Jane Eyre

Pt. I

“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so somber, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor activity was now out of the question.” Pg.1

This passage is so intense in the biting language it uses. It has this sense of darkness that is so surrounding it is spooky. It all revolves ice; in a sense each world hits you with a cold sensation: cold, somber, penetrating. Each word used makes it seem as if winter is riding the back of your neck. It also brings a sense of lifeless sense to the picture. Leafless is probably the biggest sense of death and it could also be a foreshadowing of the deaths to come. Leafless really shows no chance of life or survival in the area Jane seems to be living.

I really think the opening passage seems to set up the whole mood and tone of the novel. It seems to foreshadow events that come to pass later in the story. This passage may seem like an opener but when looked at closely you can almost see the author’s attitude towards her life story. It seems like she tells us that life really was not worth living in this time. This gothic nature encapsulates the tone of the entire story as well as the theme.

Pt. II

“Altogether the auto-biography of Jane Eyre is pre-eminently and anti Christian composition. There is throughout it a murmuring against the comforts of the rich and against the privations of the poor, which, as far as each individual is concerned, is a murmuring against God’s appointment.” Rigby really encapsulates the belief that Jane Eyre is a non Christian novel. It falls in the context of ungratefulness, and a discern towards the God that gave her the happiness she longed for.

It seems that throughout the novel Jane is ungrateful towards the gifts she has been given. It also seems to be a repetition and It surprises me that she did not show her faith in her troubled times. The thing is that she is portraying herself in a manner in which she is the one who can change the way she is. In some ways this is true but in many ways it isn’t. Yes we have the power to change ourselves but in the manner of Jane Eyre she has been given love and wants but she never seems to grasp it. So many opportunities seem to arise but when she