Fire In Jane Eyre

         As we all know Charlotte Brontë has a thing for symbolism, one of her favorite and most used symbols in Jane Eyre is fire. Fire in Jane Eyre represents passion, emotion, and irrationality. Things women were told to oppress during Brontë's time. A clear example of this motif is when St. John asks Jane to marry him, but she believes that "a marriage to [St. john] would "[force]... the fire of [her] nature continually low, [it would] compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital this would be unendurable” (470). In Christianity fire represents sin and hell. When asked what hell is, a young Jane responds with "A pit full of fire" (39). In her childhood, Jane is punished for showing anger and passion, and subsequently sent to the Red Room. This room symbolizes the suppression of her natural emotion and passion, the room being described as cold, literally as "seldom [having] a fire" (17). This early association of passion with punishment results in Janes "cool" seemingly detached demeanor later in life. Once she arrives in Thornfield this demeanor is tested on various occasions, one being when Bertha Mason sets fire to Rochester bed. The fire is a very blunt association of fire with passion; Rochester's bed is literally on fire and Jane literally puts it out. The symbolism is played out later when Rochester asks Jane to stay with him but she denies him. Jane symbolically douses the fire of his desire for her. The motif of fire as passion comes to a head at the end of the book when Bertha sets fire to Thornfield, and commits suicide. Rochester and his way of life is destroyed by a product of his passion; Bertha. The fire represents Rochester's emotional irrational side, and how eventually it came to blind him and burn his home. Fire in Jane represents passion, which can be seen as both a good and bad facet of human nature. Something to be controlled, but not entirely denied.