by idolatry as a major part in the development of the heroine of her book, Jane Eyre. By connecting Catholicism and idolatry together, Bronte uses the story of Jane Eyre’s coming-of-age

Bronte has purposefully rejected the idea of a conventionally beautiful heroine; she told siblings ‘I will show you a heroine as plain and small as myself’. As a reader we have more respect for Jane because of these virtues, she has more emotion and does not appear placid. She questions everything, which is unfortunate at Gateshead as Mrs Reed doesn’t ‘like cavillers or questioners…there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner.’ Jane is shown to possess a strong and rich inner life, but we notice also how much she internalises and, when attacked, retreats and finds solace in solitude, in the world of art, and in contact with nature.

Bronte’s feminist ideas radiated throughout her novel Jane Eyre. There were many strong and clear examples of these ideas in Bronte’s protagonist, Jane, her personality, actions, thoughts and beliefs. From the beginning of the book, Jane’s strong personality and her lack of following social expectations were quiet clear. “Women of the Victorian era were not part of a man’s world, as they were considered below them.”(VanTassel-Baska, 4) The class divisions between a man and a woman were very distinctive. Jane however ignored this. When Jane first met Rochester, the whole scene presented a feminist portrait of Jane. A women walking alone in that era should never address a man, but Jane went out of her way to help Rochester stating that “if you are hurt, I can help” (Bronte, 98), Jane even let him place a hand on her shoulder. Jane believed that “women were supposed to be very calm generally, but women felt just as men felt” (Bronte, 116), which showed her perseverance and persistence in being independent and proving that men should be equal to that of women. This was of

Helen Burns’s memorable, albeit short-lived role in Jane Eyre proves to be incredibly influential on young Jane during the rest of the novel. Helen serves as Jane’s first direct interaction with strong faith in someone her own age. Helen embodies an incredibly passive faith, believing that she will be rewarded in heaven for her suffering on Earth. She goes as far to say, “...do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you” (Bronte 70). And being a student at Lowood, the boarding school where Jane first makes her acquaintance, she is quite familiar with suffering. All of the students, in fact, are familiar with the sacrifice and self-deprivation present in many aspects of their life, such as their diet of “burned porridge” and “strange

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre emerges with a unique voice in the Victorian period for the work posits itself as a sentimental novel; however, it deliberately becomes unable to fulfill the genre, and then, it creates an altogether divergent novel that demonstrates its superiority by adding depth of structure in narration and character portrayal. Joan D. Peters’ essay, Finding a Voice: Towards a Woman’s Discourse of Dialogue in the Narration of Jane Eyre positions Gerard Genette’s theory of convergence, which is that the movement of the fiction towards a confluence of protagonist and narrator, is limited as the argument does not fully flesh out the parodies that Charlotte Bronte incorporates into her work. I will argue that in the novel

"red room" she is told by Miss Abbot: "No; you are less than a servant

In a time period where women were unequal and unheard in society, Charlotte Brontë expresses her feminist ideals through her novel Jane Eyre, an unexpected love story between an unlikely pair. During her work as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Jane gets to know her master, Mr. Rochester, very well and begins to fall in love with him. Jane at first forbids herself from a courtship because of the class difference between them; however, in time she learns that the feelings of love are mutual and they plan to marry. Unfortunately, a lawyer interrupts their wedding and claims Mr. Rochester has a living wife, which proves true when Mr. Rochester introduces Jane to Bertha, his insane spouse. Unwilling to be Rochester 's mistress, Jane flees him and finds work, only to realize that her employer is her cousin and that her uncle left her with a large sum of money. Now equal in rank to Rochester, Jane seeks him out and finds out that his wife died burning Thornfield Hall to the ground, which means that Jane can finally marry Rochester. Although it cannot be classified as a gothic novel, Brontë purposefully includes elements of Gothic literature to cause changes in the plot that identify feminist characteristics in the main character, Jane Eyre. Multiple supernatural occurrences certainly act as catalysts for changes that reveal Jane 's independence. Places such as the red-room and events like Bertha 's introduction and the answer to Jane’s prayer serve as stimuli for major plot shifts