Jane Ayre analysis essays

Jane Ayre analysis essays Charlotte Bronte makes use of nature imagery throughout "Jane Eyre," and comments on both the human relationship with the outdoors and human nature. The following are examples from the novel that exhibit the importance of nature during that time period. Several natural themes run through the novel, one of which is the image of a stormy sea. After Jane saves Rochester's life, she gives us the following metaphor of their relationship: "Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea . . . I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore . . . now and then a freshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne: but . . . a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back"(Bront 159). The gale is all the forces that prevent Jane's union with Rochester. Bront implies that Jane's feelings about the sea driving her back remind her of her heart felt emotions of a rocky relationship with Rochester and still being drawn back to him. Another recurrent image is Bront's treatment of Birds. We first witness Jane's fascination when she reads Bewick's History of British Birds as a child. She reads of "death-white realms" and "'the solitary rocks and promontories'" of sea-fowl. One can see how Jane identifies with the bird. For her it is a form of escape, the idea of flying above the toils of every day life. Several times the narrator talks of feeding birds crumbs. Perhaps Bront is telling us that this idea of escape is no more than a fantasy-one cannot escape when one must return for basic sustenance. The link between Jane and birds is strengthened by the way Bront adumbrates poor nutrition at Lowood through a bird who is described as a little hungry robin. Bront brings the buoyant sea theme and the bird theme together in the passage describing the first painting of Jane's that Rochester examines. This painting depicts a turbulent...