The Continuous Search Between Emotional Exile and Spiritual Imprisonment

The Continuous Search Between Emotional Exile and Spiritual Imprisonment

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre’s relentlessness delineates her continuous search between emotional exile and spiritual imprisonment: “The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself” (270). Basically, Jane is searching a balance between reason and passion. Jane desires to be moral and proper, yet she longs for consolation in love as well. Jane is both restless and moral. Poor John Reed went to college but got expelled for failing examinations. Also, John got into debt and into jail that Mrs. Reed had to help him out twice, but as soon as he was free, he returned to his old harmful habits and companions. Furthermore, he once asked Mrs. Reed to give everything she has to him and when she refused, John Reed was found dead. Luckily, Georgiana and Eliza were better off than John Reed. Georgiana made an advantageous match with “a wealthy worn-out man of fashion,” while Eliza took the veil and was “superior of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate and which she endowed with her fortune” (206). Mrs. Reed was suffocated by John Reed’s faith that it brought on a stroke. Unfortunately, Mrs. Reed probably saw her life as only full of sufferings. When she died, no one in her family had shed a tear. Mrs. Reed felt that her treatment of Jane was just because she had taken in Jane when she was an orphan, and she had fulfilled her promise to her husband. When Jane was in Gateshead, her only comfort or companion was Bessie Leaven. Without Bessie, Jane would have felt more isolated in Gateshead. Furthermore, Bessie aided Jane by telling her the situation of John Reed’s and Mrs. Reed’s life after Jane had left Gateshead. Bessie also told Jane about her uncle who came to find her at Gateshead. At Lowood, Marie Temple was Jane’s companion: “her friendship and society had been [Jane’s] continual solace” (71). To Jane, Temple was like a mother, governess, and companion. Without Temple, Jane would...

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