Jane Eyre : themes Flashcards
Passion (disconnected from self)
‘Strange little figure there gazing at me’
Passion (debilitating)
‘My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down’
Passion vs moral control
‘Is it better to be a slave in a fool’s paradise .. suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse’
Passion (st john)
‘I am cold, no fervour infects me’
Passion (danger of lack)
‘His large heart, weary of despotic constriction’
Passion (fire vs ice imagery)
‘If you are ice then I am fire’
Passion vs Restraint
‘conscience, turned tyrant, held passion by the throat’
Love (importance of affection)
‘When thus gentle, Bessie seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest being in the world’
Love (inherent connection)
‘I feel akin to him - I understand the language of his countenance and demeanors’
Love (beauty)
‘Gratitude and many associations, all pleasurable made his face the object I best lived to see’
Love (equality)
“My bride is here… because my equal is here”
Love (St John)
‘It seemed I had found a brother, one I could be proud of, one I could love’
Love (Rivers sisters)
‘They had inspired me with genuine affection and admiration’
Autonomy (bird imagery)
‘I am no bird and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will’
Autonomy (necessity)
‘I desired liberty, for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer’
Autonomy (power of free soul)
‘Whatever I do with its cage I cannot get at it’
Autonomy (wealth)
‘It was a legacy of life, hope and enjoyment’
Autonomy (self love)
‘If all the world hated and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends’
Religion (Brocklehurst)
‘The dread judge’
‘straight, narrow, sable-clad shape’
Religion (New testament christianity)
‘The bible bid us return good for evil’
Religion (st john)
‘Pure lived, conscientious, zealous as he was- had not yet found the peace of God’
Religion (Rochester’s redemption)
‘I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker’
Religion (jane’s revelation)
‘I felt the might and strength of God’
Class (high class)
“Expression of almost insoportable haughtiness”
‘Furrowed with pride’
Class (mrs fairfax)
‘They are only servants, and one can’t converse with them on terms of equality: one must keep them at due distance, for fear of losing one’s authority
Injustice (tyrant john)
‘You are like a murderer—you are like a slave-driver
Injustice (fear of John)
‘Every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near’
Injustice (Jane’s anger)
‘Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned?’
Gender roles (St john)
“He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man.”
gender roles (bronte’s manifesto)
‘women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts’
Gender roles (equality)
‘if we both stood at God’s feet, equal as we are!’
Madness (dehumanised Bertha)
‘Clothed hyena’
Madness (violent passion)
‘It snatched and growled like some strange wild animal’
Forgiveness (Mrs Reed)
‘To you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did’
Forgiveness (Helen)
‘Love your enemies’
Entrapment
(women)
“women suffer from too rigid a restraint”.
Entrapment
(red room)
‘a terrible red glare, crossed with thick black bars’
Entrapment
(Lowood institution)
‘an inmate of its walls’
Gothic
(red room)
‘All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality’
Gothic
(thornfield, foreshadowing)
‘like a corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle’
Entrapment
(Rochester)
‘I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck’
