Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre - Jane Eyre and I :: Jane Eyre Essays

Jane Eyre and I         For me reading Jane Eyre was no mere intellectual exercise it was an get it on which served to reflect a mirror-image of what I am. Janes rainbows and cobwebs are mine we are one. I think that she would be as engrossed in reading an account of my aliveness as I was in reading hers. I see her reading Ruth Rosen on a stormy night, covers up to her chin, with candlelight flickering and current of air whistling across the heath. I read hers tucked into bed, as wind rattled the windows and bellowed through the caverns of Trump Village. Every page of Jane Eyre seemed to uncover a nonher relation between us. One passage was particularly meaningful to me because I found it to be a melding of several characteristics No reflection was to be allowed now not one glance was to be cast back not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the ancient or future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet--so deadly sad--that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my efficacy (p. 323). Here we see Jane as romantic, moral, passionate, vulnerable and highly principled.       My past grinds at my guts, but I realize now that I couldnt have done differently taking into account my romantic and moral inclinations, my passions, my vulnerability and high principles. Jane was tormented by her choices for the same reasons. Jacques Brel said, Perhaps we feel too much and maybe thats the crime, maybe we pray too much and there isnt any shrine... But thats cynical, and defensive and incurable romantics like Jane and me would argue vehemently with Mr. Brels lyric. To me (and probably to Jane) without passion and the Quest, life is a living death without the willingness to do, to try and perhaps, to fail, we are automatons.       Philosophers and psychologists tell us that we do what we do because of what we are. As kindred spirits, Jane and I would f ind ourselves in emotional and ethical quandaries and flight would be the only choice. It is a flight fueled by principles.       Flight was Janes only alternative when St. John Rivers proposed. He didnt seek marriage on the basis of love, but as a device to woo her into becoming a fellow-missionary. She was appalled by this bloodless, lifeless request.